Spirit in Action
Jo Vallentine - Australian Green Party Senator
Jo Vallentine was the first Australian Green Party Senator. She brought principled action to Australia's federal Senate, earning her the scorn of many "business as usual" politicians, as she served as advocate and voice in Australia's Parliament for a number of progressive issues for 8 years
- Broadcast on:
- 27 May 2007
- Audio Format:
- other
I have no hands but yours to tend my sheep. No handkerchief but yours to dry the eyes of those who weep. I have no arms but yours with which to hold. The ones grown weary from this struggle and weak from growing old. I have no voice but yours with which to see. To let my children know that I am out and out is everything. I have no way to feed the hungry souls. No clothes to give or make it and the more. So be my heart, my hand, my tongue through you and will be done. The enders have my none to help and die. Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeet. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, I'll seek out light, love and helping hands, being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. I have no way to open people's eyes, except that you will show them how to trust the inner mind. I'm so fortunate to have as my guest today Joe Valentine. Joe was the first Australian Green Party Senator. She brought principled action to Australia's Federal Senate, earning her the scorn of many business as usual politicians. Served as advocate and voice in Australia's Parliament for a number of progressive issues for eight years. Joe grew up Catholic in a conservative family, deeply absorbing Catholic teachings of compassion and care for the poor. While traveling extensively as a young adult, Joe witnessed masses of poor people held down by the religious, economic and political limitations and began to transition away from conservative doctrines. Joe has been active with the Friends Quaker Meeting in Perth, Western Australia since 1972. Joe's first election to the Senate was as part of the Nuclear Disarmament Party, but National Coalition Building led to the National Establishment of the Green Party in Australia. I interviewed Joe Valentine on February 14th, 2006, in the course of my three-week visit to Australia with the friendly folk dancers. I'm here today interviewing Joe Valentine. She's a former member of the Federal Parliament of Australia. We're sitting here on the cappuccino strip in Fremantle, which is a suburb neighboring on Perth in Western Australia. Welcome today, Joe. Thanks for joining me for Spirit in Action. Hi, Mark. I've had some chance to get to know you over the last couple of days. When I heard that you were the first representative of the Green Party in the Australian Federal Parliament, I was pretty impressed to be friends with the first one. Well, it's a while ago now, and I guess it was history-making. There's no doubt about that, but I look back on it now, and I think was that really me? Did I do all those things, you know? So it's a bit like another lifetime for me now, because it's 15 years since I was actually in the Parliament, and I was there for eight years. So putting that into perspective over a life that's now nearly 60 years long, you know, it just seems like a little job I did for a while there, and I did my best in it, but it wasn't going to be forever. I never had any ambition to have a career as it were in politics that was not ever on my agenda. I'm sure that most of our listeners from the USA have very little idea of what the governmental structure is here in Australia. I believe that the federal Parliament of Australia has two houses, a Senate and House of Representatives, like the USA. I think there are 76 senators and 145 representatives and House of Representatives. You served in the Senate, didn't you? That's right, yes. So as one of 12 senators from this state, each state has 12 senators, and so the terms are three years or six years. And I got elected three times, actually, for two, three year terms, and then the third time I got elected it was for a six year term. And that felt a bit like a prison sentence, so I didn't actually finish it. You were first elected in 1984 as a representative not of the Green Party, but of the Nuclear Disarmament Party. How did that come about? What was that about? Well, it was a sign of the times, really, Ronald Reagan, the president of the United States, was running around at that point when he thought the microphone was off saying, "Let's nuke the Ruskies." And Greenham Common and Other Places in the UK were bristling with the new weapons at that time. Cruise missiles, which could go a very long way, at low altitudes. And I think there was a genuine fear that we were about to blow ourselves up. People were very, very scared. So the time was right for a single issue party to come onto the Australian political agenda. And as far as I know, it's the only one anywhere where somebody got elected to a federal national parliament on that single issue of nuclear disarmament. But it was one of many, many actions that were happening globally saying, "Stop, we don't want this annihilation to happen." So I guess I was just part of a whole movement. It seemed like something very new at the time in 1984, but in fact, because I'd been involved already for six or eight years in the anti-war and anti-nuclear movement at that stage, I knew that it was based on a lot of hard work by a lot of groups that came together then to actually support candidates around Australia to have a go for the Senate. [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] [MUSIC - "I'm Gather and People Wherever You're Own"] which is several hundred dollars, so it weeds out people who are just doing it for fun and, preferably, you need to have a group behind you, but that's not essential. So, in the first instance, I just had a movement of people behind me who got really busy with the campaign. We put up the money to register and then we worked like crazy and there was my name on the ballot paper. In fact, there was the name of the Nuclear Disarmament Party on the ballot paper. And we have a rather strange voting system here where there's a big line that separates the block votes from the individual votes. Our Senate ballot paper is very big. There might be over 100 candidates for these 12 positions representing the major parties. Each major party usually has a list of five or six senator hopefuls. So that if you're an independent or you haven't got a party, you don't