You have to make up your mind. Do Greens stop you from chopping down trees or do they actually chop trees down?

It always surprises and disappoints that, despite having the best policies of any party and despite our good record in parliament and in the community, according to comments on social media, a portion of our support base is alarmingly fragile and easily manipulated by lies from either Liberal or Labor.

Don't get me wrong. I welcome collaborative ideas, suggestions and sensible, constructive criticism. But it does seem to me that many are extremely quick to think negatively about and publicly criticise the Greens. In my experience such criticisms are usually either not true or simply misunderstandings or maybe people actually want to believe something negative about the Greens....So I guess that's being prejudiced...isn't it?

Which probably points to the fact that some critics are actually trolls from either side of politics and with trolls what can you do?

Some LABORAL voters want to do the right thing by the environment but don't like the Green's commitment to human rights, the arts, education and health. Unfortunately, to them, social justice is a foreign concept.





AND quite often much of the criticism comes from those who aren't actually joiners or participators  but tentatively vote Green while waiting in the wings for the party to slip up...no matter how minor the concern.

We're kind of damned if we do and damned if we don't. People say all sorts of mixed up things to me. For instance, only recently a family member asked,

'Why do the Greens have to be so left wing? They're so stupid! I mean, who gives a crap about gay marriage? Why don't they just focus on real issues like the environment?'. 

Mmmmm Please refer to my reference on social justice issues. ( Wish I had a series of placards so, each time someone asks, I could hold up the appropriate information...and save my breath! )




Yet others accuse us of being a single issue party and even of being too right wing. Apparently we're either too right wing, too left wing or too limited or not limited enough with our issues! Someone called us too right wing because we dared to vote for the Liberal's corporate tax transparency Bill and changes to the pension, which would ensure pay increases to the poor while cutting them to the rich. Again refer to my comment on social justice issues.

The recent Senate Voting Reform Bill has got people so muddled that even some Greens supporters are confused. Labor has spun such a clever, sinister web of lies and deceit, that many folk who don't really understand the voting reform, have been led to believe something that is utterly untrue. Well done Labor!

How do I know this? Here is some important information that will help you understand the facts.


1/
Senate Voting Reform has been Greens policy since the formation of our party. Bob Brown and Christine Milne brought the idea to the Party over 20 years ago. Of course we were going to vote for it when the time came!

2/
All three parties wanted Senate Voting Reform which had received bipartisan support for years. Both Liberal and Labor agreed that our voting structure must be changed in order to prevent the kind of rorting of the system we've seen so much of in the past few elections.

Such rorting involves the sudden emergence of fake parties and donkey candidates that exist simply to funnel preference votes to another party or candidate. That's not democratic!

https://theconversation.com/dirty-tricks-on-the-campaign-trail-16628

Deadly Serious Party
Headquarters	Australia
Ideology	joke party
International affiliation	None

Under this system of Senate preferencing... my deaf, wheelchair bound, 96 year old neighbour who is suffering from dementia could be nominated as a candidate by her scheming nephew. I love Mable but she's definitely not a feasible candidate for the Senate...although, when you look around the Senate you do wonder....Anyway.... Her nephew could then coerce her into signing a preference deal so that all those who vote for her would actually be voting for the I'm A Scheming Bastard Who Exploits My Old Sick Aunty Party. It's a way of tricking people to vote for you, by scooping up votes that don't actually belong to you, without them even knowing!

How is this possible? Well, these days, on the Senate voting form there are usually many, many candidates and also many parties. Sometimes you must number the candidate in your order of preference from one to ninety five. A daunting task.

However,  to make it easier for the poor voter before the Voting Reform was passed, there was also the option of voting ABOVE THE LINE. So if I wanted to vote for my sweet neighbour Mabel for the Senate, I could have just put a 1 in the box beside her name, above the line and the preference deal she'd unwittingly made with her charming nephew, would mean that, my vote would actually go to said nephew. Because Mabel might have only 1.5% of the overall vote, all her preferences would then go to her nephew, along with some others that said nephew had made a deal with too.

Sometimes, people like Ricky Muir from the Motoring Enthusiasts Party have been voted in on just 1.5% of the vote because they made a deal to share preferences with the Liberals or Labor or the I'm A Scheming Bastard Party. That's just 1.5% primary vote while some candidates who received many more votes, 15% direct primary vote, missed out due to such preference deals. That's not democratic!

