16 Jun, 2017 | Perma-thinking
IT CAME AND WENT with a suddenness and fury. The rain was here to stay and its presence added to the cold of the early winter evening.
“Hope this weather doesn’t affect attendance”, the woman from the Bendigo Bank at the registration desk said to me.
“Well, there’s nothing like cold weather and heavy rain to keep people away”, I replied somewhat pessimistically.
I looked around the hall at the Randwick Community Centre. There was still a little time before the event was due to start but it seemed my pessimism might be well placed. The number of attendees you could count on the fingers of two hands. That the event could be a washout was a thought unsaid by more than myself that night.
Then, a few minutes before starting time a sudden influx of people had the registration woman busy ticking names off her list and giving them sticky name badges. Far from a washout, it seemed the night was going to go well. My pessimism turned to optimism.
And it did go well. The event, billed as the Sustainability and Social Impact Forum, was a joint venture between the Clovelly branch of the Bendigo Bank and Randwick City Council. As another woman from the bank said to me, rather than spending money on advertising budgets, the bank prefers to spend it on events such as these. Nationally, the bank as disbursed around $165 million to communities.
The Bendigo Bank videographer records the sessions.
A diversity or presenters and topics
Diversity is an established principle used in permaculture design, and although the seminar was not a permaculture event per se, it featured a diversity of speakers.
Two architecture companies were among the presenters. One did modern-looking energy efficient one-off designs for what I assume are clients with deep pockets or a good line of credit. The other was an innovative little company developing an approach to affordable housing based on the Ikea model — the flat-pack home (and here).
Big World Homes has developed an approach to affordable housing based on modular, off-site manufacture that it says can be constructed by two people over a few days using simple tools, including the roof that is installed from the inside. It is positioned as a transitional housing model to span the gap between renting and first home ownership and to relieve the chronic housing crisis and mortgage stress in our big cities.
According to the company, their design is:
“ …a modular, mobile, off-grid housing system made from structural-thermal-waterproof integrated panels. It’s ordered online, arrives flat-packed and can be built by two people over a few days using simple tools, making incredible savings on labour”.
It is what has become known as a ‘tiny house’ and, like many tiny houses, is built on a long, wheeled trailer.
Joanne Jakovich, who presented for Big World Homes, said that the small house movement has taken off in the US but is less visible here in Australia. I agree with her in general, however I believe many people in the permaculture design movement have known of the tiny house movement for some time and it has a growing presence on social media. I recall visiting what would now be called small houses that were built in the 1980s and over following decades, well before someone created the ‘tiny house’ tag. They, though, were fixed houses rather than the mobile variant of the model.
The tiny house movement started to create a presence for itself in Australia less than a decade ago as news of it spread from the US. The idea of solving the housing affordability crisis with small dwellings that can be towed to new locations might be new in its present form, however it reminds me of how Australians have lived permanently in caravans over the decades. It also reminds me of a home on a rural property I visited in Aotearoa-New Zealand that was mounted on skids so, if needed, it could be towed to a new location on the property. That had to do with getting around building regulations.
Big World Homes has also launched Big World Communities:
“ …a not-for-profit that works in partnership with developers, councils, community groups and individual landowners to locate off-grid home owner communities on unused land”.
This has potential to address a challenge mobile tiny home owners face — where to park their home. In North America this is being addressed through tiny home parks where tiny home owners have access to shared services in a self-managed environment.
A catalog of good ideas
The presentations were something like a catalog of permaculture solutions that have been developed over the years. They illustrate how ideas once popular in permaculture design in past decades have taken on lives of their own, leaving the permaculture nursery to grow in the world beyond as independent practices. One solution offered at the seminar, social (also known as ethical) investment, is one of these. The contemporary movement, it’s actually an industry, was started in Australia in the 1980s by Damien Lynch, who became a permaculture design course graduate and who was instrumental in developing permaculture’s focus on alternative economics in that decade.
As well as social investment, solutions offered at the forum included environmental protection (a run-down of EPA activity), community gardens using the local Coogee Community Garden as example, solar energy, composting — with the regional Compost Revolution as an example of a joint local government/social enterprise approach to community composting education — and permaculture.
