INTERVIEW - New Australian Greens MP laughs off Telstra sale
Date: 17-Jul-02
Country: AUSTRALIA
Author: Belinda Goldsmith
Kerry Nettle, a dedicated activist who takes her seat as the Greens' second national MP next month, flatly dismisses the notion that Prime Minister John Howard will get a mandate to sell the state's remaining 50.1 percent of Telstra in the near future.
"I've found some frustration in terms of the way Howard talks about Telstra, that is to talk about the inevitability factor of (selling) Telstra," Nettle told Reuters yesterday in an interview in her new, sparsely furnished parliamentary office.
"Obviously Howard is going to hype it because that's his agenda but count the numbers! You don't have 'em."
The conservative government is in a minority in parliament's upper house 76-seat Senate where it needs to secure four extra seats on top of its 35 to get approval for legislation to sell off the rest of Telstra, worth an estimated A$30 billion.
But the numbers are against the government with a flat refusal from the 28 senators sitting for the main opposition Labor party, from eight Democrat senators, two of three independents and two Greens - Nettle and party leader Bob Brown.
And Nettle is probably the hardest to move, the most left-wing of them all, who describes her pre-parliament occupation as "an environmental and social justice campaigner."
She was one of the loudest voices when the Greens' national executive unanimously voted down an idea floated by Brown to consider Telstra's sale in return for banning old-growth logging.
ANTI-GLOBALISATION
"A privatisation will lead to a decrease in services in rural areas," said Nettle, a 28-year-old dedicated activist from Sydney with three arrests to her name. No charges were ever laid.
"It is just not going to happen," she laughed.
Telstra is one of four major issues that Nettle expects to confront head-on after she is sworn into Australia's 40th Senate on August 19 as the nation's youngest senator.
She lists the others as campaigning over moves to liberalise trade under the General Agreement on Trade in Services which Greens fear would hit key state-run services, Australia's role in the U.S.'s war on terrorism, and land clearing.
Nettle expects to bring a new voice to the parliament, representing a broad political movement of street activists whose anti-globalisation protests became a major headache for police internationally before the events of September 11.
"My job is to let people know what is going on in here...provide that interaction between activist communities and parliament," Nettle said.
Her background is one of a green political activist, involved in forest blockades and anti-globalisation protests.
Since leaving university in 1997 with a first class degree in environmental science, she has been a youth worker, taught English in East Timor, and fought uranium mining at Jabiluka in the Northern Territory. She joined the Greens in 1998.
Her entry to parliament comes at a good time for the Green movement which is enjoying a worldwide surge in popularity.
The 10-year-old party's vote jumped at a general election last November to 4.4 percent from 2.1 percent in a 1998 ballot after the left-leaning party took a strong stand against the government's hardline on asylum seekers, which Labor backed.
