Debating the Green New Deal in Australia: Labour, Nature and the Role of the State

Department of Political Economy Seminar

Debating the Green New Deal in Australia: Labour, Nature and the Role of the State 

Speakers: Natasha Heenan and Anna Sturman

When: 12-1.30pm, Tuesday 3 March, 2020

Where: Social Sciences Building Room 341, University of Sydney

Abstract: This seminar will consider the theoretical and political questions provoked by discussions of a Green New Deal (GND) for Australia. It will consider the key debates and critiques that have surfaced since the topic of a GND for Australia reemerged in early 2019, including:

• Labour and environmental struggles for climate justice;
• The nature of work and how best to facilitate programs of regenerative labour i.e. via a job guarantee or universal basic income; 
• The role of the state in achieving transformative change; and 
• Strategies for mobilising engagement with and support for a GND i.e. electoral vs organising strategies.

About the speakers: Tash Heenan & Anna Sturman are two halves of one academic brain. They are both PhD candidates in the Department of Political Economy at the University of Sydney and founding members of the Climate Justice Collective (CJC). Tash is a unionist researching the relationship between labour and environmental struggles in Australia, and the political economy of climate change. Anna also researches the political economy of climate change, with a focus on the valuation of nature in capitalist agriculture and state theory in the context of transformative change.