16 March, 2015
Environment Forum 2015 - Putting nature in the election campaign spotlight
Environment spokespeople for the ALP, Liberal Party, and the Greens will be quizzed about their parties’ environment policies in front of a capacity crowd at the NSW Parliament Theatrette next Tuesday from 5.30pm to 7pm.
Environment Minister Rob Stokes, Opposition Leader Luke Foley, and Greens Environment Spokesperson Mehreen Faruqi will field questions on key aspects of the portfolio, including:
- biodiversity and land clearing
- coal seam gas and coal mining
- marine conservation
- logging of native forest
- environmental regulation and performance of EPA
- climate change
- national parks and wilderness
- urban bushland
- dams
The Q&A is being moderated by veteran political journalist Quentin Dempster and is being hosted by the Environment Liaison Office, a collaboration of nine of the state’s leading conservation organisations. [1]
“The major parties have already made some big-ticket announcements, including a container deposit scheme from the Coalitions, a Koala National Park proposal from the ALP, and some piecemeal responses to coal seam gas threat,” said Nature Conservation Council CEO Kate Smolski.
“However, there are many areas of environment policy that require urgent attention. The forum is an opportunity for the parties to explain to an informed audience of environmentalists how they intend responding to these challenges.”
The forum is one of several actions that ELO organisations are taking to swing the spotlight onto the environment during the 2015 state election campaign.
Environment groups are also:
- running candidate forums in regional centres;
- running billboard ads in western Sydney
- running bus ads; and
- compiling a political Promise Tracker.
They have also circulated a detailed policy agenda, Our Environment, Our Future - Policies for the 2015 NSW Election and Beyond [2], which contains 25 top policy asks.
REFERENCES
[1] The ELO comprises the NSW Nature Conservation Council, NSW National Parks Association, Colong Foundation for Wilderness, The Wilderness Society, Total Environment Centre, Blue Mountains Conservation Society, Central West Environment Council, North Coast Environment Council, and South East Region Conservation Alliance. Read more: http://www.nature.org.au/campaigns/parliamentary-liaison/
[2] http://www.nature.org.au/media/2116/our-environment-our-future-revised-february-2015.pdf
ENVIRONMENT FORUM 2015
A 90-minute Q&A-style panel discussion.
Speakers
- Rob Stokes, Environment Minister
- Luke Foley, Opposition leader and ALP environment spokesperson
- Dr Mehreen Faruqi, Greens environment spokesperson
When: 5.30pm-7pm, Tuesday, 17 March
Where: Parliament Theatrette, NSW Parliament
Tags
NSW Parliament
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