[Pil-pc-oceania] GetUp Poll - Put GM-free on the agenda

[permaculture at apollobay.org.au]

hi nick
welcome :)
have you signed a GM-free postcard yet?
or the online petition at GeneEthics.org (It's free to join GeneEthics and
get more info and materials)

This is such an important issue... please spread the word... please do some
campaigning in Mudgee (and all other areas you venture to), put up signs,
raise awareness, get people to sign the petitions and postcards.  Have a
market stall at whatever Mudgee market you have there and promote your
business while doing GM-free campaigning... and you've got the Great
Escapade bicycle ride going through and staying at Mudgee after APC9...
make sure that every bicycle rider is aware (and sign a postcard) 

Victoria and NSW have just lifted the ban on GM crops, do you know what
this means and what the implications of this are?

If you haven't seen the Future of Food, buy the DVD (Go to
TheFutureofFood.com ), and do a public screening of it to educate everyone
in Mudgee.
We must campaign everywhere and raise awareness.
The Press talk about GetUp volunteers being everywhere... well so are
GeneEthics volunteers... but there's also the concerned farmers network and
MAdGE (Mothers Against Genetic Engineering) and many other organisations,
businesses and individuals.

Cheers
Fern

PS. Deb, don't give up!!  It's such an important issue you must Continue
on!  Down here, I'm continuing campaigning no matter what... market stalls
every Saturday and Sunday, Future of Food screenings, signs and postcards
everywhere... Got the Otway Mountain Bike race and Forrest Festival coming
up soon.  Make sure you petition your local council to enforce a GM ban...
I was even considering promoting the issue in local council by running for
council in the upcoming bi-election... but then I thought about that
seriously.
    

Original Message:
-----------------
From: Nick Ritar nick at milkwood.net
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:26:06 +1100
To: pil-pc-oceania at lists.permacultureinternational.org,
marcus.westbury at gmail.com
Subject: Re: [Pil-pc-oceania] GetUp Poll - Put GM-free on the agenda


I have a friend who works for get-up. As far as I understand it they are a
generally left wing organisation who leverage the power of the internet to
amplify the voice of the general populace. Although they are politically
motivated they are very careful not to manipulate the results of their
surveys/petitions etc. They make every conceivable effort to ensure the
accuracy and accountability of all their data because they know if they were
caught fiddling the books they would be eaten alive by the press.

In the recent election getup's "How should I vote" website distributed over
100,000 how to vote cards, equating approximately 1% of eligible voters. Due
to the liberal/nationals boycotting the site and the fact that it is illegal
to distribute a How to Vote card that endorses a candidate without that
candidates permission NONE of the how to vote cards that getup provided
recommended the coalition. Therefore an "optimistic" interpretation is that
getup was responsible for a significant part of the swing away from the
coalition - which has to be a good thing.

I suspect that the reason GM was not offered up as an option in their poll
was that it was just not mentioned by enough respondents to their survey. I
highly doubt a conspiracy. Their logic for choosing the issues can be found
here http://www.getup.org.au/blogs/view.php?id=754

Cheers
Nick

PS: I'm new here :)


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