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Take Heart and Name WA's New Federal Seat Vallentine 2015 Marks 30 Years Since Jo Vallentine Took up Her Senate Position

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Take Heart and Name WA's New Federal Seat Vallentine 2015 Marks 30 Years Since Jo Vallentine Took up Her Senate Position Take heart and name WA’s new federal seat Vallentine 2015 marks 30 years since Jo Vallentine took up her senate position, the first person in the world to be elected on an anti-nuclear platform. What better way to acknowledge her contribution to peace, nonviolence and protecting the planet than to name a new federal seat after her? The official Australian parliament website describes Jo Vallentine in this way: Jo Vallentine was elected in 1984 to represent Western Australia in the Senate for the Nuclear Disarmament Party, running with the slogan ‘Take Heart—Vote Vallentine’. She commenced her term in July 1985 as an Independent Senator for Nuclear Disarmament, claiming in her first speech that she was the first member of any parliament in the world to be elected on this platform. When she stood for election again in 1990, she was elected as a senator for The Greens (Western Australia), and was the first Green in the Australian Senate. … During her seven years in Parliament, Vallentine was a persistent voice for peace, nuclear disarmament, Aboriginal land rights, social justice and the environment (emphasis added)i. Jo Vallentine’s parliamentary and subsequent career should be recognised in the named seat of Vallentine because: 1. Jo Vallentine was the first woman or person in several roles, in particular: The first person in the world to win a seat based on a platform of nuclear disarmament The first person to be elected to federal parliament as a Greens party politician. The Greens are now Australia’s third largest political party, yet no seat has been named after any of their political representatives 2. To acknowledge the social activism of the 1970s-1990s in which ‘new social movements’ transformed the global and Australian political and cultural landscape, in particular in relation to environmentalism, feminism, Indigenous rights and peace and nonviolence 3. To celebrate a remarkable person who is the living expression of engaged citizenship, leading a life of political passion, social commitment and personal integrity. 1. Jo Vallentine - the first woman or person to … The first person to win a seat in any parliament in the world on a platform of nuclear disarmament (in 1984). The first senator to win a senate seat for any political party from a ‘standing start’, i.e. not following the defection of a sitting member (such as Don Chipp creating the Australian Democracts)ii. First and only senator to win a seat for the ‘Vallentine Peace Group’ (in 1987). The first person to be elected to Australian parliament for the Greens political party (in 1990). The first female and non-major Party individual to serve on the 30 person Joint Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee (from 9 October 1987 to 31 January 1992). Jo Vallentine lobbied hard for this position, seeing it as a chance to raisequestions about the environment, social justice and human rights on a committee that traditionally saw trade as its overriding concern. 2. Acknowledging a transformative period in social and political history Indicating their widespread effect on Australian social and political life, the values of the new social movements of the mid-1960s to mid-1990s were expressed first in the election of the Don Dunstan 1 government in South Australia (June 1967 to April 1968; June 1970 to February 1979) and the Gough Whitlam government federally (1972 to 1975). We believe that a federal seat in New South Wales should assuredly be named ‘Whitlam’. But a federal seat in Western Australia should also be named to commemorate the second wave of social movement activism, which in Jo Vallentine’s case focused on peace and nuclear disarmament and pursued that goal with a commitment to participatory decision-making. Values and outlooks that were changed fundamentally by the new social movements: Environmentalism – instead of seeing the planet as an endless economic resource, the conservation movement understood the interconnectedness of people and planet and the ‘limits to growth’ imposed by non-renewable use of land, water, minerals. Environmental understanding and commitment. Jo Vallentine wrote presciently in 1990 ‘there is an urgent need to set a limit on carbon dioxide emissions’iii but her most sustained environmental campaigning has been to ban uranium mining, the cause that propelled her into political activism because of its deadly threat to humanity Achieving a ban on mining in the Antarctic – Jo Vallentine was instrumental in persuading the government to refuse to sign the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities and instead to promote the formulation of a comprehensive conservation conventioniv The women’s movement – transformed the rights of Australian women in work, the home and cultural life and challenged the widely accepted ways of doing things, including politics. Jo Vallentine