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Hawthorn
Peter Grounds
Peter Grounds is the Family First candidate for Hawthorn.
Of the four Hawthorn candidates, Peter Grounds would seem to be the candidate with the least climate friendly credentials. Family First Leader Senator Steve Fielding voted against the Emissions Trading Scheme in the senate and is known for expressing climate change scepticism. He also ran a petition on his website which called for a health probe into wind farms and played to the NIMBY reaction to wind farms in country areas. Not surprisingly, The Climate Sceptics gave their senate second preferences to Family First at the last federal election.
Victorian Family First leader Peter Lake has said that one of the planks of the party platform is to make sure the Greens don’t hold the balance of power in the state parliament.
Ted Baillieu
Ted Baillieu is the current member for Hawthorn and Opposition leader. He is a member of the Victorian Liberal party.
He is a former architect. He told the local paper that the three key issues for the electorate were street violence and rising crime, failures in the transport and health systems and rising state taxes and utility bills.
Under his leadership, the Coalition has supported the Brumby Government’s climate change bill and the 20 per cent cut in greenhouses emissions by 2020 now passed into legislation.ment. While the Coalition has received plaudits for some of its proposed transport initiatives, such as more train carriages, new stations, promises to introduce rail services to Tullamarine and Avalon and the introduction of a central transport authority, a focus on climate change and a plan to reach the 20 per cent target have failed to yet materialize.
The Coalition has not addressed Hazelwood, the state’s most polluting brown coal generator, and backs the proposed new brown-coal/gas power station, HRL. Its wind farm policy would make it harder for wind farms to start up.
There have been a number of policy announcements by the Victorian Liberal National Coalition that have been classified as Environmental Policies. Upon closer inspection there are a number that really are imposters e.g. Family Fun Day Every Weekend under Coalition’s Free Zoos Policy and then there’s the Coalition Landfill Rescue Package for Casey Families Policy. There is very little in the way of quantification of impact on climate change of their policies and very little in the way of substantial policies.
It therefore requires a leap of faith to believe that the Coalition under Ted Baillieu is serious about reaching the 20 per cent target or urgently cutting greenhouse emissions.
Jenny Henty
Jenny Henty is the Greens candidate for Hawthorn.
She is a well qualified environmental consultant with degrees in economics and environmental science and a history of public policy and advocacy work in Melbourne and Canberra. She now runs her own consultancy specialising in recycling products such as computers for less waste. Her website says she is committed to building sustainability into urban living and practices this in her own home and office.
She told the local paper that the three key issues for the electorate were fixing the planning system to give local communities more say and make sure VCAT enforced clear rules on developers, giving elderly people easier access to services and providing “a safe future for our children which would only be secured by reducing the greenhouse intensity of our lives”.
The Greens policies include a 40 % emissions reduction by 2020 on 1990 levels and the replacement of Hazelwood by 2014. They oppose the HRL proposal.
John McNally
John McNally is the ALP candidate for Hawthorn.
He describes his occupation as “working to address skills shortages in the building industry”.
He told local paper, Progress Leader, that three key electoral issues were: working towards a fair and just society, a clean sustainable environment and access to quality healthcare. He cited the ALP’s Climate Act as one of the reasons voters should vote for the ALP. He said he made a conscious effort to minimise his footprint.
The Brumby Government has legislated a target of 20 per cent emissions cut by 2020 based on 2000 levels. It has promised to phase out 25 % of the emissions from Australia’s dirtiest coal-fired power station Hazelwood in the next term and to achieve 5% solar energy by 2020 on top of the federal government’s 2020 renewable energy target of 20%. But tt has also provided $50 million to a new coal/gas-fired power station - the HRL Dual-gas proposal which is still being considered by the EPA and which is being fought by environmental groups.