…permaculture is a platform of ethics, principles and characteristics upon which its practitioners develop useful applications…
The Bank had asked me to talk about permaculture design and practice. I approached this not through a theoretical presentation on the design system but by explaining that just like the mobile devices people had in their pockets, which are platforms of hardware and software on which developers produce useful apps, so permaculture is a platform of ethics, principles and characteristics upon which its practitioners develop useful applications. Using a photo presentation I introduced people enacting permaculture in different ways, such as through social investment, community education, community garden development, international development, horticultural education, landscape architecture and architecture.
Feed the people
People gather around food, and good food accompanied the forum, a requisite or any successful event where organisers want people to mingle and meet.
My only suggestion for improving the event would be that, next time, run the presentations consecutively. Offer coffee and a light snack before starting and more substantial finger food at the end. That way there is continuity and the opportunity to continue networking more so than interrupting the presentations for a brief food break.
The Sustainability and Social Impact Forum was an event even more successful because it attracted around its 100 people who had registered online despite the cold, heavy showers that swept though and battered on the roof on the community centre. It demonstrates that the Bendigo Bank is a different kind of bank and that councils can partner with such progressive businesses to create something relevant and useful to people, their concerns and their needs.
8 Feb, 2017 | Perma-thinking
Click on the image below to watch the Tribute to Bill track…
8 Jun, 2015 | Perma-thinking
Story by Russ Grayson, June 2015
Citizen-initiated food systems could get a funding boost if recommendations coming from a NSW state government proposal get a favourable reception by the environment minister and departmental decision makers.
The proposal comes from the work of consultants, Roz Hopkins Muller Enterprise, who carried out research into community food systems for the NSW Environment Trust, a quasi-independent operation of the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH). The Trust administers an annual grant scheme open to community and educational organisations as well as local government, and has a focus on environmental improvement.
Community food systems the focus
The Trust launched the project to assess new funding opportunities for community food systems, and since its launch I have been a member of the advisory panel for the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA). Other advisory team members include Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network president, Jane Mowbray, the Royal Botanic Gardens Community Greening program assisting community food producers in social housing, local government, the UNSW Faculty of the Built Environment and others.
Any funding scheme eventually coming from the project will exclude food waste projects as that is already the focus of the state government’s Love Food Hate Waste program. It will also exclude assistance to food enterprises based on a business model, such as small, for-profit food businesses as well as not-for-profit social enterprises like community supported agriculture and food co-ops, as they are outside the terms of reference of community-based enterprises.
I tried to have social enterprise included as they are a distribution model with the social goal of access to good food, any operating excess going back into the enterprise rather than being distributed as profit, however my attempt was unsuccessful on account of their operating as businesses.
I accepted the invitation to participate on the panel as I believe this is where AFSA can do good work and influence outcomes. It might be behind-the-scenes type of work but that, rather than campaigning, is often where change can best be influenced because it allows us to focus less on what we would oppose and more on what we want to see happen.
The four community food systems likely to benefit include community gardening, food swaps, edible streetscaping and home gardening, which is growing food in home gardens for distribution via swapping or selling along the lines of the NSW Blue Mountain community enterprise, Crop & Swap.
The survey carried out by the consultants found that the main motivator for participation in community food gardens to be environmental improvement. Social interaction and access to good food also figured. Improving environments figured when I did research for a local government policy directions document some years ago, however the lead reason for participation I found to be access to good food followed by social interaction and learning.
Interestingly, the research found that participation in community gardening has increased the sharing of knowledge to a high degree among gardeners, significantly enlarged their social circles, dramatically increased the practice of composting food and green wastes (to produce garden fertiliser) and made many aware of the ‘food miles’ issue of transporting food over long distances.
Naming something ‘community’ does not automatically mean access, it was found. Access to community initiatives, like community food systems, is influenced by proximity, transportation and so on. It’s much like the realisation in the fair food movement with its criticism of Australia’s supermarket duopoly, that in some areas there is no alternative to the supermarket as a source of food, and what is needed are ideas on how to buy less-processed, more nutritious foods in the supermarkets.
