Dumbo Feather – February 2019

school so they would win, because it was an easy win. But the fact that they learned how to

lobby their principal to get this and galvanise the school community around it, it was kind of

re-engineering that experience that I went through of winning a campaign.

Yeah. Everything gets harder as you get older!

Sometimes it can be really brave just to get out of

bed and get on with things knowing how quickly the

climate crisis is escalating. Especially this summer

with the heat waves and the drought and the fires and

the flooding. It can be quite overwhelming. But I’ve

become less black-and-white about how I see things.

And really tried to reach out to groups that have

traditionally not been part of the environment movement—because this challenge is so big

that we need bipartisan political support. Some of the work I do now involves supporting

National Party and Liberal Party members who disagree with their political parties’ stance on

climate change. It’s been really, really refreshing and important. There’s a big environment

movement in Australia but I would say it’s historically been broad yet shallow. Easy to

join on paper or online but hard to get really meaningfully involved in. So a lot of people

haven’t been given opportunities to do things that are really strategic because it’s expensive

for big environmental groups to do community organising and this work is chronically

underfunded. In the last few years I’ve been loving working with smaller groups and

supporting them where I can to get started and to grow—groups who are working with really

important constituencies like farmers, parents, health professionals, bushfire survivors.

The numbers of people might be smaller but the engagement is much deeper and I think the

political impact and the cultural impact and the stories are incredibly powerful.

At the moment I’m spending a lot of time helping Farmers for

Climate Action with campaign strategy and fundraising.

They’re also politically influential because they’ve traditionally been the rusted-on base

of the National Party, who are one of the biggest blockers to getting action. So FCA is one

of the most strategic groups around. I’m helping a few other climate groups as well. And

my husband and I are putting as much of our income as we can into funding these groups.

I love being able to give people the opportunity to make an impact as part of the climate

movement, to be able to facilitate them getting involved. The way I think about it is people

have time, treasure and talent.

Yeah. A lot of the work I’m doing at the moment is connecting people who have

the treasure element, treasure being money. Connecting them with organisations

that are doing amazing work and trying to also grow the pool of money that’s going into

climate advocacy in Australia. Only two to six percent of charitable giving is going into

the environment right now. And even less than that into climate. And given that climate

change affects everything, we need to grow that pool of funding. So my friend Clare and I

have been running these trips to the Great Barrier Reef for the last two years with a mix of

philanthropists and influencers. And we’re now working on a new project, which is a giving

Okay, so you have that incredible grounding. I wonder

what the difference is between the activism that you

did then as a young person and how that felt, to what

it feels like now. I mean, you know a lot more about the

issues. Courage, I imagine, is something that you’re

having to call on a lot more at this stage of your life

than perhaps you did as a young person. Is that true?

What kind of resources are you giving these

groups? How are you supporting them?

Time, treasure and talent.

Farmers manage over half of Australia’s land

and are trusted messengers on climate impacts.

28

ANNA ROSE

DUMBO FEATHER