get a spot in the block vote above the line. Because Australians are a bit lazy about voting and because it's compulsory, a lot of people like to go into the ballot box and they just put one tick in the box and then they follow. That is assumed that their vote follows the line of that particular party. So we had to work very hard to make sure that we had people educated enough to fill in the whole ballot paper and say we want this person representing the Nuclear Disarmament issue to actually be in the Senate for us. So it was quite a coup. I mean it doesn't sound like very many people but 52,000 people voted Valentine 1. That was more people than we expected. We had all the ballot boxes covered nearly all in the whole state. We had people there on Election Day handing out materials saying here's an opportunity to say to our government we don't want to just follow the United States line which could take us into nuclear war. That's what people felt afraid of. At that stage we have American warships visiting often and we still do full of sailors discouraging into this very port. This is their most favourite port in the whole world for R&R. That's unless they're back home in their home bases. They love free metal friendly, good weather, nice beaches, et cetera, et cetera. So we had this constant reminder that we're very linked into the American military machine. We've got Pine Gap, a huge military base, secret secret secret in the middle of our desert which feeds stuff back into the whole United States satellite network which is like a huge vacuum cleaner sucking up information about everybody and everything everywhere. And through that base they then formulate their ideas about where they're going to bomb. We also had other bases like the Northwest Cape Naval Base through which orders could be issued to launch nuclear weapons. So we felt really enmeshed in it and a lot of people didn't like that. So all around the country there were nuclear disarmament party candidates but in fact I was the only one who managed to get a big enough percentage of the vote and enough preferences coming in the direction of the nuclear disarmament party from the other major parties who didn't really see me coming and I squeaked in. He's is the bread we break, love is the river all in life is a chance we take when we make this earth our home, gonna make this earth our home. Feel the cool breeze blowing through the smoke and the heat, hear the gentle voices and the marching feet singing call back the fire, draw the missiles down and we'll call this earth our home, pieces, pieces. The bread we break, love is, love is the river all in life is a chance we take when we make this earth our home, gonna make this earth our home. When you got the melody down feel free to try some harmony and don't be afraid of harmony, harmony is any note that your neighbor isn't singing. We have known the album the power and pain we've seen people fall beneath the killing rain if the mind still reasons and the soul remains it shall never be again. He's is the bread we break, love is, love is the river all in life is a chance we take when we make this earth our home, gonna make this earth our home. When we make this earth our home, gonna make this earth our home, gonna make this earth our home. When you said the voting is compulsory what did you mean by that? When you get fined, if you're on the electoral you don't vote, you get fined, not a lot but you know you've really got to be accountable, the government will write to you and say where were you on voting day and why didn't you vote and here's your fine of $20 so most people will go and vote if they're on the electoral roll. So you can choose not to be on the electoral roll, that's okay, but most people somehow rather get on to the electoral roll and then they're obliged to vote or you can go into the ballot box and do what we call a donkey vote or just not fill in the paper. Just you can go in get your name checked off and then fill in an informal vote it's called or you just go straight down the line without any choice about the political consequences of your vote so you can sort of do a non vote if you like but most people actually show up on election day. Are you saying that there's near 100% voting by the adult populace? That's right it's certainly it's about 87% and so the rest are people who have chosen not to go on the roll or who think will bug or you know I'll get the fine or they're overseas or something like that. So you can put in a good case you can say that you are more than I think it's 60 kilometres or something like that from a polling booth and then you don't have to vote but they go out into the remote Aboriginal communities and so on days before the helicopters drop off the ballot boxes and it's a very thorough coverage you know you really have to work quite hard to be not found on voting day to go back to something I should have said before this whole business about the preferences is really crucial in the outcomes of our elections particularly in the upper house because if the candidate of your first choice doesn't get enough votes to get a percentage above the line then the votes are transferred to the next one down. So because the opposition or the main major parties didn't really see me as a threat I got the preferences allocated from a number of groups. So I got in where somebody in another state the Rock singer Peter Garrett from Midnight Oil that some of your listeners might have heard about because Midnight Oil was pretty strong in the states. He got 9% of the vote I got 6.3% of the vote I got in and he didn't so it's a little bit like that so I was often called the accidental senator and I quite like that label because I never really meant to be a senator but once I got in there I gave it my best shot. Joe when did you become part of the Green Party or when did your designation officially become Green Party? Well that didn't really happen until 1990 and a lot of water went under the bridge between 84 and 90 so I was independent for quite a long time still working on the same issues I don't feel as though I let anybody down in terms of working on the issues that I'd been voted in to represent but the issues became wider and wider because originally the platform was just no nuclear warship visits no uranium mining because that's our big contribution in Australia the nuclear arms race and no foreign bases on Australian sorts. So that was the policy for the first election very narrow single issue. By the