Fragmentation
In identifying the existence of a social movement around community-produced food the researchers found it to be fragmented, with participants restricted to their ‘silos’ of community gardening and other areas. There is little cross-communication between the silos. I think this fragmentation is real, having seen it myself.
There are many reasons spanning a lack of time to share and communicate outside of the particular community food circle, a focus only on community gardening especially where gardeners are new and learning, a monofocus on home gardening without connection to other home gardeners or gardening organisations, a focus on localism that ignores the larger community food picture and of the social and political contexts the practice exists within.
What has come from the project — the research was national in scope — is the realisation that there is a significant community food movement but it lacks cohesive leadership.
One of the few moves in that direction comes from the national educational, advocacy and networking organisation, the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network. The Network has engaged in advocacy to protect the practice of community agriculture and has represented it in the media and in government. It is sectoral, though, focusing only on community growing, school gardens and closely related activity.
The national, Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance offers a broad representation to its diverse membership that includes farmers, food distributors, community gardeners and others, however it is not a leadership focusing specifically on the community food sector. There would likely be potential to assume such leadership were the Alliance to set up an initiative specifically to do that, much as it set up a farmers’ group — Fair Food Farmers United.
Any representative organisation that evolves to represent the nascent community food sector would necessarily include the commercial, social enterprise organisations that seek to fulfil social goals through a not-for-profit business model. Community supported agriculture schemes and food co-operatives are the dominant types of food social enterprise in Australia.
These are important parts of the broader community food system that focus on the distribution side of the urban food supply chain. They are important to those without time, inclination or opportunity to garden their food. Importantly, community supported agriculture enterprises like Brisbane Food Connect, Ooooby and CERES Fair Food in Melbourne link urban eaters directly to farmers in the region, developing through practical experience a regional food economy and giving practical expression to just what is local food.
It’s about volunteers
The community food sector, that around community gardening, food swaps, networked home gardeners distributing their produce beyond the back yard, and even the school food gardens that have become popular since first being developed and promoted in the 1990s by the permaculture design movement, is the work of volunteers.
These initiatives extend the great Australian tradition of voluntarism into food provisioning. While home gardening is an Australian tradition that was scaled up through the Gardens for Victory campaign during the Second World War, it is only since the first community garden was established in Melbourne in the late 1970s that food production has taken a sustained community focus.
The Environment Trust research disclosed what those involved in community organisations, especially those managing them, have known for years — voluntarism is a practice limited by volunteer time and skills. Researchers found that the number of good ideas offered by volunteers exceeds the capacity of voluntary organisations to implement them. Organisations relying on volunteers risk losing them when volunteers find their good ideas cannot be followed through because voluntary organisations don’t have the time, funds or capability to do so.
A member of the Woodbridge, Tasmania, community supported agriculture scheme with a box of fresh organic produce.
There would be much to be done to improve to implement some of the ideas coming from the proposals. Local government approaches to edible streetscaping and planting edibles on public land is much in need of reform, including policy that covers regions larger than just local government areas. The idea of incentivising councils to develop more permissive and coherent policy came up.
Another topic raised was the undemocratic practice of councils in allowing vexatious individuals to block community initiatives even when more people support them than oppose. This, too, would require reform and democratising if community food initiatives are to be enabled. Although it wasn’t mentioned specifically, there is the associated potential for precinct committees, where they exist, to block community food initiatives. Critics say that precinct committees often devolve into cliques of NIMBYs — the conservative Not In My back Yard crew who seek to control what is done on public land and who can limit the opportunity for innovative new landuses.
In some ways food is a safe area for government to venture into, however it is also a conflicted area with its own politics. That politics reflects the makeup of the movement and touches upon food security and poverty, the market dominance of the supermarket duopoly, farming systems, urban landuse and local government, the GMO issue and government policy. Discussion among the advisory panel was about how the Environment Trust scheme, if it eventuates, would represent not the campaigning side of food politics but those organisations actively building the community-based food systems as the fair food future they want to see.
That a state government body has taken the initiative to commission research on, and bring together an advisory panel of community food systems signifies that the practice has moved from the innovative urban fringe into the social mainstream. Now, we wait to see what comes from the government and minister’s office.
