Ben’s Blog

Just checking in. I’m in Delhi for two days, and this is the first chance I’ve had to get online for a little while.

It was an amazing, heartbreaking, encouraging, informative and challenging twelve days in Bangladesh. I travelled for about a week with AJ and Susan from Room 3, who will produce the TEAR video on the risks and impacts of climate change on communities in Bangladesh.

I’ve met families forced to move five or more times because of increasing river erosion, losing land, homes and possessions each time. I visited areas affected by Cyclone Sidr (November 2007), still suffering the after-effects of lost lives, lost homes, lost livelihoods, salinated groundwater… We definitely got some remarkable and tragic insights into the nature of climate and environmental risks in Bangladesh, and the way climate change is already making hard lives harder.

Don’t have time to upload any photos or stories yet, but will do that as soon as I can.

It’s been revealed that an unpublished World Bank report suggests that 75% of recent global food price rises is the result of crop substitution and land conversion in favour of biofuels.This blows out of the water the US’ very sanguine take that biofuels were responsible for only around 3% of price rises, and even the far more realistic estimate of 30% provided by the International Food Policy Research Institute (pdf).So, while the longer-term supply and demand factors (lack of investment and support for small-farm productivity and rising demand in, for example, India and China) clearly play a part in rising world food prices, it looks like it’s mostly the fault of the world’s wealthiest filling their tanks at the cost of the poorest being able to fill their stomachs.It’s f-ed up. I just can’t think of another way to say it.ActionAid have just released a great report, Cereal Offenders (pdf), providing recommendations for the G8 to cut biofuel subsidies, support small-scale farmers, and tackle climate change.

The Global Call to Action is staging a noisy, creative, and hopeful demonstration at the G8 in Japan.

10,000 people, 200 bamboo trees with wishes from all round the world addressed to the G8 – basically asking them to keep their promises.

Which, according to a leaked draft of the communiqué reported in the Financial Times, they are having some trouble doing. Backtracking on their 2005 commitments of an additional $25 billion in aid to Africa and universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care by 2010.

You can send an online wish to G8 leaders, putting a bit more public pressure on them to come up with something more substantial during the summit this weekend.

On the weekend the Treasurer said:

There will be revenue raised from an emissions trading system and every cent of that revenue will certainly be used to assist either households or the business community with the impacts of this scheme.

I’ve got no problem with assisting low-income households particularly to deal with rising costs associated with the ETS. But I think the money needs to do more than just get recycled to businesses and/or households. Some of the revenue should be used to help further reduce Australia’s own emissions, through technology development and deployment for example.

And some of it should certainly be used to fund the efforts of poor countries as they struggle to adapt to the impacts of climate change. We actually have treaty obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to support adaptation, particularly in Least Developed Countries and countries particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, such as small island states. Using some of the ETS revenue for this purpose would start to provide an adequate and reliable source of funding for critical adaptation needs in poor countries. Something that has been shamefully lacking in the global response to climate change so far.

It’s a crazy time to be doing it (with all our preparations for a longer-term move), but I’m leaving for Bangladesh tonight, to see the work of one of our partners HEED responding to climate change impacts and help make a DVD for TEAR on the topic. Then I’ll be going to India to see the advocacy work of one of our partners who are doing some really effective community development and advocacy work.

Good to see The Australian is still mostly carrying on its anti-ALP and anti-climate change campaigns. There are occasional bright spots where commentary is insightful and well-informed. (That is, it hasn’t been through the Australian’s sausage factory of dominant narrative conformity – “responding to climate change will destroy the economy”, “the Rudd Government is all spin and no substance”, or whatever.)

Here’s a good example of why, in general, George Megalogenis is a commentator worth reading and Dennis Shanahan is not. Same day, same issue – the newspoll on the environment that showed that:

• 61% of voters think an emissions trading scheme could slow global warming
• 56% of voters are prepared to pay more for energy and transport
• More voters want petrol included in an emissions trading scheme (46%) than want it excluded (42%)

Dennis says that this shows that the more people understand about emissions trading, and the higher costs it will bring, the less they support it. It’s only in George’s article, though, that you get all three results. On the inclusion of petrol, Dennis just says that voters are “almost evenly divided”.

It’s a 4% difference, Dennis! Your whole article is built around the 5% difference between those who think an emissions trading scheme might have some impact on greenhouse gas emissions and those who are prepared to pay more in responding to climate change. So, how can a 4% difference in the poll numbers mean nothing?

Dennis also would like to give the Opposition some more ammunition for their “populist campaign” with the almost unbearably dumb line:

But cabinet is wrestling with issues that range further, and could send up power bills and the grocery bill. How do you measure a cow fart and should that push up the price of beef?

Look out, you’ll pay more for everything! (By the way, the methane mostly comes out the front, not the back, end of the cow.)

Dennis reckons the polls show that voters basically don’t support anything that means they might have to pay more. However, given that a clear majority support the idea of an ETS, and are prepared to pay more, and that the larger minority favour including petrol in such a scheme, George is on stronger grounds when he says:

The public are much smarter than that: they know more important decisions need to be made.

That’s why voters ignored the false promises at the bowser, and said instead that they are prepared to accept the inclusion of petrol in an emissions scheme.

If global warming is the threat Rudd and Nelson say it is, and the electorate believes it to be, why would either leader risk arguing the opposite - that doing next-to-nothing is a serious option?

Voters clearly don’t believe an ETS should be nobbled at birth.

