RICHARD JONES: GREEN POLITICIAN, ANIMAL LIBERATIONIST AND SIMPLY LIVING
Interview: Claudette Vaughan
Richard Jones is a former member of the NSW Legislative Council, a member of the parliament from 1988 to 2003. He’s an activist par excellence on environmental and animal rights issues. He has been elected twice to the parliament as a Democrats candidate. He left the party in 1996, whilst still a sitting member, turning as a Independent politician. He was the first convenor of Friends of the Earth Australia. He assisted in the founding of Greenpeace in Australia in 1978 and beyond his dedication to green politics and animal rights issues, he was also a vigorous proponent of alternative medicine, speaking several times in parliament in favour of homeopathy and traditional Chinese medicine. He is happily married to his partner Jo and lives on a rain forest property in Northern NSW.
 Abolitionist: How do you think the split between the animal liberation movement and the environmental movement occurred in Australia?
Richard Jones: I don’t think there was ever a split as such. I just think they grew up separately because people who feel very strongly about animals are not necessarily people who feel strongly about more abstract things like forests and the general environment. I just don’t think they ever quite came together. It’s pretty unusual for them to even come together at all.
They are just different types of people. Unfortunately many more people are concerned about the general environment which I think is more of a male concern than concerned about animals where you see there are many more women involved in the Movement. There are an awful lot of people working for animals that you never hear about, they aren’t high profile people. There are people working in animal rescue centers, looking after possums, all kinds of animal work is being done now but the people involved are not necessarily high profile.
You have been extremely active in politics and extremely supportive of all animal related issues when they presented in Parliament mainly because in many cases you were involved and brought them to everyone’s attention. Now that you have retired, what was life like for you as a politician? Was it hard?
It was hard trying to get our view across and trying to make changes for the animals because we were, in the early days 1988-89, we were basically ridiculed if we asked animal questions in Parliament or if we made speeches on the subject and they just regarded us as light-weight to be even concerned about these issues. Frankly, people used to laugh at us. They’d say, “Why are you concerned about animals, what about more weighty issues like economics, health and education?” They say, “What about people?”
From that point of view it was really hard but never the less I still got my Private Members Bill through to ban duck hunting in NSW with an awful lot of pressure on the Premier. There were various amendments to legislation that became law. It seemed to take forever to ban steel jaw traps! I started with Evelyn Cleary in 1972 but it took something like 30 years to get them banned finally. Some of these campaigns take an awful long time. Public opinion has to change. Sometimes we are ahead of public opinion you see.
Did you find lobbyists from the other side – the hunting lobby, the farmers, the cattle industry – did you find that they were directly in your way at all Richard?
They simply had their own people in place. Take the National Party for example. They didn’t need lobbying because they were already established. The idea of applauding when an abattoir closed down, as I did in the Chamber one time, appalled people. Another time, Virginia Chadwick was the Minister and I talked about closing down McDonalds and she said, “Are you serious about closing down McDonald’s and all those jobs?” and I said, “Yes I am”. She thought I was a complete nutter.
The trouble is the status quo is that most people eat meat. They try and kill as humanely as possible, they are not really concerned as long as they can get their steak on the table and so we are living in a country where 95% of the people happily eat steak, pork, chicken, they eat anything. If you go to India it’s totally the other way around in many areas. If you go on a plane in India they ask you, “Do you want veg or non-veg?” They don’t say what steak would you like? It’s so much easier to eat over there compared to here although it is improving. People are beginning to get concerned if only from the health point of view. It shows that red meat can cause cancer and heart disease and the rest of it. People are beginning to turn away, at least, from red meat because of the harmful health effects.
Are you disillusioned with what you went into politics to accomplish but couldn’t for the animals or are you a fatalist?
No I’m not disillusioned. I’m a realist because I know that sometimes a campaign might take 100 years, sometimes they take 200 years. You are just part of a campaign that you might spend 10-20 years of your life on that might be a 100 year campaign in itself. Slavery wasn’t abolished overnight.
What are your views on climate change especially since there is a massive shift to force nuclear energy as the only option available.What do you think about John Howard’s “new” Kyoto Protocols?
Howard’s on the way out basically and by the time this hits print he may have been defeated. I have just finished talking with a senior Liberal who also agrees with me. He also reckons that one of the seats up here which has been a traditional National Party seat will turn over to Labor. I think Howard’s days are over. I don’t think we are going to have nuclear power here because it’s simply not viable but what we will have is geo-thermal. There are 3 companies now doing very well on the stock exchange at least and one of those companies alone can supply all of Australia’s energy for 500 years without any Greenhouse impact at all.