second election in 1987 people saying we want you to work on more things we want you to work on aboriginal issues we want you to work on the environmental issues we want you to work on social justice issues. So gradually the platform that I was working on became expanded and expanded and expanded and I'm still only one person in there all by myself trying to deal with all of these issues with a very small staff so it became really clear and clear to me that we needed a network we needed a base so we set about forming the Greens party and there had been one in Tasmania and there'd been a couple of efforts but they hadn't really quite come to anything so in 1990 we launched the Greens in WA and then later on it became Australia wide and now there are four Australian Green Senators in the Parliament one of whom is from Western Australia so I'm really pleased about that. Have you been a lifelong political activist? Well I've always been interested in politics I guess but I never thought I'd sort of go anywhere with it. In fact I never joined the Labor Party which would have been my closest inclination and actually in 1984 when they turned from being an anti uranium mining party into a pro uranium mining party in this country which is the thing that got a lot of people enraged actually so they joined the nuclear disarmament party but I often wished that I had been a member so that I could tear up, burn my membership card but I never had that pleasure. So that was my general tendency but I came from a very conservative family in fact my grandfather was in the Parliament in Western Australia for 33 years as an independent but a very conservative independent who was way ahead of his time with some ideas he had like a desalination and capturing the tides and so on things that are still being talked about now. And so I'd grown up with the idea that you know politics was you know worth talking about certainly but my parents a kind of generation had been missed my father was not the least bit interested he was a sportsman and my mother had worked very hard for her father and her younger day in political circles and then wanted nothing more to do with it so in fact I didn't grow up with people encouraging me to go into politics or anything like that but I did have a Catholic education and in the Catholic school system here we figured out in activist circles that you get a pretty good dose of social justice Now it might be with the Bible in one hand and the aid in another hand but I was very aware of haves and have nots when I was growing up because of my Loreto education so I'm very grateful that I had that. So there was an awareness that everything wasn't right for me from well before I left high school. You said you went to Catholic school how long did that go through all the way through your graduation from high school? Yes I went to a Catholic school all my life until I got a scholarship to go to the United States actually then I was an AFS student for a year in Illinois and that was no Catholic school and I had a ball it was just such fun. What year was that that you were in the USA? It was 1963-64 and so I happened to be there when John F. Kennedy was assassinated I remember the day well as everybody who lived in the United States at that time did exactly where you were when you heard the news and so on because I thought he was wonderful. He was the first Catholic president you know I was so proud to be associated in some way and I was also there when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show so that puts it into a bit of perspective for people it was a big year it was a great year. By that point did you consider yourself liberal leaning in spite of your conservative family Joe? Not really no and I can remember when I came back from the States because this family that I was living with in Illinois you know the rural Illinois was pretty conservative as well and I got very interested in politics and I can remember reading Time magazine avidly you know for the first few years when I came back. So I don't think I was very liberal or left wing at that point at all just sort of sucking it all up you know and it wasn't until a little bit later that I realized hey American foreign policy has done some pretty awful things in Central and South America. And about the basis and so on in Australia I didn't at that point know that there was any implication in fact it was really all just getting going at about that point. So how did you make this journey from conservative Catholic upbringing to the kind of liberal presence that you became in the federal parliament here? Well I certainly worked in a way completely different from most of my allies because I went to university with a lot of the people who were by then ministers in the government so we were all sort of roughly the same age you know mid 40s late 40s 50s and so one guy he accused me he said you've come from a farming family. I know who you were handing out how to vote cards for in 1964 and I thought oh my goodness that was the national party very conservative. And so I was able to say well at least my journey I think Senator has been in a direction that I'm proud of you know from far right maybe to far left. On the other hand there are many ministers in this government who can I could say were student leaders and radical leaders in the Vietnam Moratorium Movement for example who were on the left and now they've gone to the right you know so what kind of a movement is that? So I was proud that I'd moved in the opposite direction from a lot of my colleagues in the parliament. So I think the Vietnam War was one thing which turned my mind to think about the repercussions of our foreign policy and what were we doing just slavishly following American foreign policy. That was the first example of it that was so clear. And then I think at about the same time when I went to the Vietnam marches in Australia I noticed these quakers and they were marshalling the crowds and keeping people in order. At that stage I was teaching very conservative I didn't want to be seen on the cameras because you might get to school on Monday and find yourself carpeted before the principal. And so I was always in the middle of the crowd not anywhere on the edges or out the front I wasn't an organizer in those marches at all but I learnt quite a lot by observing. And then I met a very special person and we got married in the Quaker meeting house but it was years this tussle would we have children or wouldn't