Another take on the global military spend:

Yesterday, as the travel doctor was finishing giving us our Rabies, Meningococcal and Japanese Encephalitis shots, he said:

It’s possible that the Japanese Encephalitis vaccine could cause an allergic response. In ten years of doing this job I’ve never seen it, but I suppose it will happen one day.

So do I ever feel special today! I woke up with a crushing headache, an itchy rash from the top of my head to my knees, and looking like Cro-Magnon man from the swelling around my eyes. Bring on the antihistamines, baby.

It’s a sad an interesting day in the Senate, with the departure of all the Democrat Senators. Natasha Stott-Despoja is retiring and the others were not re-elected.

I listened with interest to their valedictory speeches – tragic, I know – and just want to acknowledge the work of Andrew Bartlett on refugees and asylum-seekers. It’s one of the issues on which he was a persistent, outspoken, critical and compassionate advocate for vulnerable and often vilified people. It was a personal pleasure to meet him, it was a professional pleasure to see his work on this (and on so many other human rights and justice issues) and I wish him – and all the other Democrat Senators – all the best.

Here’s a bit of what he had to say last night. His call to remember the past, and reject these abuses in our present and our future is a necessary one.

I want to emphasise the area of multiculturalism and immigration, which has been probably the biggest focus of my time in this chamber. The experience I have had in working with people in the community who did not support the approach taken by the former government—broadly speaking, supported by the opposition—towards refugees and asylum seekers is one of the most inspiring that I have had. I am talking about thousands of Australians who simply wanted to express an alternative view and to convince other Australians that there was a better way, that the way that things were being done was too extreme and too harmful.

I want to particularly mention one person, named Ali Sarwari, who was recognised as a refugee here and was living in Melbourne. I met his daughter, Sakina, and his wife on one of the times I went to Nauru. I do not know why, but it never leaves me, having to hear his daughter ask why she could not see her father and hear them continually talking about the pressure for them to be sent back to Afghanistan. They were separated. They were treated as being separate from Ali.

Even though their father and husband was seen as a refugee, they were not seen as refugees. They were imprisoned on Nauru for over two years, along with so many other children that I met when I was there. That one girl sticks out in my mind particularly. That man had to live here knowing his family were being pressured every day to go back to the horror that he had fled and knowing that his daughter was there wondering why they could not be together. He had to leave
and go to settle in New Zealand for that family to be reunited.

That was a direct consequence of the temporary protection visa legislation passed by this chamber in 1999. That to me was an example, probably the starkest example, of a policy that was deliberately designed—consciously, specifically—to cause harm to innocent people. It sure as hell did. It did not deter boat arrivals, I might say, but it sure as hell caused a lot of harm. I know it is a complex issue, asylum seekers, and that needs to be acknowledged, but I would never want to see us again passing a law that so deliberately causes harm to vulnerable people, particularly children.

Let us not forget in this chamber the many children and others we locked up behind razor wire for years. Our government, on our behalf, even took court action and fought an appeal all the way through the courts to stop people in detention from getting access to mental health treatment, despite clear psychiatric diagnoses. It is unthinkable now, but it is true. I never want to forget that, even though it is distressing, because I do not want that sort of thing to happen again…

I say that not particularly to criticise—although, obviously I have many times—the past government and the former opposition for their positions, but to emphasise that it was politically rewarded by the Australian people. The Australian people validated and accepted that. As an Australian, I think we collectively have to take responsibility. We must acknowledge that that was done, ask ourselves why, ask ourselves if there is a better way and try to stop that happening again.

It’s been a slow process, and one which we’ve been contemplating or actively pursuing now for about a year, but it’s now confirmed that Lyndall, Gabe, Jacob and I will be moving to Nepal in September for a few years (definitely two, and probably – hopefully – more).

We’ll be TEAR fieldworkers, volunteers on a cost-of-living (in Nepal) stipend, working with United Mission to Nepal.

I’ll be advocacy advisor to UMN, working with Nepali colleagues to set up an advocacy training and lobbying team. UMN work with local Nepali groups and organisations in a range of areas – conflict transformation, education, disaster management, HIV, agriculture – and want to help their local partners identify and take up policy and political opportunities to benefit poor and excluded communities. UMN also wants to develop its own ability to research, network and lobby at a national level on different issues.

So I get to help out with that! Amazing! Lyndall will be spending a fair bit of time with our new little person, Jacob, but she’s got qualifications in Primary Teaching and ESL teaching to adults, so will no doubt be finding work as and when she’s able.

Lyndall and I were in Nepal for 4 months in 1999, working as volunteer teachers and teacher-trainers with UMN. And it was a life-changing experience. I fully expect that working their again, and this time with a five-year old and six-month old in the family, will be again.

It’s an exciting time politically for Nepal too.

I’ll blog more soon (and have to change the blog banner from Bangladeshi community scene to a Nepali one) but we’re on the way.

If you’d like to keep in touch, or even support us in prayer or financially, while we’re away we would really love that. I’ve created a support page to facilitate that.

TEAR Australia fieldworkers are a pretty rare breed and we feel enormously privileged to be able to work with a partner we have known about and prayed for for a long time now. Because TEAR works almost entirely through local partners (rather than sending Australians to do work that locals can do) it’s only when a partner has a compelling case for an out-of-country appointment that TEAR would send Australians like us to be involved. TEAR wants to maximise the money it gives to local partners (rather than to support Australians) so any donations towards our support help this.