Celebrating A Year of Impact!

What a night! Our online event on Tuesday, celebrating A Year of Impact, was a fantastic conversation with over 600 people dialling in.

It was a great opportunity to reflect on what’s been achieved in this past year in Parliament, and hear directly from federal Independent MPs Dr Sophie Scamps, Kate Chaney, Dr Monique Ryan and Zoe Daniel. The wonderfully vibrant media personality Julia Zermiro did an outstanding job of MC-ing and moderating the event.

I wanted to share with you the key points from the presentation Simon and I gave at the event, explaining the why, the what and the how of what we do – and the future we’re looking forward to.

I’d love for you to consider joining us in making this future possible by becoming a recurring donor. We can’t do this without you.

Here goes!

Climate 200 was established back in 2019 by a group of Australians who were deeply concerned about the lack of political action on climate change, and almost daily corruption scandals. It appeared Australian politics was broken.

We thought: what if instead of trying to change the minds of politicians who didn’t care enough, we could change the politicians?

And so Climate 200’s mission was born: let’s help independent candidates who champion climate action and political integrity to win, and let’s change the political status quo.

The 2022 federal election was a watershed moment.

Community independents kick-started a democratic revival.

Together we made history: we helped a total of 23 community independent candidates run for election across the country; we successfully supported 11 independents to get elected: 7 for the first time and 4 existing independents to get re-elected.

How did we do this?

Climate 200 offered very targeted assistance to excellent campaigns. We don’t choose candidates, the community does. We support community campaigns who have successfully gone through the process of finding great community leaders and who have a plan to win.

We then help the groups with the best chance of success to fundraise, raise their media profile, and develop creative social media and advertising, as well as offer advice and introductions to suppliers to help strengthen their campaigns.

A lot has happened in the year since that historical election.

Independents helped pass the Climate Change Bill, which increased our national target for cutting emissions to at least 43% by 2030, and locked Australia’s net zero by 2050 goal into law. A few months later, they helped strengthen the Safeguard Mechanism, a policy compelling the country’s 215 biggest emitters to cut their pollution by 5% a year, and all new gas export projects to offset all of their emissions.

The Guardian described it as the “country’s most significant emissions reduction legislation in more than a decade”.

Four months after the new Parliament first sat, it passed legislation to establish a National Anti-Corruption Commission, inspired by the bill put forward by Independent MP Cathy McGowan in 2018, and continued by her successor Dr Helen Haines MP. Just this month, Australia’s new Anti-Corruption Commission finally opened its doors.

Meanwhile for Climate 200, we want to help this powerful movement for positive change, and we know there’s work to do.

The Coalition is still the biggest threat to climate action in Australia, and the Labor Party have continued to give the green light to coal and gas extraction.

If we want more ambitious action on climate change, integrity and gender equality, we need more community independents.

We’re here to support the growth of the movement: to help the amazing independent MPs working hard for positive change in Parliament, to help the community campaigns that came so close last time and want to try again, and to help new local groups who want their own pro-climate and pro-integrity independent leadership.

Community groups starting out for the first time have a long journey to build momentum for a successful campaign to win. In the seats where independent community campaigns have been successful at a federal level, community groups start an average of 10 months before election day.

Every other week we hear from a new community group looking for help to turbo charge their campaigns. We want to help them, but we need your support to do that.

Could you become a recurring donor to help us help this movement grow?

The next federal election could be as early as August next year. The time to act is now.

Thank you so much for all your support.

Best regards,
Byron Fay