Climate inaction is her call to action: Dr Penny Kyburz – ACT Greens Senate Candidate
The billboards are bright and loud, the number of pamphlets too many to fathom. While pedestrians scurry across streets to avoid being accosted by eager volunteers, many have already had enough. On 18 May 2019, Australians will go to the polls to grab their democracy sausage and decide the fate of the country.
With no visible gap between the last political scandal and the announcement of an election, this campaign has felt long and arduous. An exhausted electorate barely watches on as the Morrison government fights challenges from all fronts. Central to this growing apathy has been the complete implosion of the Liberal Party. Gaffe after blunder has left Morrison steering a national campaign almost single-handed. With wounds still apparent from another leadership saga, the Australian populace seem all too wary of a Liberal election message that talks of ‘trust’.
One possible victim of the Liberal chaos is ACT Senator, Zed Seselja. With a sustained Union assault on the senator, there are growing doubts whether he can retain his seat. ACT Greens lead Senate candidate, Dr Penny Kyburz, is a prime prospect looking to take advantage of a Seselja demise. The ANU computer science lecturer and former video game developer sat down with NowUC to discuss her chances.
How’s the campaign going?
It’s going really well, we’ve had such a positive response in the community. I’ve been out there since last year, talking to people around the ACT and the first thing on everyone’s lips is they want climate action. And obviously, the Greens are the people to deliver that climate action for them so we’re feeling good about it.
Is that the main reason that motivated you to run in this election?
I suppose for me I am largely driven by wanting to act on climate change. I’ve got two small children, aged five and seven, and I found myself constantly thinking about the world we’re creating for them and the types of problems we’re leaving for them to fix. I just thought I really can’t sit by and do nothing, I must actively do something about changing it. So, I joined the Greens a few years ago and I started volunteering and campaigning. I found that I could sleep a lot better at night as a result of feeling like I wasn’t just letting this all unfold in the world. I was actually taking action. I suppose the next step for me is to step-up for the ACT and be willing to give a voice to our community. Obviously, it’s not represented by the current Liberal representation that we have here in the ACT. We’ve got great representation at the local ACT level, with Labor and the Greens in the government. But it’s particularly Liberal Senator Zed Seselja that I think has been failing the ACT more broadly.
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What areas do you feel need the most urgent action and why?
I think one of the big things is transitioning out of coal to the renewable energy economy. We have an extensive plan around that. I’m a lecturer for computer science, I’ve worked as a video game developer and as a programmer, and it’s obvious that we’re not investing in our knowledge economy – our information economy – we’re not providing the infrastructure. The NBN was decimated by the Liberal Government. They made a complete debacle of it. They’re actively working against our IT and technology sector in a lot of ways. Even looking at things like the anti-encryption legislation…that got slammed through in time for Christmas for some reason. Without having proper scrutiny this is going to really hurt individual people, and their security and privacy online. Also, the tech sector has found already that it’s having massive implications in being able to develop and export technology from Australia as well as people who are trained in Australia and their prospects of getting jobs overseas as well.
What do you think are the longer-term technological challenges Australia will have to face?
I mean there are the obvious challenges that are coming and are already upon us from automation and the rise of the machines, as you might have it. We really need to be investing in being ahead of these industries. We’ve got some great researchers here in Canberra working on AI and understanding automation. Being able to develop those technologies so we’ve got a piece of the global change that’s coming, but also investing in our universities, our research and our education. To make sure we’re able to train people, to retrain people, to up-skill people, and be able to move as trends change to where the jobs are going to go in the future. We’ve been through several industrial revolutions in the past, and automation does kill off a lot of jobs. However, new jobs are created and in a lot of ways, we don’t know what those jobs are going to be yet. In the future, we need to have the infrastructure and the capacity to be able to move with the times and be ready to train people for those new jobs.
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What jobs are still likely to need a ‘human touch’?
Parts of a lot of different industries will start to be hollowed out in a way. Some of the more, perhaps, repetitive tasks that go with a lot of jobs, but you know humans will need to be able to have really good problem solving, creative thinking and people skills. There will be a lot of work in the service industry but also in the creative industries, and working at a level above what the automation is able to do, like things that are more human at this stage.
If you win a Senate seat, you’d be apart of the crossbench. Where do you feel your policy platform overlaps with Clive Palmer?
Oh wow. I suppose the really great thing about the Greens winning a Senate seat in the ACT is that it would very likely be the seat that gave us a balance of power in the Senate. So, we would be able to work predominantly with Labor, to make sure we’re getting through more progressive reforms and changes, and fixing a lot of things that have happened under the Liberal Government over the past few years. We expect there’s going to be some interesting characters in the Senate after this election. Clive Palmer and Pauline Hanson are just a few. I mean that’s why it’s so important to get as many Greens as we can into the Senate, so we can have perhaps a more sensible and future-focused looking discussion with the Labor Party to try and progress some of our common goals.
Did you know that a Greens Senator in the ACT could be the difference between the ALP and Greens being able to pass legislation in Senate, vs having to negotiate with One Nation or others? #votegreen #greens #canberra #act #auspol #actpol #actvotes #ausvotes pic.twitter.com/SKZYFZEOFk
— Dr Penny Kyburz for the Senate (ACT) (@DrKyburz) May 2, 2019
With the rise of populism and a seemingly increasing apathy towards politics in Australia, what can the major parties do to regain the trust of the Australian people?
I’ve heard, talking to so many people around Canberra, that they’re just sick of politicians; they’re sick of the lies, and the corruption, and the self-serving attitudes. It’s why it’s so important for us to get integrity and accountability back into politics. We’ve got some reforms including having a federal Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). All the states and territories have, or will soon have, their own ICACS but we need to be able to trust politicians. We can’t do that now because there is so much that happens behind closed doors. We don’t know which lobbyist politicians are having meetings or what those meetings are about. We don’t know about the donations that political parties are getting in real time, we don’t know until possibly a couple of years after an election. Whether it’s the coal or gambling lobby, or whoever made these major donations to each political party. We need transparency around donations. We need transparency around who they’re talking to and who they’re working for. They’ve taken $100 million in donations over the past 10 years from very questionable sources, which has resulted in policy outcomes being bought. Its no wonder that people don’t trust politicians, I certainly don’t trust the major parties and I would like to have more transparency for everyone in parliament.
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