If Australia’s fossil fuel export plan succeeds, world action on global warming will fail. 

Yet, Australia continues to ramp up fossil fuel production in the face of international backlash.

Join us at St Kilda Town Hall for this special event, to find out about Australia’s plans for vast new export coal mines and gas fields, despite calls by the International Energy Agency, United Nations as well as scientists and civil society organisations from Australia and around the world to stop all new investment in fossil fuels. 

Speakers: 

Adam Bandt is the Federal Member for Melbourne and Leader of the Australian Greens. Adam is the Greens spokesperson for the Climate Emergency, Energy and Employment & Industrial Relations. In his maiden speech to Parliament, Adam warned of the coming climate emergency, and since becoming Leader, Adam has led the Party’s campaign for a Green New Deal.

Josh Burns is Labor’s Federal Member for Macnamara in the inner south-eastern and bayside suburbs of Melbourne. First elected in 2019, he serves in key parliamentary roles including as Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights and Chair of the Foreign Affairs and Aid Subcommittee of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. Before representing his community in the Australian Parliament, he previously worked as a teacher’s aide and a factory hand, and served as an adviser in state and federal governments, including to the Premier of Victoria.

Zoe Daniel created history in May 2022, by becoming the first woman elected to the federal seat of Goldstein. Prior to entering politics, Zoe spent almost three decades on the front line of news and current events, in Australia and internationally, living and working in some of the most challenging environments in the world. Zoe is a three-time foreign correspondent and former ABC News United States Bureau chief. She was based in Washington DC from late 2015 until the end of 2019, was the ABC’s South East Asia correspondent from 2009 to 2013, and between 2005 and 2006 the ABC’s Africa correspondent. She has reported on politics, conflict, famine, natural disasters, plane crashes, terror attacks, mass shootings, repression, economic collapse and poverty across the world in countries as diverse as the USA, Mexico, Venezuela, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Burma, Vietnam and Vanuatu.

Kavita Naidu is a feminist climate activist and international human rights lawyer from Fiji-Australia specialising in climate justice for grassroots women in all their diversity in Asia and the Pacific. With over 16 years of diverse experience working in the Pacific, Asia and the UK, Kavita has worked at the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, government bodies and the private sector. Kavita served as a Board member with Greenpeace Australia Pacific and is currently a board member with AkitvAsia and Progressive International. 

Richard Denniss is Executive Director of the Australia Institute. Richard is a prominent Australian economist, author and public policy commentator, and has spent the last twenty years moving between policy-focused roles in academia, federal politics and think-tanks. He was also a Lecturer in Economics at the university of Newcastle and former Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at ANU. He is a regular contributor to The Monthly and the author of several books including: Econobabble, Curing Affluenza and Dead Right: How Neoliberalism Ate Itself and What Comes Next?

MC-ed by Polly Hemming, climate & energy program director at the Australia Institute.

Note: speakers from all sides of politics, including the Liberal Party have been invited.