From Natalija Simic, Qld
The Brisbane public information meeting on the CPRS went as expected – governmental representatives dodging the difficult questions. The targets tag team protested outside the Brisbane Exhibition and Convention Centre. At the actual meeting we managed to get the first question in, which was along the lines of, ‘how can the government justify this betrayal to the youth of Australia’. We got 3 questions in, each steam rolled and step around by the representative. A lot of the questions asked were from business asking about how much it would cost them.
Thankfully toward the question time, we had managed to get a few more people on our side (we were the only young people there), and a wonderful gentlemen posed the statement/question about how these targets will still have the sea water rising and the great barrier reef disappeared, and why the grants to business don’t have a clause insuring that that money goes into renewable energy… so that gradually the business can change over energy sources. The government representative ended up concluding the event by saying that there is no point for Australia to do anything if no one else does!!! (SO INFURIATING).
Overall, the team was great, very knowledgeable but walked out very frustrated from the lack of answers – so we had a debrief session over some icecream.