took feminism seriously, expressing it o in the first ever all female senate ticket which also fielded the first ever female Aboriginal candidate, Gladys Yarranv (the Greens (WA) senate ticket in 1990). Western Australia can be proud of its female political firsts: Edith Cowan (recognised in the electorate of Cowan, the first woman to be elected to an Australian parliament) and Dorothy Tangney (recognised in the electorate of Tangney, the first female senator) vi followed by Jo Vallentine, the first ever Greens senator. o In a 1984 election campaign run by mothers of young children, including Jo Vallentine herself, with a positive and hopeful focus of ‘No negativity, no slanging matches’, compared with the ‘raised fists’ and ‘mushroom clouds’ of the campaign in the eastern states. Where the much more famous Peter Garrett (Midnight Oil) was unsuccessful in New South Wales, this campaign swept people up, with with 1500 to 2000 volunteers staffing 80% of WA’s booths from Kununurra to Esperance on election day o how the team attempted a ‘non-hierarchical model, using consensus decision-making’ to run Jo Vallentine’s electorate offices in Canberra and Perth, Jo contributing her ‘entire electorate allowance to the team, to be spent as the group decides’. Peace and anti-nuclear campaigning – Jo Vallentine’s passionate commitment to peace was not a commitment shared by either the Whitlam or Dunstan governments. Naming a seat of Vallentine recognises the global movement for peace in which Australia briefly led the way, at least in political representation. o The global anti-nuclear movement reached a peak in the 1970s and 1980s, expressed in the New York demonstration in 1982 of one million people protesting the arms race, ‘the largest anti-nuclear protest and the largest political demonstration in American history’. o In Australia, The Palm Sunday events were huge - about twenty thousand people marching in 1984 - and superbly organised, without the help of the internet or social media’ (Jo Vallentine). 2 o The NDP was the fastest growing political party in Australian history. At the December 1984 federal election the NDP exceeded 4% in every state except Tasmania (where the NDP received 3.9%). o The yearning for peace and the fear of nuclear war was demonstrated in the re- election of Jo Vallentine in 1987 as an independent under the banner of the ‘Vallentine Peace Group’ o As Jo Vallentine likes to ask ‘how many uranium mines have we got in WA?’ Nonevii - in no small part due to her tireless energy to hold back nuclear war, nuclear accidents and halt uranium mining. During Jo Vallentine’s time in parliament, Indonesia proposed to build 10 nuclear reactors – a threat both to Indonesians and Australians in the event of a Chernobyl of Fukushima disaster. Aboriginal rights o In 1978 Jo Vallentine joined Community Aid Abroad, and was central in the establishment of the West Australian branch of the Aboriginal Treaty Support Group in 1979 o Jo Vallentine has been a stalwart supporter of Indigenous leaders and communities ever since, understanding that their connection with the land is a necessary approach for humanity’s survival. She has campaigned with particular vigour to oppose uranium mining on traditional land or the dumping radioactive waste near Aboriginal communities 3. A remarkable person of integrity who has made a lasting impact. Jo Vallentine was politically engaged from a young age, joining the Country Party as a teenager and being a Labor supporter and worker (but not a member) as a young adult. As a senator during the Cold War, Jo Vallentine was ‘very often alone in this place, challenging the logic, the expense and the pollution of what passed for real politics and security back then. … she was often belittled by people who were never her intellectual or moral equals’. The struggle for nonviolence continues, Greens Senator Scott Ludlam going on to note her words in 2012: 'It is not in my name that you make these plans and promises in support of future wars and it is not in my name that you offer Australian facilities to the deadliest war machine on the planet'viii In parliament her office sought to share the resources of parliament with community groups in Australia and abroad, preparing lobby backgrounders encouraging the readers to write letters to politicians and to participate in the democratic process, writing articles and organising seminars on alternative defence strategies for Australia, receiving international delegations and putting the case of environmental groups to their government Introduced the first attempt in parliament to protect whistleblowers with the ‘Whistleblowers Protection Bill 1991ix Ensured an enduring legacy for social justice, ecological sustainability, peace and nonviolence, and participatory democracy in the foundation and growth of the third largest political party in WA, the Greens (WA). Jo Vallentine noted that the environmental and peace movements had more members than any political party in the country. Jo Vallentine was instrumental in negotiating between the groups that shared these interests but required cajoling to come together.
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