AND it gets worse when you take into consideration the fact that people probably didn't know who the preferences were going to. So they could have been going to a candidate or party whose views were actually the opposite to theirs ....like the I'm A Scheming Bastard Party or the Knock Em Down And Shoot Em Party or The Ban All Wheelchairs Party. So the people who voted for Mabel, who obviously relies on her wheel chair to get around, could have unwittingly also voted to ban all wheelchairs! That's not democratic!

Most often preference deals had nothing at all to do with policies or issues but were simply a means to an end. To get elected! That's not democratic!

However, the Bill the Greens have been working toward for 20 years and have been fine tuning with both Labor and Liberal for at least ten years, has finally been passed and now when a voter votes above the line they must number six boxes in order of preference.

The changes won't mean the demise of so called micro parties but it will mean they'll have to gain a higher number of votes to get into the Senate! Sounds like true democracy to me! Good one Greens!
 
3/ 
The next important fact to remember is that this Voting Reform had bipartisan support from Greens, Liberals and Labor until about 2 weeks before the Bill was brought before the Senate...when suddenly Labor decided to dump the idea and to spread the lie that the Greens were making a deal with the Liberals. He he. What a joke....only it wasn't funny because many people believed their lie. This was pure wickedness on behalf of Labor and they've lost all respect from me as a consequence! The tiny glimmer of hope I felt toward Labor has been snuffed out by their unscrupulous political maneuverings.




It was a dirty ploy to sell a lie because Labor suddenly realized that if the Senate Voting Reform that had been their own policy for years was actually passed, then they might not win the election. Says something about preference deals doesn't it?

Of course the Greens have done NO DEAL with the Liberals and will preference the Liberals nowhere at all in the coming federal election. BUT GUESS WHO HAS ACTUALLY MADE A PREFERENCE DEAL WITH THE LIBERALS? You guessed it. The Labor Party themselves who  have hurled accusations at the Greens for the last 2 months and convinced so may that the Greens had sold out to the Liberals....have actually done exactly that!

What does that preference look like? On Labor HTV cards there'll be a one beside the Labor candidate and a two beside the Liberal candidate. How weird is that? 

But that's not all. Labor is very good at rewriting history to suit their own needs. Hell, Liberal and Labor are masters of the rewrite! 

The weird accusation that's regularly thrown at the Greens is that it's the Greens fault that we have no price on carbon today. YES, REALLY! Can you believe that? That the Greens who worked their butts off negotiating a price on carbon back in 2011, are accused of preventing a  price on carbon.

The curly logic that's applied to this argument is along the lines of: If the Greens had agreed to Kevin Rudd's CPRS (which would have locked in lower targets than we have now...for ten years or more) we would, today, have a price on carbon. How does that make any sense at all? They're saying that the Greens should have voted for ridiculously low carbon reduction targets...even lower than the present time....and somehow that would have assured us of success. Another ridiculous joke from Labor!

I suspect another problem for we Greens is that we pick up some tentative support from single issue campaigners such as anti-GM, animal rights, gay marriage, violence against women, child sex abuse, forests, refugee rights, indigenous rights, sustainable population and so on. It astounds me that people can be completely devoted to one important cause, while not giving a hoot about anything else. They can't understand why the Greens have comprehensive policies and actions in all areas of concern including renewable energy, economics, health, transport and education.

Gold Walkley award winner, Joanne McCarthy, who was instrumental in raising the issue of the child abuse scandal in the Church, recently wrote a disappointing article concerning people who ruin the 'ambience' in cafes by asking if the coffee is organic and fair trade. Is she a single issue journalist I wonder?

I'm always surprised and perplexed when I see yet another single interest party raise it's head; like The Sex Party, Hunters and Shooters Party and Car Enthusiasts Party. Australia must have more parties than any other country in the world.

 And then there are the branch off onto the twig parties ( Twig Parties is a good name for them ) like The Labour Coalition Party, the Nationals Bob Katter Party, the Liberals Clive Palmer Party and the Nick Bloody Xenothon Party among others. I can't wait for the Dancing On One Leg Camera Enthusiasts Party or the Curly Haired Crossed Eyed Tree Climbers Party. No, seriously, that's a thing! (No it's not but you believed me for a second, didn't you?)

