Greens candidate for the seat of Page, Kudra Falla-Ricketts, launched her campaign yesterday at the site of the Bentley CSG battleground.
Ms Falla-Ricketts has challenged the other Page candidates to take promise their campaigns are ‘pollution-free’.
Yesterday she signed a pollution-free pledge put together by Climate Change campaign group 350.0rg.
The group is calling on federal politicians to sign an agreement to stop taking money from and giving money to the big polluters.
Ms Falla-Ricketts said that as a young person who was concerned about both climate change and political corruption, she considered it ‘vitally important to end the practice of big fossil fuel companies gaining influence over Australian political parties through big campaign donations.’
‘I call on the other candidates in Page to also sign the pledge to indicate their intention to oppose fossil fuel donations to their own parties and to work toward an end to the practice,’ she said.
‘Our community fought hard against successive governments trying to impose a gas industry here and it is important to have confidence that political parties are not in the pocket of the big mining companies.
‘While that dirty money is there, we are never going to see a switch to renewables or any significant action on climate change.
‘So far only the Greens can proudly say that we are free of donations from the mining industry’, Ms Falla-Ricketts said.
Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon, who has a Donations Reform Bill before federal parliament, joined her for the announcement.
Senator Rhiannon’s bill would ban political donations from big mining, tobacco, alcohol and property development companies.
She said that the Greens wanted to see ‘a major overhaul of political donations before the coming election.’
‘Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals have collectively taken $3.7 million from fossil fuel companies in the past three years,’ Senator Rhiannon said.
‘Effectively, for every dollar donated by the fossil fuel sector to political parties these industries receive about $2000 in subsidies for their industry,’ she added.
‘Findings from successive ICAC investigations in NSW have revealed the potential for corruption where parties are financed by the industries they are supposed to be regulating.
‘Coal and oil industries have been prominent problem areas for corruption in recent years both in Australia and globally.
‘The Greens have consistently shown that we are a party committed to acting in the interests of voters, not wealthy donors,’ concluded Ms Rhiannon.
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