we? And I think actually for me that was really the big thing because I by then was much more aware of the repercussions of our politics and we went travelling. That was the other thing I did quite a lot of travelling on my own and then with this new partner and we travelled for about three years and we saw so much overpopulation pollution and so on. And bad use of resources well I was becoming a greener without realising it. I thought the last thing the world needs is more people you know there are too many already for goodness sake. So we had to really think hard about whether we would go into this parenting thing or not and that was a six year discernment time. What year was your first daughter born? My first daughter Kate was born in 1979 so what actually got me going was I sort of made a decision of a deal with myself this is my own personal contract with me and that is work for social justice for peace and the environment until I drop dead. Then I can think about producing another couple of human beings to share this planet I just couldn't do it otherwise. I would feel like I was taking too much from planet earth without giving anything back. I'm giving two beautiful daughters to the planet but I mean I've got to make sure that we all tread relatively lightly on the planet you know that we don't have a huge ecological footprint that we're going to cause more damage than the good we can do. That's what you can do is try and balance up how much damage you're doing how much good you're trying to do. So I've gone into that on lots and lots of causes and had a few little wins along the way but I'll be in there lobbying and encouraging other people to take action encouraging people to really participate in the democracy that we've got it's all relative but you know it's the best of the many systems that are around. So this thing about having children and I thought I wouldn't be able to look my children in the eye unless I was doing the best I could aid to prevent nuclear war from happening and then be to work for social justice in a very positive way and see to work for the environment because I realized by even early 70s that actually were in big trouble about that time Club of Rome had come out with its report the Club of Rome which said you know in 30 years blah blah blah blah blah they've just done the 30 year review and what do we find it's all exactly as they said only a little bit worse. Now in the Quaker meeting at that time there were a few very wonderful older people and they fed me plenty of social justice material so from the time that I started with Quaker 72 until 79 that was a really good period of learning for me. Most of which was overseas but I was looking I knew what to look for then as I was traveling I was aware of the interconnection of all of these issues and the more I saw the more I realized that I had to make a commitment or I couldn't go into parenting just couldn't do it. So I've got two gorgeous daughters they're an absolute joy to me and I'm really thrilled to have that kind of extra dimension in my life. I mean there's nothing like it your kids are great teachers wonderful teachers so it's been a joy but it's also something that I feel very deeply as a responsibility to the planet as well as to those two individual children. Let me get this straight Joe you identified primarily as a Catholic I think in 1964 by 1972 you were attending Quaker meeting. What happened in between there when did you stop identifying as Catholic and why did you stop identifying as Catholic. Well now there's a story about Mexico so I did quite a bit of traveling when I was on my own I was traveling well with a couple of girlfriends and we went to Mexico. I found myself at the Shrine of Guadalupe which is a big basilica focused on Mary and the peasants literally crawl on their knees from the gates of this basilica. They get inside the basilica and they've taken with them if somebody in their family needs healing a little gold replica of an arm or a heart or a liver or a brain whichever part of the body needs healing. Now this is a great expense to their families I'm talking about people who are really poor and that was probably the first time I had seen a very crowded poor Catholic country and it really pulled me up short. I thought well you know what is all this most of my Protestant friends had always teased me and said well the Catholics always had the best place as their churches are always on top of the hill you know that kind of thing. Right that's when I really saw what they were on about you know the Catholic churches and institution is extraordinarily wealthy and very dominating dictatorial to its peasants. And about that time I mean it was you know I'd taken my Catholicism very seriously here I am at about the age of 20 absolutely virginal. I mean you know sounds pretty funny to young people now but there I am living out my Catholic ideals and suddenly see overpopulation you know. I think there's this Pope in Rome and he's telling these people that they can't use birth control. That really bothered me you know the poverty, the dictums about birth control and so on. Too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but there's too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but it's out of control. And it's a sing along. Too many people having too many babies got to love them babies very important part got to love them babies but there's too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but it's out of control trial. Too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but there's too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but it's out of control. At a mandate time on their hands hyperactive glands room to expand when they began begatting they begatting to excess. It's doing tactics prophylactic now we're in a mess because there's too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but there's too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but it's out of control. When Columbus sailed the ocean we were 400 million industrial revolution still under a billion. The Great Depression hit 2.1 billion now we're pushing a millennium six billion and counting civil wars rumbling refugees stumbling forest falling deserts creeping traffic crawling resources too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but there's too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but it's out of control. Once I lived in the city it was too big and noisy so I moved to the country to stop