26 Feb, 2015 | Perma-thinking
Story by Russ Grayson, February 2015
I ATTENDED two of global food sovereignty advocate, Vandana Shiva’s appearances in Sydney this February. It was the second event that I found most interesting, but more on that later.
To walk past the display tables at Vandana’s Friday evening presentation at the NSW Teachers’ Federation hall was to pass by some familiar faces. There was Alana Mann from Sydney University and Fiona Campbell who does IT and communications support for the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance below the organisation’s banner. There was Nick Ritar from Milkwood Permaculture at their table. And there were other tables with faces I did not know, mainly those of the anti-GMO lobbies. And, as is usual at such events, there was a plethora of familiar faces in the milling audience before and after the event itself.
Vandana’s presentation followed that of innovative US farmer, Joel Salatin. I’ve seen Joel before and he didn’t add much that was new—he was the supporting act, after all—other than to say that his neighbouring farmers didn’t much like his approach to agriculture. Milkwood had scheduled Joel for a weekend of specialised courses in farming.
A familiar message
What Vandana said would be familiar to those who have heard her messages before, on the importance of maintaining the food sovereignty of smaller and medium scale farmers worldwide, of maintaining the supply of traditional, non-hybridised agricultural seed through seed saving and distribution and of the danger of corporate control of our food systems. I was happy that she addressed recent allegations by a US-based pro-GM advocate that she received US$40,000 per appearance and travelled first class, among other alleged misdeeds that read more like an attempted character assassination. She ridiculed the dollar sum without disclosing what it is that she actually receives for her appearances.
The US advocate also alleged that Vandana misrepresented her scientific qualifications and that they were in social sciences. She repeated what has been widely reported before, that she was trained as a physicist specialising in quantum mechanics.
Vandana started the Navdanya movement, a seed and farming education organisation. She is a middle aged woman who wears her dark hair tied back in a bun and dresses in traditional Indian clothing. She wears the traditional Hindu tilaka on her forehead. Her reputation and work brings her what I can best describe as a commanding presence (cliched I know that term is, but it does describe the perception of intellectual authority that she emanates). This is reinforced by a paced delivery, neither too fast or too slow, her voice adopting a suitably deepish tone.
The impression that comes across is that Vandana is delivering a serious message. She uses emphasis but does not indulge in the name-calling, blatant condemnation and emotional rhetoric that so mars many the messages of anti-GMO advocates. Vandada does not pull punches when it comes to the machinations of global corporations and their seeking control over our food systems, but she does so in a measured way that affords greater credibility to what she says. You get the impression that Vandana calls upon the objective, analytical part of her brain in delivering her messages, rather than the emotional.
The secondary benefit of events like this is networking, catching up with friends and colleagues, and there was plenty of that, the organisers wisely having built the opportunity into their program.
Preaching or educating?
Vandana’s Friday night appearance would have been empowering for those who filled the hall—it was standing room only at the back. Hearing what may be now-familiar messages again is a reinforcing thing that keeps them alive in individuals and the organisations they participate in.
People might call this preaching to the converted. But that mistakes how social change works. That preaching is actually a reinforcing of message and motivation for those already involved. It is best seen as educating-the-educators and change makers who go on to enact those ideas in the world and influence others.
Saturday more focused
Saturday morning was one of those humid, sticky, late-summer days in Sydney and it was the morning of the invitation-only meeting that I found the most interesting of the two Vandana Shiva events I attended.
It took place in the Surry Hills Community Centre in the City of Sydney’s newish library building on Crown Street. It was a conversation with people who play some role in the fair food and food sovereignty movements.
How to structure a movement?
There’s a tendency even among organisations that would think of themselves as socially progressive to adopt old and conservative models of organisational structure and operation.
With this in mind I explained to Vandana that there are numerous small organisations focused on fair food but they often act independently and are scattered. I suggested this reduces the overall effectiveness of the fair food movement and asked her for any insights she has developed as to structuring the fair food movement in Australia.
I should have anticipated that her answer would be based on the model of the agricultural biodiversity she promotes and on a pattern in nature. First, though, she started with a critique of the conventional, old and tired organisational and movement model we are all familiar with.