Why didn’t Australia get started earlier on solar when Australia has the climate, can do windpower, hot rocks, the lot if it really wants to. Things would be much different and better today if solar had been promoted back in the 70’s.
I flew into Tel Aviv in 1967 and virtually every house there had solar hot water, that’s 40 years ago. There are places in the world like Florida for example who regularly put solar hot water on their roof yet only 3-4% of Australians have solar hot water and it pays for itself within about a 3-4 year time bracket. It would be nonsensical not to put solar hot water on your roof because you pay for it quickly then you have free hot water there after. Even when it’s incredibly viable and you get a government subsidy as well, people still don’t do it. I don’t get why Australians don’t wake up to this very simple thing alone. It doesn’t make sense to me at all.
What about the Jones household then?
The only form of heating in the house is a slow burning wood stove which the wood for that comes from the property itself. That’s all the heating we need. If we get cold, we put on more clothes. We have solar hot water and we have green energy. We get our green energy from the grid. Photovoltaics probably will be viable in a year or two. The minute I consider it to be viable, I’ll put it on the roof. We have an organic property here. There’s a lot of greenhouse gas emissions from non-organic farming. If anybody really wants to help contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions they should start eating organic food for example.
Go vegan preferably of course.
The global livestock sector is growing faster than any other agricultural sub sector and its provides livelihoods to 1.3 billion people and contributes to a whopping 40% to actual global outputs says the latest UN survey and let’s not forget that intensive farming is the largest polluter of any industry on the planet today. So going vegan was the answer all along.
If you are a vegan you can cut your greenhouse figures down quite considerably by eating organic food because of the artificial fertilizers they use and the cost. Also because of local organic food rather than organic food from America or elsewhere overseas you can cut your greenhouse gases very considerably. Organically cared for land sequestrates carbon. I plant trees. That’s cut down my cost to the planet. I’ve got a target of 10,000 and I’m up to 9,560 so getting there. They are rain forest trees.
How do you see the animal liberation movement progressing in Australia? Will it be through forming a animal liberation political party to be able to lobby its own platform?
I doubt it. Not yet. You’d need at least 4-5% of the vote to get anybody elected. The Fishing Party, for example, have a tiny percentage of the vote although they say they have huge support . The only party that you would call a single issue party is The Shooters Party. They managed to get one in on the strength of John Tingle. They are extremely well organised. There’s lots of shooter clubs all over the place so they are the only one who have managed to break that mould so far and to be able to get in on their own particular issue.
A Vegetarian, Vegan Party, a Animal Rights Party would be very very hard indeed because if you don’t get a very high vote then people tend to write you off. I think the best bet is to work within the existing political parties with people that are concerned about animals. I think animal people should join existing political parties that are concerned about animals like the Greens or Democrats and work their way through the parties and put their hands up to stand in seats. Think of how many people are not available to stand in various seats all over this country so if you really want to be effective think of standing in an existing political party, one close to your heart, and then put your hand up to stand as a candidate. I think this would be more effective than forming your own political party and spending a lot of time and energy as I did and even though I managed to get a Democrats seat, that was very lucky but I wouldn’t have been elected if it was The Animal Rights Party. I would have been giving my preferences to the Democrats or the Greens but I wouldn’t have been elected in my own right.
What was your opinion of the Liberal Government bringing in the army to force Aboriginal children to have a so-called health check-up - wasn't this just a ploy for another land grap?
I think it basically started off that John Howard was so far behind in the polls he got this report and used it to try and boost his standing in the electorate to show he was pro-active and doing something now for Aboriginal children. I think everything flowed from that. Like another version of the Tampa. He really wants to seize the initiative from Kevin Rudd. Perhaps Howard won’t be around for much longer any way.
Name a dozen things activists get wrong with politicians.
- Assuming one can resolve an issue instantly
- Not understanding that changing government policy is extremely difficult and time consuming
- Not understanding that many politicians are extremely busy/pre-occupied and cannot absorb long messages
- Not understanding that politicians have their own hobby horses which they like to ride around Parliament
- Not understanding that when a letter is sent to a Minister he or she rarely gets to see it but it is replied to by someone lower down on the pecking order whose job it is to fob off any queries.
- Nevertheless when half a dozen people write spontaneously it is a BIG issue
- Not understanding that protesters are generally regarded as ratbags bypollies
- Not appreciating that the status quo, whatever it is, is regarded as OKand not to be changed without good reason
- Not appreciating that Ministers only act under advice from theirdepartments and almost never on their own
- Underestimating the impact of Treasury on all decisions
- Not realising that a country person's vote is equal to about ten citypeople's votes in the eyes of politicians
- Not realising that the number one concern of politicians is to get re-elected and nothing else comes close
|