and smell the roses all my city friends join me and put up nice new houses now it's too big and noisy think I'll move to the country. Some say no no no no it's not the population it's consumption pollution unequal distribution I say that so but it's a simple equation. Times pollution equals no solution too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but there's too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but it's out of control. If you are a child welcome to the world this blue-green earth is your gift by birth may you rock to its rhythms may you sing its anthems and if you have babies please stop that too because there's too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but there's too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but it's out of control. Too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but there's too many people having too many babies got to love them babies but please stop that too. And this was just after Vatican 2 as well so there'd been a bit of an opening up but still not enough for what I was beginning to think so I just thought well I'll give the Catholic Church a break here and I did and I looked around and I didn't find any other Christian Church that was better or even as good as I thought the Catholic Church in terms of being aware of the poverty but I think dealing with it in rather a patronising way and making sure that there was a fit there. Making sure that there was a fair bit of conversion going in with it you know so it was not until 1972 that a friend of mine said I think you might like this Quaker meeting come along to a Quaker meeting with me so I went along to a Quaker meeting with her at the beginning of 1972 I kept going and she disappeared off into something else. So it was a case of really feeling at home straight away I loved the silence I loved the people and the lack of ritual was quite refreshing after all the ritual in the Catholic Church I just felt that it was something genuine. And these people seem to be really active way beyond their numbers what you would expect you know they were into this that and the other thing in this little community of Perth it's not a very big city so you pretty quickly figure out you know who's in the social justice movement who's in the peace movement and there they were and I was really inspired by that. So if I understand correctly Joe you got involved in motivated into social justice by your Catholic upbringing but then felt it didn't go far enough is that a fair way of saying it. Yeah I think that'd be fair that'd be that's a very good way of putting it and then once I did come into Quakers and we were actually married under the care of the meeting the meeting house that I still attend and deliberately chose to live a few blocks away from so I could walk there that's a lovely part of my life. But then I went or we went to London Yearly Meeting in 1974 and that was really quite an extraordinary experience there were 1200 Quakers and I'd never even been to a business meeting in Perth it was very new. Just asked as an attendant could we go along to Yearly Meeting in York because there we were and they said sure come along and there were 1200 people and a clerk who could pick up the sense of the meeting and all these silences in between I was so impressed it was a great way of doing business I thought. How did that compare to what you experienced as a senator the way of doing business did that really rank old dealing with the federal system here in Australia? Well that's pretty funny really because you start the day with the Lord's Prayer in the Senate and you know they don't really take that very seriously and so it's all very formal and there is a whole fat book of the rules of the Senate. Rules of engagement I used to call it and I looked at it and thought no why am I ever going to learn all those rules and regulations if I learn all of that I won't have time to do anything else. And as well as the written rules there are all the unwritten rules which are even more important you know all the conventions of the Senate you do this but you don't do that you know you wait for this and somebody else has to go first here. And so I just sort of blundered along really and in a few cases I made mistakes but I don't mind making mistakes you know a bit like you say with a friendly vote dances it's quite healthy and refreshing to make mistakes of course you learn a lot from them. And so I found it really stultifying it's one of the most adversarial workplaces you can imagine I think the legal profession and I've been in court a few times on civil disobedience charges. The legal profession is pretty intimidating as well but the Senate you can imagine walking in or by yourself no political colleagues it was pretty scary but I quite like a challenge so a way I went. You must have had some people to help support you to help muddle your way through the federal system did you have any particular allies did you have a big staff eventually? No not like senators in the United States the staff is three to three and a half people so really you don't get a lot of staff but we had lots of volunteers and I think that made a difference you know there were lots of people that we could call on in different areas particularly as the portfolios were expanding. We had to have somebody who could help us on this and somebody who could help us on that and that made a huge difference but the actual staff was four people at the most. And then we shared salaries and I put my money into the pool and we shared and we made it into five or six or sometimes seven but officially there are only ever four positions. The taxation department was quite challenged by us because we said we don't want to just spend something that's called the electoral allowance as well as a salary. The electoral allowance is meant to be just a little bit extra that goes into the senators or members pockets for things like you know bouquets of flowers a little old ladies who turn a hundred and that kind of thing. Well I said to the taxation commissioner I'm not going to be spending my money that I'm going to be spending it on educational materials and I'm the only one in the parliament doing this and this is a job I've been given by the people of Western Australia to do. I was elected to work on these issues so this is my obligation and we need to produce a lot of educational materials so we would like to put that money towards those educational purposes. I don't want to be