“The pyramidal model of organisation is finished. The top forgets that the bottom supports it”, she said.
“The model for movements is biodiversity. It is like overlapping circles of organisations that are independent but that cooperate in working together.”
Sitting in the armchair in front of the 50 or so in the community centre, Vandana expanded further on this by drawing an analogy with multicellular organisms.
In life, she said, “There is no master cell. Life happens through self-organisation”.
Here was Vandana the scientist speaking, drawing on systems theory in explaining how life, nature and all complex systems self-organise. There is no master cell, no CEO, no board of management, no planners, no central committee. It is life emerging from the interaction between elements in a system and between those elements and their environment. And so should it be with organising a social movement, was the message. It would have been good to spend the rest of the session on this topic alone, to open it up and explore its innards, but there were plenty of others with their hands raised to ask their own questions.
One of those questioners was a young woman from the Youth Food Movement (YFM), an organisation that has now expanded interstate beyond its Sydney origin. Her’s was a similar question to mine, about how to proceed and about their relationship with commercial entities. Vandana advised that the constituents might be rather young to offer advice to others as their age might reflect a lack of experience. She asked the YFM to be humble. My thought was that she was suggesting caution while being supportive of the YFM’s work in food sovereignty.
Another young woman (yes, it was a female-dominated event, not that there’s any problem there—it’s like they say in organising Open Space events— the people who come are the right people, and that’s irrespective of gender and other characteristics often the focus of the politically-correct mindset) asked whether GMO’s have potential based solely on their science and devoid of the politics of patents, seed ownership and control around them.
This is a frequently-encountered question often coming from those in science and technology or who make use of those approaches and mindsets. It’s a fair question because it breaks down the complexities around GM—ownership, control, agrochemical dependence, farming systems, any potential for GM to adapt crops to the conditions of climate change, the drift of GM materials and so on. The value of doing this is that you can explore the nuances of GM technology and it can lead to the conclusion of many that the scientific potential of GM is separate to its economic, cultural, environmental and cultural impacts.
Being a scientist with an understanding of systems, however, Vandana answered the woman with a simple statement: “The reality is you can’t separate the science form everything else. They are part of the same thing”.
Another participant asked for a short video clip of Vandana voicing support for the March Against Monsanto his organisation was planning. This she did after the meeting.
Too short a time
There, in the Surry Hills Community Centre that sticky summer morning, we had only an hour with Vandana. Far too short for the depth and range of topics on people’s minds.
In afterthought, How good it would have been to organise a follow-up gathering of those there.
Vandana’s visit was made possible through the support of a number of organisations through the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance and was smoothly organised by Catriona McMillan, a veteran of the organics industry in Australia and a fair food advocate.
23 Feb, 2015 | Perma-thinking
Story by April Sampson-Kelly, February 2015
Permaculture has achieved what the movement wished just a couple of decades ago. It is in the mainstream. It has become a common word and it is now having to shine it’s boots and pull up it’s socks.
In the early years, business in permaculture was frowned upon. In some cases the frowning came most unfairly from people who had secure paid work in permaculture-related fields (teachers, writers, lecturers in sociology, mental health advocates, organisers of festivals and conferences etc).
If it is ok to have a job related to permaculture, then surely it is ok to have a business in permaculture. In fact it is more than ok, without people in small permaculture businesses, we wouldn’t have the magazines, the news articles, the suppliers of rare plants, animals, biochar, worm-farms etc.
Most of the functions that are needed for the permaculture movement today have been filled by enterprises such as Permaculture businesses and social media enterprises (google, facebook etc).
A few impressive tools have come out of community-based projects such as wikipedia, libre-office, farm-hack, TED (and other online communities).
The activities that have truly helped permaculture flourish in the last decade include:
- the creation of large data-bases with records showing providence of teachers
- standards for the Permaculture Design Course and Diploma courses
- networks for guilds
- good demonstration gardens and villages
- good marketing strategies
- promotion, funding, organising and facilitation of guest speakers, talk-tours etc
- information/resources including magazines, news articles and books
- video clips, animation to document successes over time and how these came about.
