Personal

Last night I headed over to the Albury Wodonga Environment Centre AGM.

We were privileged to have Graeme Dunstan from PeaceBus.com and Hamish of Folk-Rhythm-Life fame in attendance.

Hamish told us about the ins and outs of his simple composting toilet system, Graeme gave an interesting talk on the philosophy of his ongoing activism. Sharece from the Environment Centre shared photos from some of Victoria’s leading Permaculture setups, taken during her recent two week course with the legendary David Holmgren.

Electoral politics is not the be all and end all for achieving practical change in our society. It was nice to be reminded of that at the AWEC AGM.

Tomorrow, ballots will begin arriving in letterboxes around Wodonga.

In the course of this campaign so far:

500 impressions have been recorded on our Facebook adverts.
400 people have taken a leaflet from myself or Dennis whilst we’ve been in High St.
1650 views have been recorded on this website.
2500 people have received one of our “Act Now on Climate Change” post cards in their letterbox.
Thousands have seen us in the paper and on TV.
10 000 people have recieved one of our tri-fold leaflets in their letterbox.

And despite their late arrival, (I can recommend a printing company not to use!), our large corflute posters are now going up around town.

In just over a week, most people in Wodonga will have completed their ballot paper (stats show most people vote when they receive the vote, a few wait until the last minute, and a significant minority simply “forget”).

It’s been a long campaign, there’s another solid weeks work ahead of us, then the waiting begins. Hopefully by this time in December, we’ll be pushing our vision of action on climate change, social justice, and greater democracy, in Wodonga City council.

It was with some disappointment that I heard that councils along the North of the Murray have been given the option of easing water restrictions. All have exercised this option.

This has happened despite the fact that we’ve had a dry winter and spring, and we’re heading into what will be a hot and dry summer. If you live on one side of a line on a map, apparently you can ease off the water savings. No individual council is ever going to say “no” to a cut in water restrictions, no matter what the collective good might be.

This just demonstrates why we need a coordinated apolitical approach to water restrictions from the councils and water authorities on both banks of the river.