THE movement that blocked Barry Drive for two hours yesterday morning have moved their protests to Parkes this afternoon (August 4), to take their message directly to federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley.
Yesterday the group called Extinction Rebellion blocked Barry Drive, between Kingsley Street and Northbourne Avenue, before climbing onto the roof of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) to highlight “its insidious role in lobbying on behalf of the oil and gas industry in a time of climate emergency”.
Five were arrested, with one released on bail and the another four released after appearing in court.
Following yesterday’s blockade, Extinction Rebellion will be at the Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment in Parkes from 3.30pm to tell Environment Minister Sussan Ley that she has a duty of care when it comes to the climate.
“We refuse to be the last generation” will be the theme of the protest, which will include local man, Dr Nick Abel, who is an honorary professor at CSIRO and an honorary associate professor at ANU.
Dr Abel, 77, says he’s enraged about the dangerous future his generation is leaving humans and nature.
“I’m here to help change that,” he says.
“I’d long believed that scientific knowledge would solve the problems of human impacts on our planet. I was with CSIRO as a principal research scientist for 20 years, and another 22 at the ANU and the Universities of Canberra and East Anglia (UK).
“We told successive Australian Governments about the potential for catastrophic climate change and the many opportunities for avoiding it. We thought that more and better information would persuade them to act.
“We’ve come to understand that didn’t work because the Coalition and ALP have been captured by the financing and lobbying of the fossil fuel industry and will not take responsibility for future generations.
“Environment Minister Susan Ley’s appeal against the court decision that the Australian Government has a duty of care to young people is an open declaration of this callous negligence.”
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![Teacher Vanessa Jones has been living in Higgins since 2001, and while she loves the area, she says she is “fed up” with the neglectful ACT government.
The Higgins shops have been completely abandoned, says Vanessa, preventing the opportunity for residents to have a community-centred space to socialise.
They only received bins nine months ago, she says, and requests for a water station and repairs to the bus station have gone unanswered.
“It’s very, very slow,” says Vanessa.
“I asked for the zebra crossing on Fullagar [Crescent] to be repainted, and we had to wait about six or nine months.
“That’s just such a long time… we pay a lot of rates.”
Vanessa says assistance from the government only seems to go to communities with time-rich and assertive communities, leaving places such as Higgins, where the majority of households have both adults working full-time and English may not be the first language of the family, at an automatic disadvantage.
“If you’ve got two people working, paying a mortgage, raising two or three kids, they don’t have the time,” says Vanessa.
Vanessa says the lack of attention quieter places such as Higgins is receiving is starting to look a lot like favouritism.
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