Most of these functions would never have been able to be organised and funded by an independant centralised global Permaculture Association.
Luckily, existing skilled business people have had their finger on the pulse and jumped in to build these assets.
But it is important that we remind permaculture businesses that there is more reward in their efforts than just money and power. They can become a leader in world business practices by building good business ethics into their permaculture businesses.
Without business ethics a successful business quickly rises to become a powerful corporatehood. Corporations crush competitors by undercutting, restricting supply and flooding the market.
Corporate-hood has become a business phenomenoa recognised well in the USA with vocal, massive backlash from communities. Corporations in the USA have become so powerful that they have earnt almost equal rights as individuals. They certainly can afford better legal representation, and have the funds to campaign for the things that will make them bigger.
Bigger is not always better. In permaculture we talk about limits to growth as well as fair share and valuing diversity.
Good permaculture business practise…
- enables all the workers to obtain a local and enriching livie-hood
- shares excess by supporting other permaculture projects
- does not demand exclusivity at the cost of limiting a supplier to work elsewhere
- sets up systems that acknowledge the good work of others
- has marketing that is honest and fair (do your research before making bold claims of “being the biggest or the first or the only”)
- reflects the ethics of permaculture
- sets limits to growth
- reinvests earnings in local people and environment
- acknowledges we are all standing on the shoulders of giants and nurtures others to follow them by establishing honorable practices
- holds the torch for sustainable [ISO14000] and ethical practices.
28 Dec, 2014 | Perma-thinking
Story by Russ Grayson, December 2014
A Northern NSW “permaculture farmer” calling for a boycott of halal foods and linked with an alleged far-right anti-Islamic group could bring the permaculture design system into disrepute if her beliefs are taken to be representative of permaculture.
Her name is Kirralie Smith and her story was carried by the Sydney Morning Herald online on 28 December this year.
The Herald lead describes Kirralie as ” …a permaculture farmer from northern New South Wales and a mother of three. She is also the public face of the virulent campaign to boycott halal food and products.”
[pull_quote align=”right”]We aim to Not buy halal products & services, because they fund Islamic expansion by any means[/pull_quote]
It continues: ” …Smith’s Facebook page Boycott Halal in Australia has 41,000 supporters. She speaks at events organised by ‘Islam-critical’ groups such as the Q Society, which has also been involved in local campaigns to stop mosques being built. Her Halal Choices website, she says, gets 80,000 visitors a month.”
Boycott Halal in Australia says in its ‘about’ column’s general information that: “We aim to Not buy halal products & services, because they fund Islamic expansion by any means” (punctuation reported as is).
A 27 December posting on the group’s Facebook seeks to disassociate itself from Kirralie: Another article – Why halal certification is in turmoil… with lots of information from our Page – but again the False Assumption that Kirralie Smith is involved here at Boycott Halal – which she is not & she is as flabbergasted as we are by this Media confusion.
“Note that Kirralie Smith is behind the very informative HALAL CHOICES website and is featured in the excellent Q Society Video about Halal Certification which we often feature… but she is not involved here at Boycott Halal.”
[pull_quote align=”right”]Businesses themselves have to accept the blame for any loss and can only bring themselves discredit by choosing to be bullied by the anti-Islam lobbyists[/pull_quote]
The Herald article describes how the anti-halal movement applies pressure on Australian food companies to drop halal certification, a move successful in one instance but resisted by other food companies. A 21 November article in New Matilda this year reported that the Byron Bay Cookie Company was hounded about its halal certified Anzac cookies and that South Australia’s Fleurieu Milk and Yogurt Company was forced to back out of a contract to supply Emirates airline.
There are implications in this strategy for Australian food exporters. Businesses themselves have to accept the blame for any loss and can only bring themselves discredit by choosing to be bullied by the anti-Islam lobbyists rather than stand up to them in a public way that focuses attention on the Islamophobe’s tactics and agenda.
Halal foods are certified as appropriate for Moslems just as kosher foods are certified for consumption by Jews. The article goes on to discuss the halal certification process and controversies within it.
