Thursday, 7 March 2024

Sustainability

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:04): (779) My adjournment matter is for the Premier, and the action that I seek is for her to abandon her privatisation agenda. Right now it really feels like everything is terrible. The cost of food is out of control, rents are at record highs and Labor is letting companies search for new oil and gas by blasting the sea floor with giant air guns. They are literally deafening the whales – this is cartoon villain stuff. It feels like we are heading into a dystopian future. But I would like to point out in this place that it does not have to be this way. We can choose a different path. We can live in communities with solar panels on every home, where everything you could need is within walking or cycling distance. We can build a world where everyone has access to a high-quality public home, a world where everyone has access to food, where people do not have to struggle for the basic necessities. We can build a society that respects the ecology of the planet, where biodiversity is restored, and climate change goes backwards; where everyone works less and enjoys a higher standard of living; and where everyone has a real say in how their community is run. I know this sounds like a fantasy, but we already have the tools to do this and more. We have the technology and the resources. We can build a better world if we choose to – and seriously, what is the alternative? As social ecologist Murray Bookchin said, we must start thinking utopian:

‘Be practical, do the impossible’, because if you don’t do the impossible … we’re going to wind up with the unthinkable – and that will be the destruction of the planet itself.