taxed at the personal tax rate because I'm spending all of this money on community education and doing my job. Now is that okay and they said oh nobody's ever asked us that kind of question before so it was interesting. When I went into the parliament some people said oh so and so will be really good to help you know senator so and so is really strong on this issue or senator so and so is really strong on that issue and I found to my disappointment actually that most people hooked into their party political machine and they didn't really want to be allies very much at all and particularly in the case of the women I really expected there be some women solidarity. I mean we had a picture taken once you know all the women senators because there weren't very many at that time and there are a lot more now. The women senators and then women members of the House of Rep's and senators and you know we numbered about 20 out of the whole lot you know at that point and I thought there'd be a bit more solidarity but most of them to my disappointment were as entrenched in party politics as were the men and a couple were downright mean to me I'd have to say. But I did find that somebody from the Liberal Party which is the very conservative party and someone from the Labour Party found out when I had been declared a senator rather than a senator elect which I mean I knew I'd been elected on December the 1st 1984 because the numbers were all right. But it had to be actually declared by the electoral commission that didn't happen till mid January and then I didn't take up office until July the next year. So there were all those months no staff no salary but people think oh she's been elected great we can get her to do this this and this. So I was in that invidious position of being senator elect. Now what happened was very interesting is that one person senator from the Conservative side and one person from the Labour side within five minutes of each other and within about ten minutes of the poll being declared yes there's Joe Valentine as a senator they both rang and offered help. And I thought wow this is really something and I thought hmm are they going to expect favours back. If I take advantage of their kind offer of help to go in and use their offices and so on in the meantime when I didn't have an office they knew better than I did what I wouldn't have you see at that stage. And I thought then I'm going to be beholden to them they're going to be able to call favours back. So I rang them both back and said look thank you so much for your kind offer but no thank you and that was good. I thought that was good I felt that I had to keep myself a separate and a little bit distant so that I could be my own person and not beholden to anybody and I didn't go in there expecting to make friends with anybody. But I did find some colleagues on particular issues in cross party groups for example Amnesty International is a great group and we had a really active group of parliamentarians from all parties upper house and lower house. And that's because Amnesty International doesn't work on any domestic issues so there was no local point scoring that they could actually get if they were a good member of Amnesty International nobody really knew or cared because it was all about some foreign country you know or some political prisoners somewhere else. You never work on your own countries issues in Amnesty International which is one of its rules and it was founded by a Quaker. So that was a very good group to belong to actually very good group and then I was in the Christian Parliamentary Fellowship a lot of cross party groups. I joined them all because I thought this is a way to let other people see that I haven't got horns you know that I'm not totally out there and unable to be talked to or totally useless. I wanted people to see that there were points of contact because I believe that you work from your common points and gradually you might be able to influence someone. So I had a lot of colleagues in that sense people I could work with but I didn't really make good friends deliberately and you know there was always a point beyond which you know you sort of didn't go. I mean I didn't go out to one on one dinners with other senators and members it was always sort of in a group and always with a task in mind. But if there was a cocktail party sure I'd go along and I'd have an agenda and it was either I'd novel the Prime Minister because he was just going off to meet Ronald Reagan for example. So cocktail party okay Bob Hawk this is what I want you to say to Ronald Reagan. This is the list of things that I've been asked by my position here to ask you to represent to Ronald Reagan of course he wouldn't do it but I felt I had to say it to him you know. So I had a lot of fun actually finding opportunities to speak truth to power as I thought to say what I felt I had been elected to say. Knowing maybe that it would fall on deaf ears but also knowing that there was a possibility that it might reach somewhere sometime. For example the International World Court had a 10 year campaign to get nuclear weapons declared illegal. We worked on that with friends in New Zealand who put that forward and we couldn't get our foreign minister to agree to it and this was a labour foreign minister. He'd say well what if the 15 judges on the International Court of Justice say nuclear weapons are okay what if and we said no they're not going to. They just can't because these are weapons of mass destruction that won't happen. Believe us that won't happen so Australia should be in there really arguing for this case to be taken to the International Court of Justice. Well it didn't happen in my time but to my amazement a couple of years after I resigned. The government's policy did change. Australia went there. I heard the minister for foreign affairs making his speech and I thought this sounds really familiar and it was my words. It was using a lot of my arguments to say why Australia should be in there pushing for the International Court of Justice to come down with a verdict about the illegality of nuclear weapons. So you never know where things are going to end up. You don't go in there or I didn't go in there thinking I was going to make huge changes or have major successes and my friend Peter Jones a fellow Quaker who was my research officer for years used to keep reminding me we're called to be faithful not to be successful. You know we're called to make a witness to speak out what