Kirralie, who has a BA in theology, says halal certification imposes costs on food for all Australians and constitutes a religious tax. She wants the Corporations Act 2001 changed so that only Moslems bear the cost of halal certification. In an October 2012 article entitled Is Halal Funding Terrorism? on australianchristians.com.au, Kirralie says that money paid for halal certification is used, partially or in whole, for the push for sharia law (the Islamic legal code) in Australia. Yet, she doesn’t link the cost of certifying kosher foods to overall food prices, nor that of certifying organic foods (although that would not constitute the alleged religious tax).
[pull_quote align=”right”]…certification is a “scam” to raise money for building mosques and, by implication, for funding jihad…[/pull_quote]
Kirralie alleges that halal certification is a “scam” to raise money for building mosques and, by implication, for funding jihad. The Q Society video linked to her website says that halal certification was not traditionally required of Moslems in past times and is now a means to make money.
The Herald reported that the Australian Crime Commission had found no links between the legitimate halal certification industry and the financing of terrorist organisations.
The Q Society, with which Kirralie is linked, describes itself on its website as anti-Islamic — the words are the heading of one of the website’s drop-down menus. Click it, and you find this: “For too long Islam has enjoyed immunity from necessary analysis, due criticism and debate because of its status as ‘just a religion’. Unfortunately, if we continue to tolerate Islam without understanding it, Australia as a free, secular democracy will be lost…”.
The Society also warns against “…the systematic Islamisation of our schools in textbooks, curriculum, tuck shops, uniforms and installation of parallel rules”. It describes itself as a not-for-profit “civil rights organisation… to inform Australians about Islam”.
The Age newspaper on 23 June 2014, in an article entitled Far-right group spreading anti-mosque message in Bendigo, disclosed that the Society was behind the campaign against the building of a mosque in the Victorian city.
In an 26 June 2014 article on news.com entitled Revealed: The secretive Q Society’s battle against Islam, the Q society was described this way: “THEY are a group of ‘concerned citizens’, but are very hesitant to say who they really are. If you want to go to one of their meetings, you have to sign a nondisclosure agreement.
“Their only address is a PO Box in suburban Melbourne. They won’t say exactly where their money comes from and say they never will.
And they are very opposed to Islam in Australia. The secretive organisation known as the Q Society has this week been linked to a noisy campaign to stop the construction of a mosque in Bendigo, Victoria.”
A challenge to permaculture’s reputation
Permaculture is a practice with a broad range of participants. There are Greens supporters, Labor supporters and — who knows? — even Liberal supporters. There are people from the different flavours of Left and the Right and those who seek a better way than adherence to tired, Twentieth Century ideologies. There are Christians, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, Jews and — yes, Moslems too (perhaps the most prominent being the Permaculture Research Institute’s educators and consultants, Geoff and Nadia Lawton).
So it should come as no surprise that a whole range of beliefs and attitudes are present within the permaculture design milieu. What has been absent however, are those actively engaged with fringe political groups who publicly identify as permaculture practitioners. It is this that is the difficulty with Kirralie’s association with anti-Islam organisations.
As an Australian living in a democracy, Kirralie has freedom of association, including with small political groups of dubious intention. She also has her freedom to express what she thinks, including about the halal industry and Islam. Sure, that will offend some but in a democracy where you can say what you like without resorting to hate speech, you’re bound to offend someone, somewhere. Offence is part of democracy.
Kirralie’s being linked with permaculture risks the design system being associated with her personal beliefs and anti-Islamic activities. By late December other media had picked up on the Herald story and in most of the online links the word ‘permaculture’ appears with Kirrilie’s name. It may be assumed that her beliefs reflect those within the permaculture milieu and it is this that has potential to discredit the design system. Kirrale’s Pinterest presence has a page on permaculture gardening.
Another issue is that pressuring food manufacturers to drop halal certification would reduce freedom of choice for those seeking those foods. That would be of concern to Australia’s food sovereignty advocates such as the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance that advocate people’s control over their food systems. So too should Islamophobic bullying of Australian food businesses.
The incident also raises the question as to how seriously permaculture practitioners, and Kirralie, take the Second Ethic of permaculture that talks about care of people. Can you really care for the wellbeing of people if you seek to remove the certification of the food they choose to eat?
Read more…
