By Parker McKenzie
Voices of Casey held a community forum with talks from environmentalist, public scientist and 2007 Australian of the Year Tim Flannery and former Indi MP Cathy McGowan as they continue their search for a candidate to run for the seat of Casey in the next federal election.
Voices for Casey spokesperson Fionn Bowd, who led the forum attended by over 80 people, with the theme of whether individuals can have an impact on larger issues like climate change, said Ms McGowan and Mr Flannery had optimism and hope for the future, but it isn’t a passive kind of hope.
“It’s not the kind of hope that you hear some people express along the lines that surely things will get better, surely politicians will start to listen, surely women will start to have more equality, surely we’ll start to get some action on climate change,” Ms Bowd said.
“There is the kind that asks you to take action, asks you to ask yourself what more you can do and what can be done together.”
Mr Flannery said he had hope for climate action after witnessing the speed of Australia’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
we stopped flights from China within weeks of the news breaking and we actually beat the WHO to declare a global pandemic by 12 days,” Mr Flannery said.
“We were being very proactive and I just thought if this government can do this for a global crisis, we can do it for climate and it turns out that there are so many lessons from dealing with the pandemic that are directly applicable to climate,
“As we got closer to COP26 in Glasgow, and I attended that meeting so I can talk a little bit about it, where Australia just performed so dismally it was if we’d learned nothing from the pandemic.”
Ms McGowan said if you have a vision you can bring people together.
“We’ve forgotten the power of groups coming together, finding a shared vision, having discussed what the values are, and the behaviour that we’re going to work to doing that very obviously, and then setting about doing something in a really deliberate way,” she said.
“We got all the diverse people together. We had a strategy, we had a vision, we had a strategy, we had an action plan, we had a time frame and then we got ahead and did it, and it worked.”
Ms McGowan said 22 Voices groups have put forward candidates for the federal election around Australia.
“It’s doesn’t work when your ego gets in the way and when you think it’s about you,” she said.
“You have to get out of your own way.”
Applications closed to be the Voices of Casey independent candidate on 7 February, with an in-person launch on 20 February where the candidate will be named.
The Casey electorate includes Lilydale, Mt Evelyn, Mooroolbark, Montrose and Chirnside Park.