needs to be said or what we think people have asked us to speak in this place but you don't really expect to be heard. You mentioned earlier Joe that you had a couple small successes. Could you mention any of them? Well one was on Antarctica which was a lovely cause to work with environmental groups on. We were trying to get a ban on mining in Antarctica one of the last wilderness places on the planet. You know there's scientific exploration happening there and as one of our friends says look if you don't cooperate together in Antarctica you freeze separately. And I thought that was kind of a nice image you know we can cooperate globally about anything if we choose to and we've got an international postal service. It's a good case of cooperation we fly airplanes backwards and forwards around the world mostly without accidents we can cooperate if we want to. So in Antarctica we felt that this wilderness really needed to be preserved and so it was a great joy to work with environment groups on that issue. Now the governing labour party at that stage had not come down on a position they were about to go off to an international conference and we were saying well what's Australia's position going to be? I found a conservative senator who had been to Antarctica. Now anybody I know who's been to Antarctica and quite a few Australians have because we've got a base down there and you know we're quite close relatively speaking. But anybody who's been to Antarctica totally falls in love with it and they can't bear to think of it being despoiled. So here we have conservative senator who'd been to Antarctica. Now this was a person who'd been he considered me a real enemy. He'd been really saying she shouldn't be here and what does she know about this? You know I've got a lot of abuse in the Senate actually a lot of stuff was not very nice. And he was one of my chief provocateurs if you like. So I went to him this day and I said I know you've been to Antarctica this is coming up. You know has the Liberal Party got a position on Antarctica? And I said hey you know the Labor Party hasn't got a position on this yet. Here's an opportunity for you guys. So away he went he lobbied his conservative colleagues. He got them to make a position public on Antarctica before the governing Labor Party. And a day or two later I put up a matter of public importance which is a special debate that you can call for after question time in the Senate saying what we thought needed to be said on Antarctica. So actually I was responsible for the Liberal Party just about trumping the Labor Party with a policy on Antarctica. At the very last minute what do the Labor Party do but think oh well we can't let the Conservatives get in there before us. So by the time I put up the debate they had come to a position so move them along. And that meant that we could go to that international conference and argue very strongly for this 50 year ban on mining in Antarctica. Now that isn't really satisfactory but at that time that was a pretty good outcome. Are there any other victories that you'd like to speak about? I'd like to say that I put up several private members bills which created debate. They produced lobbying points for the community. One was about war toys being advertised on television particularly children's television where programs are designed around selling stuff. That we were trying to disengage children's programs from a lot of commercial advertising. And then another one was about conscientious objection to particular conflicts. This was after the first goal for in 1990-91 where we knew that there were Arab Muslim Australians in the armed forces who didn't really want to go to Iraq then. Probably didn't want to again later but it became a real talking point. And then somebody who went absent without leave from the Australian Defence Forces then knew he could come to our office and get a lot of support for the stand that he was taking. And another one was about paying for war taxes so we put up a private member's bill about a peace tax instead of 10% of your taxes generally going into the so called defence department. So things like that were useful lobbying points but of course a private member's bill doesn't actually get very far. You don't expect it to get through unless it's about something that everybody agreed to but it just forgot to legislate about. But that was useful work no doubt and I think the most useful work I did though was to be like a catalyst for community activism and encouraging people in the community to take action and giving them feedback about the petitions that they'd put in and helping people to feel that it was worth lobbying politicians. It's really important for people not to give up on the process. I think that while you were a senator you actually engaged in civil disobedience and went to jail. Yes that's true I think I've been arrested five or six times. Actually twice in one day in Belgium which was going overboard a little bit at the gates of NATO headquarters after a march from the Hague to Brussels. That was after I was a senator though that was more recently. But when I was a senator I was arrested several times for trespass for example at Pine Gap the big American base in the middle of Australia and I spent several days in jail a year or so after that. By then I was brave enough to take on the legal system by myself. I said no I don't need a lawyer so I went in there and represented myself and had quite a bit of fun doing that. Another case was here when I was arrested at Fremantle close to where we are now. I handcuffed myself to the rails of it warship as it was pulling in and it was a British warship actually with Prince Andrew on board. So it tied in very nicely with the people who said oh she's just anti-American. I've always said look I'm not anti-American I don't like their government's foreign policies but I have a great affinity with Americans and America. It was important not to just have a go at American warships you see. So this was a British warship possibly carrying nuclear weapons but they have this policy also of neither confirming nor denying whether they've got nuclear weapons on board. But Prince Andrew was on board and it was when he was still married to Fergie a blazing redhead and I had a bit more red here in those days myself. So the reporters had a bit of a field they said ah two redheads on the wolf one waiting for her prince and the other one getting arrested you see. So I handcuffed myself and had a