The Greens are accused of being a single issue party yet we have comprehensive policies covering most issues. ( I only say most because someone, somewhere will point out something at sometime....)

We're charged with contradictory things like cutting trees down while stopping them from being cut down. Some blame us for bush fires because we're against burn offs, which of course is not true and we're not! Crazy baby! When will they realize that the Greens aren't actually in Government so can't be blamed for any legislation that causes a tree to be chopped down or otherwise...though it would be very unlikely for the Greens to vote for such an action unless it was a very bad weed variety of tree. Nevertheless, people find a way to blame the bloody Greenies.

Apparently we're spooky, new age, born again crystal worshiping, Godless heathens. I've been Catholic all my life and know some Greens candidates like Canberra's Lin Hatfield Dodd, who are actually elders in their churches.

 http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2013/08/27/3834302.htm

I guess, just like all the other parties, some of the criticism is true some of the time and in those instances, if the criticism falls within our four philosophical pillars of Social Justice, Peace and Non-Violence, Sustainable Environment and Grassroots Democracy, then the Greens are more than willing to re-group and re-think an issue.

I have however, found that most of the criticism is utterly unfounded...and that includes a few things I myself have taken issue with. If I do the research, get the facts and discuss it with someone, the issue is usually resolved.

Sometimes, with some of the social media criticisms, there is a fair amount of prejudice and ego involved. Well, more than a 'fair' amount. They make bullying statements and then accuse us of bullying if we dare to defend ourselves. 

And speaking of egos, a number of older gents (and sometimes younger ones too) have theories, quite often of the conspiracy variety, about a particular concern and then proceed to manipulate, connive, write, phone and weasel in order to get the Greens ( me and my comrades) to become their minions. (Code for bug eyed, crazy, egocentric, old, grumpy git wants Greens to work for him.) AND when the Greens (me) politely decline, suddenly, we are the devil in disguise and very much a part of THE conspiracy of whatever particular, old git theory he's fixating upon.




I take umbrage with the more patronising critics who say things like,  'I'm so glad the Greens are in parliament. You fight for good things but I could never vote for you because you've never been in Government.'



Yeah, so let's fix that and vote the Greens right smack bang into Government ASAP! Then you can vote for us for ETERNITY!

Is that what they're saying? That no matter what someone believes, no matter what's going on in the world ( refugee crisis, climate change, economic crisis ) and no matter how incompetent and power grabbing the Government proves to be, we should always keep voting them in (either Liberal or Labor) just because they've actually been in Government? Isn't that absurd? So no matter how good the Greens are and how qualified we are to run the country, we should never be voted in because we've never been in Government! How are we supposed to get experience if we aren't given the chance? And if we fail, then vote us out again! ( WE WON'T FAIL. )

Anyway, finishing now before I die of frustration!

Vote Green everyone. At the next Federal election, for the sake of this and future generations, turn Canberra GREEN!   http://renewaustralia.org.au/

Why the type of coffee you drink is crucial to fighting climate change and child labour.

Joanne McCarthy's article 'Enough Poppycock' in The Warrnambool Standard weekender Sat 2nd Jan 2016, lacks ethical insight. Does she seriously believe that by asking if the coffee is organic, the customer victimises the cafe proprietor, spoils the ambience and ruins everyone's day? Joanne is a Gold Walkley recipient, so by rights she should know better!

Here are some facts about the non-organic, non-fair trade coffee she chooses to imbibe amid the 'scent of sunscreen and coconut oil'.

Non-organic, sun coffee is responsible for the demise of great swathes of the world's rain forests and is therefore a huge contributor to climate change.  http://rainforests.mongabay.com/0811.htm

Shade grown, organic coffee ensures the preservation of (threatened) biodiversity within the rain forest and the survival of the forest itself, while either keeping the ecosystem pesticide and poison free or restoring a healthy balance.

http://www.fitfathers.com/costa-rica-discovering-the-finca-rosa-blanca-coffee-plantation-inn/

Coffee farmers in South America and Africa receive 7-10% of its retail price. When prices fall below costs, farmers struggle to feed their families or educate their children.

Child labour is common in the global coffee industry.

 Organic, fair trade coffee means a better life for all those people now and into the future by ensuring: adult only employment, fair wages and safe working conditions. It also helps to curb climate change.

