By Stephen Robson
Dee Margetts is the Greens (WA) number one Senate candidate in the federal elections. She hopes to join Christabel Chamarette, who succeeded Jo Vallentine as Greens senator at the beginning of 1992.
Green Left Weekly talked to Christabel and Dee about the issues the Greens are emphasising in this election.
Christabel pointed to widespread disillusionment with the two-
party political system, identifying "two areas of community concern".
The first is distribution of wealth and resources. "People talk about it in terms of jobs, but that's a very superficial way of analysing it", Christabel said.
The second is accountability. Christabel pointed to the mainstream parties as ignoring the "concerns of the community. The community feels disempowered in the political process and the decision-making process."
The Greens (WA) see an interconnection between environmental and other pressing concerns, calling for an economic system that is "community oriented and based on participatory democracy, ecological sustainability, social equity and peace, non-violence and disarmament".
Dee Margetts attacked economic rationalism, describing it as "distressing" that "a whole range of beliefs come out as facts on the economy". Rather than growth per se improving the situation, Dee said that there is increasing information "that it's the way you do things rather than how much you grow that's important". If don't change our way of doing things, "you create poverty, you create unemployment, you create foreign debt and you create environmental destruction".
Combined with this, the mainstream parties are "disempowering the community" and closing their ears to what is happening at the community level.
The debate over economics needs to be brought back to the issue of communities, Dee believes. "We are all part of the community and I say again and again to people, if the economy or economic policies aren't working at the community level, they are simply not working.
"If people aren't able to make a living and if the environment is then destroyed, and local communities are then asked to make large investment projects viable — then you have simply got to start asking, what are we trying to achieve?"
Dee disagrees with the view that the market will automatically solve problems. "It isn't meeting people's needs", she says, "and at the same time it's destroying the environment and creating unemployment".
In December, Christabel supported a motion by Janet Powell to repeal Sections 45D & E of the Trade Practices Act. The Democrats voted for this, but Labor and the Coalition combined to defeat it.
Dee has been travelling around Western Australia talking to people from the Pilbara and Kalgoorlie recently as well as the union movement in Perth. On February 23, she addressed the WA Trades and Labour Council.
Attacks on union rights have been mounting under a federal Labor government. Dee cited Robe River as a case in point, where unionists who supported the ACTU call for action on November 30 have been victimised.
Employers with strong union bases are using this as a "time to make changes that will be almost impossible to reverse after the election, especially if there is a conservative government", Dee explained.
The Greens (WA) oppose individual contracts and the reduction of union participation in the workplace, supporting the right to strike and repeal of Sections 45D & E.