placard which quoted Mount Baton. Another one was up at a uranium mine on Aboriginal country in the Northern Territory and I spent a week in jail in solidarity with the Mira people, the traditional owners of that land. And that was more recently too since I was not a senator anymore. [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] In all of this breaking of the law have you been supported by your political party, the Greens or the nuclear disarm party and by the Quaker meeting? Well I've certainly supported by whoever was around in politics at the time. I did have a letter from a Quaker actually saying not sure that you should be doing this. But mostly people were supportive I think. Not necessarily all that overtly I have to say. You know sometimes I've thought you know have wished for a little bit more support from the Quaker meeting I must say. But then you see I think the Quaker sometimes forget the tradition of people being in jail and dying in jail and being killed for their beliefs in the very very early days. So I wasn't doing anything nearly as dramatic and bold and brave as they were doing and my life was not at risk. You know generally speaking this is what I kept saying to people we have a privilege in this country because we can speak our mind generally without fear of being shot or left to rot in jail so shouldn't we be availing ourselves of that opportunity. In other countries people are literally dying for the privileges that we just take for granted. So sometimes I've wished for a little bit more support I guess from the Quaker meeting but I know that this is often the case that people who are out there in front a little bit perhaps make other Quakers feel a little bit uncomfortable. So that's okay I'm not happy about that but prepared to cop that if you like and of late I'm maybe I've quieted down a bit but here I am co-clarking a meeting so maybe I'm not doing my job as an activist quite well enough because I always used to think when I was in the parliament or as an activist if you're not attracting criticism hey what are you doing if you're too quiet or you're not bringing out the adversaries in some way or another you're letting everybody be too comfortable. We're here to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable maybe. It just so happens right after Ronald Reagan was elected that I did a trip to Europe I met a guy in Italy who asked me what I thought about that election and when I gave him my answer he said he thought it was ridiculous that Jimmy Carter had ever been elected and it made absolute sense that Ronald Reagan would be elected over him because Jimmy Carter was an honest person and you cannot be honest and effective in government. So you should never elect an honest person whatever their other morals are. How did you feel about your conflict of morals and maybe you could have gotten more done if only you'd been a little bit more duplicitous while you were in government. Well maybe I think that's a very sad comment but I understand it and you know he only lasted one term because he was a good man unfortunately. Well I wasn't ever tempted to be duplicitous I must say to do deals behind people's backs or to take bribes or anything like that I think people knew that they just weren't going to get anywhere suggesting anything like that to me. I was seen as being pretty straight I guess really and maybe to some extent not worth bothering about I mean what would people have bribed me about you know I couldn't deliver any favors really I was on the outer definitely on the outer which was a good place to be. Now I think that if you look at the Greens in West Germany for example where they got so strong and they were so big in numbers that they then became part of a coalition government then they were in big trouble because they had to take on some ministerial responsibilities. Joska Fischer had that terrible decision about whether to go with NATO into the Bosnian crisis for example it tore the German Greens apart. What could they do they couldn't please everybody or anybody really deep down about that if they really are committed to non-violence and yet could they stand aside and see the Kosovo's for example being ripped to shreds you know it was a very very difficult position. So I was very glad to be one person on the outer and not to be in a position where I had to make those really really difficult calls. Well Joe I really wish that I had another hour or two to interview you here there's so much that you've lived through and done and made a difference in this country. Are you thinking of me coming over and being a senator in the United States that would be wonderful. Well perish the thought no I considered getting out of politics a lot more carefully than I considered getting in getting in was a bit accidental. It just something that happened in 1984 I was the right person in the right place at the right time. A woman with a couple of young children appealed to people who are concerned about the nuclear annihilation possibilities and so on but getting out I planned it really carefully made sure there was a party in place and people who could take over and so on. I'm very glad I did it but I'm very glad to be out of it as well. Thank you for your work then and thank you for your continuing work. It's a pleasure mostly and thank you for your witness I love the way you're dancing the world together for peace. It's a wonderful way of expressing the peace testimony so I'm very grateful to you for doing that and I've enjoyed it enormously you being here. Thank you Joe. You've been listening to an interview with Joe Valentine who was the first Australian Green Party Senator. You can hear this program again via my website northernspiritradio.org where you'll also find a number of links and other information about this program. Music that has been featured in this program includes The Times They Are A Changing by Bob Dylan, Peace Is by Fred Small, Too Many People, also by Fred Small and Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around by Charlie King. The theme music for Spirit in Action is "I Have No Hands but Yours" by Carol Johnson. Thank you for listening. I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. You can email me at helpsmeet@usa.net. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. I have no higher call for you than this. To love and serve your neighbor, enjoy selflessness. To love and serve your neighbor, enjoy selflessness. Music (gentle music) [MUSIC PLAYING]