Joanne McCarthy is either ignorant of the facts or her sense of justice doesn't extend beyond the victims of sexual abuse. If so, she should stick to the subject she understands or become better informed.

Every person should be asking important questions about their coffee. We should demand that all cafes do the right thing because our choices have real consequences.

I know it's an uphill battle as we have to face ignorance and a prejudicial backlash against so called Greenies (anyone who cares about fair trade/organic food...I wear the title proudly) and the fact that organic/fair trade is often more expensive than unsustainable chemical laden/exploitation food. Wouldn't it be great if all coffee/food that's grown with toxic chemicals, with unsustainable farming practices and with cheap labour and poor working conditions, were labelled 'Exploitation, chemical laden, unsustainable food' with pictures of children slaving and people wearing protective clothing. Imagine that! How many people would still buy it do you think?

Until the countries of the world unite to legislate for change in the way we grow, harvest and transport food, it will continue to be expensive. It would be fantastic if all countries legislated to ban any coffee that is not fair trade or organic or at least to make all the ecologically friendly and fair trade products we want to buy, much cheaper than those that are bad for us and bad for the Earth and all it's species. 

Unfortunately even the takeaway coffee cups are fraught with problems. Every time you use a non-biodegradable, single use plastic coffee cup and lid, you're doing yourself and the Earth damage. Yes, all coffee cups that are not biodegradable have a thin plastic coating both inside and out and the lids are just plain bad plastic. Read more about this serious issue in my previous blog.

http://lisa-green-owen.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/no-more-plastic-waste-you-can-make-it.html

There is a better choice of takeaway coffee cup but it is a tiny bit more expensive for the retailer. Hardly anything...and many of the best cafes are using them now. Of course it's much better to take your own re-usable cup or sit down, smell the roses and drink it from an old fashioned china cup. Yum!

Bon apetite!
Lisa Owen

My doubt in the men of the Church grew stronger than my faith in them.

To John Pavlovitz from Lisa Owen.

http://johnpavlovitz.com/2015/09/16/an-honest-tired-struggling-apostles-creed/#comment-30482  

I read with gratitude your human and soulful rewrite of  the Apostle’s Creed.

Soon I'll turn sixty and as this milestone draws near, I’ve made the momentous and heartbreaking decision to leave my Church.

Here I am the second last girl in the second row from the left. It was also my second year of school at St.Clement's, Bulleen. So many twos and later I'll be talking about the Second Vatican Council!

We borrowed the St.John's, Heidelberg supper rooms until our new school was built. Standing n the doorway was our one and only teacher for the first year of St.Clements. Though not much taller than me, she was force to be reckoned with. It was either 1961 or '62. There's that two again!

My life was all about being Catholic: Mass once a week, sometimes more; Catholic Primary School, Secondary School, Teacher’s College and then teaching in Catholic Schools. I also went on to become a business woman and activist and then, while running a Youth Mass Group playing rock music, writing our own prayers and improvising the Gospel. The oldies hated it but the church was always full of young people. I broke ranks by marrying a non-Catholic and adopted two Korean children who came to Mass with me every Sunday as well as going to Catholic schools.

My dedication to and faith in Catholicism was nourished by a devoted family, my parish community and inspirational nuns who shared with me their very well informed thoughts and ideas as well as the writings of the great philosophers and saints of the Church.

But the Church I was born into was about to face the most radical change of its 2,000 year history. The Second Vatican Council, which took place during the time of the sixties Peace Movement, brought with it the promise of a new, invigorated church, inspired by the influence of two visionaries. Pope John XX111 and Pope Paul V1 hoped to modernise Catholic teaching, giving it renewed impetus and meaning.

Recognising that the Peace Movement reflected an historic shift within our modern spiritual consciousness, the two Popes, John and Paul, determined to reassess the rigid culture and staunch teachings of the Catholic Church, hoping to move us toward a freer, more inclusive, more Christ-like and humane spirituality, while at the same time inspiring the world with Christ's core values of love, inclusion, acceptance, forgiveness and peace. These core values had inspired many of the Church's saints to bring love into the world and inspired an even greater number of ordinary folk to do good works of charity and compassion.

As my mother said at last year's Christmas dinner, our faith inspired us to support each other and to try to give solace and hope to those who were suffering. In a harsh world we provided a safe harbour of goodness and light, expecting nothing in return. Little did she know she was training me to become a Greenie!



