Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Dailan Pugh is a giant of Australian conservation and of the arts. He is the son of Clifton Pugh, the artist whose defining portrait of Gough Whitlam hangs in the gallery upstairs. Dailan was a founder of the Big Scrub Environment Centre and the North East Forest Alliance. His son, Asren Pugh, is an environmental and labour movement activist. In his late teens he was a founding member of the Labor Environment Action Network together, with Senators McAllister and Keneally, in the tradition of the two Bobs in New South Wales—Debus and Carr—embodying the labour movement and the Labor Party's commitment to protecting the environment for all Australians.

Asren Pugh is Labor's candidate for Byron Shire Council. If elected as mayor, he would be a fresh start for a council with big problems—overcrowding, a housing crisis and environmental challenges. Why, then, is the Greens political party preferencing, in its registered how-to-vote card, the Nationals' candidate for mayor in a sleazy, grubby Greens-Nationals preference deal to try to stop an energetic young progressive? You can't trust the Greens political party not to do preference deals with its friends like Senator Canavan in the National Party.

From Cape Byron to Mount Warning, to the north-east forest, to the border ranges and all the way south to Coffs Harbour, those remnants of the big scrub rainforest have been protected by genuine environmentalists, many engaging in long protests, and in cooperation with Labor governments that have actually delivered national parks. Why is it that the Greens political party prioritise partisan, narrow self-interest in sleazy deals with the National Party in their registered how-to-vote cards?