One can see in this picture that these two inspired and saintly Popes, definitely had their work cut out for them!



Despite the overwhelming nature of the task of Vatican 2, when I was nine years old, many initiatives were being implemented in parish communities around the world. This is St.Clement of Rome Church, my family's parish in Bulleen. I was married in front of that alter and our daughter was Baptised there.

It was built according to the new Vatican 2 design in the round, physically manifesting a radical re-think of the experience of the Mass, with the congregation radiating in a circle out from the alter. The Cardinals of Vatican 2 wanted us to think of each other as the metaphorical body of Christ. The aim was to facilitate a move away from the falsely perceived  'magical' rite of the Mass and power structure of the Church's hierarchy, replacing it with an egalitarian, inclusive gathering 'around the table' of our spiritual 'family'.

 It was hoped that we would pray for and grow in love with each other as an intrinsic part of the spiritual mystery of the birth, death and resurrection of Christ. We were to become equal with the clergy which would lead to a raising of the status of the laity. I think part of the idea, was to relieve the clergy of much of the managerial, administration and 'non clerical' ministeries.

I was in awe of our magnificent new church, which is one of the most beautiful of it's kind anywhere in the world.

But that was over fifty years ago and though Vatican 2 made a promising start, the conservative 'Pharisees' in the Church soon began to react and finally put their collective foot down.

We used to joke that in this picture of the Vatican 2 Synod there are many dresses but no women. Both Popes had hoped to modernise the dress code and deal with the Church's horrendous gender inequality but unfortunately they failed on both counts.

Despite the foot stomping of the Church's conservative traditionalists, there was a brief flowering of freedom, debate and inclusion and during that short time, my faith grew strong and optimistic. For about twenty years, the church progressed harmoniously, or so it seemed to me, with greater laity participation in the Mass and in  the running of parishes. Women were invited to read scripture at Mass and to hand out the Eucharist.

Then suddenly, for reasons I don’t understand though I suspect it had something to do with power, the fear of losing it and the neurosis and emotional dysfunction within the culture of the Church, the hierarchy of the church performed an amazing back flip. It was a tremendous, collective, conservative knee jerk. To this day my father's knee is still jerking... which is very sad considering he was one of the early instigators of the push to raise the status of the laity within the Church. He even helped to start a group called The Redemptorist Lay Community.

Dad's explanation for, in my opinion, the Church's 'retreat from sanity' was that the gentle swell of openness within the church instigated by the Second Vatican Council grew into an out of control tidal wave of change, that had to be stopped.

So, just as this young adult in her twenties was being inspired by a bright new, spirit filled Church community, the old men in dresses decided to shift the goal posts! I felt betrayed and abandoned by both my father and my church.



The laity was still included in the saying of the Mass but we were warned not to discuss the issues of women priests, dying with dignity (euthanasia), same sex marriage, along with many other issues.

The very popular rite of Communal Penance was stopped and any criticism of the Church or it's teachings, frowned upon. This reaction became the pattern of the Church throughout my adult life. Each time the laity began to grow in 'power' (if you  could call it 'power' ) and with it perhaps a little less conservative, the men in charge (in dresses) would perform another collective knee jerk.

I loved these beautiful windows at St.Joseph's Church in the seaside city of Warrnambool, Victoria where David I came to live in 1982. There's that two again!

At certain times of the year, when the sun was at the right angle, they'd light up the church, revealing very human faces, some of whom looked authentically Middle Eastern. Installed in 1954 about eleven years before the Second Vatican Council, these world renowned lead light windows cost the good, hard working people of St.Joseph's Parish the enormous sum of two thousand pounds ( $40,000 in today's money). Those good people were steeped in the old rigid faith and valiantly resisted change when it reached their isolated shores. My father used to say, the Catholic Church is alive and well and living in Warrnambool. It was ironic that he rejoiced in that which drove me away!

Years later, my journey away from the Church reached a pivotal moment. We (the progressive minority) knew Church scholars had been working on our beloved rite for a number of years and, optimistically, we hoped that the language of the new Mass would be more gender inclusive…or even gender neutral. Alas, it was not to be. Instead, the language is now even more focused on a masculine God. The priests were not happy about the change but still they adopted it like good, frightened little robots.
.

Today, I’ve finally accepted that the Church is broken and I can’t fix it. I can’t even try to help fix it. I can’t even hope that it will ever be fixed…despite our magnanimous and inspirational new Pope Francis.

The Church is broken and my faith, or should say my faith i the church, is broken with it.

Maybe it's crazy to hold on to ones spiritual beliefs with absolute, incontrovertible assurance, although, my husband thinks I’m a little bit crazy (just enough to make me interesting). Most of us, if we're honest, have some doubt. We hang in there because our belief generally outweighs the doubt but in the end, I was worn down by the ever present men on high and the women who supported them and the culture of silent obedience (we could question some things but not expect anything to change...not until another Vatican Council...maybe Pope Francis will call one.).

My doubt in the men of the Church grew stronger than my faith in them and quite suddenly, it all seemed far too absurd and ridiculously obsolete. My daughter said that it had become embarrassing to sit beside me at Mass, because I'd sit on the pew, pulling faces, rolling my eyes and quietly groaning. It was an outward sign of my frustration, anger and sense of betrayal. Without any doubt I know that God would not want me to attend Mass, if it caused me such emotional discomfort.

The sex abuse scandals and the Church’s response to them and the consequent cataclysmic damage that’s been visited upon families and whole communities, was in the end enough to drive me away.

That and the fact that women are treated as lesser beings, not equal, not priestly, not credible. We were taught that Mary, Jesus' mother, had changed the status of Jewish women. Strange that 2,000 years later, there is little difference in the status of women in the Church.

I know we’re all broken. I know we’ve been taught that God is with us in our brokenness but to me, it didn’t look as though those priests, bishops and others who work so hard to maintain the organisation of the church, were in the slightest bit broken and certainly not as broken as the poor children who had their whole lives ruined…nor the families who had been torn apart…nor the communities in remote areas who were decimated by alcohol, drugs, mental illness and suicide. Where was the God of the Church for those people? In the hearts and minds of the victims, the Catholic God had become the embodiment of the devil itself.

I could relate to your version of the Creed, with one exception. You referred to God as ‘He’. We’ve been taught that God is neither male nor female, yet still we refer to God as ‘He'. I believe that until this one seemingly small thing changes, nothing else will. So, just to stir the pot and hopefully make a point, I always refer to God as 'She'.

Now I spend nearly all my time trying, with others, to help save God’s Earth from human destruction. Our beautiful planet may well be the only one in the entire universe brimming with billions of complex and diverse life forms. And so, knowing this, what do human beings do? They continue to wantonly destroy it!

I organise, I write, I meet and I fight the devastation of mining, urbanisation, industrialisation, deforestation, corporatisation, greed, exploitation, factory farming, pollution and waste. I fight for human rights and the rights of all species to exist on a healthy planet. I believe I'm doing what God asks every one of us to do.



Along the way, this determination lead me to realise that unless we change our human laws, we'll never save our only home, the Earth. So, about thirteen years ago I joined the Australian Greens. Though many Greens don't believe in God, I know they're the only political party and global political movement, trying to save Her creation.

As Greens we work to change Australian legislation and to win Government in order to stop our country from persecuting refugees and to fight for the rights of all human beings and all other species. The four tenets upon which we base all our policies are:

Grassroots Democracy
Peace and Non Violence
Social Justice
A Sustainable Environment

The Greens are the only consistently ethical, global political organisation with credible and sustainable human rights and environmental policies.

Thank you for speaking my thoughts and feelings in your version of the Apostle’s Creed. The words  resonated deep in my soul.

‘May God hold you in the palm of Her hand.’

Lisa Owen
Warrnambool, Australia

Hello. I'm the Growling Grass Frog.

It's hard to believe that these beautiful animals may soon be lost to us and to the Earth. 

The Growling Grass Frog is a permanent resident of the Merri Wetlands near Warrnambool in Victoria, while others visit for a holiday once a year.

The Merri Wetlands Protection Group is a tiny group of local people who fight to stop the industrialisation of this important ecosystem.

With this aim we went to VCAT (civil court) but now we must pay legal fees. That's why we need your help.

Please donate whatever you can.
It's easy to give on-line on the My Cause site but cheaper for us if you directly deposit into the bank account that is listed on the site.

With much gratitude and love,
Lisa Owen
On behalf of the Merri Wetalnd Protection Group
https://www.mycause.com.au/page/108897/help-us-pay-court-costs-to-protect-our-merri-wetland