Did you know that your tax dollars are currently paying polluters to pollute?

A carbon price is part of a vitally important process of turning that around - making sure that the big polluters pay for their pollution and some of that money comes back to you to help build a cleaner, healthier, happier community. A carbon price, teamed with policies like a feed-in tariff, means we can drive investment towards the solar future while making sure that governments have the funds to help people struggling to make ends meet.

This summer we've seen a terrible warning of what climate change-fuelled disruption will look like.

With scientific projections of more frequent and severe droughts, floods, fires and storms already coming true, climate change will not only drive prices for food, water and insurance through the roof, but it will risk the lives and livelihoods of millions of people around the globe including here in Australia. We cannot simply sit back and let that happen.

To prevent the climate crisis, we need to transform our economy away from the dead end of coal to the exciting opportunities of baseload solar and other renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. We need to redesign our cities around people instead of cars. We need to protect our magnificent forest carbon stores.

All that activity will stimulate our economy. It will create jobs and investment in new industries, many of which need the same skills that people in the coal sector already have.

Economists around the world agree with the Greens and the government that it is economically sensible to use a carbon price and a suite of industry policies to drive that job-creating transformation.

And they agree that Tony Abbott's policies would be far more expensive, far less successful and only end up costing us all more in taxes or reduced services. The scare campaign is economic nonsense.

What most people don't realise is that, far from supporting the transition to a solar economy, our governments are handing billions of dollars of your money every year to the companies digging up, selling and burning coal, oil and gas - companies already making multi-billion dollar profits out of polluting our planet.

A carbon price is an important part of turning that around, as is a feed-in tariff to see baseload solar power plants built, as is an energy efficiency target scheme, as is cutting subsidies like the one that means that the trucks digging coal out of the ground don't pay the fuel excise that you and every other motorist does when you fill up at the bowser when taking the kids to school or doing the shopping.

When we go to the supermarket, most of us want to buy the healthier or greener options available, but we think twice if they are more expensive. The same goes for industry and investors - they currently use coal because it is the cheapest alternative.

But coal is only cheaper than renewables because we don't factor in the impacts on all of us of its air pollution and of climate change. We don't factor in the costs of childhood asthma. We ignore the fact that food and water will become hugely more expensive if we let climate change happen.

A carbon price, teamed with industry policies, will mean that, when industry and investors make choices - coal or solar, a petrol car fleet or new electric vehicles - they will now see clean options as the cheaper alternative.

Now: A carbon price will make some things more expensive - we must not shy away from that fact.

But the great thing is that we can compensate people for the impacts of a carbon price, handing money back to people struggling to make ends meet to help them put food on the table and buy shoes for their kids while still encouraging everyone to buy less polluting goods and services. Instead of us paying the big polluters with billion dollar subsidies, the polluters will pay you.

And the Greens, the government and the Independents are all 100 per cent committed to making that happen.

We can compensate people for the impacts of a carbon price. But we cannot compensate anyone for the impacts of climate change.

Tony Abbott thinks he can raise a people's revolt to stop this sensible policy change from happening. But everywhere I travel around Australia, I hear from people worrying about what future they are leaving their children and grandchildren and desperate for this exciting change.

As a nation, we are smart enough and mature enough to put our children's future first, reject the scare campaign and embrace this exciting future.

Women have made some pretty incredible gains in the 21 years since Carmen Lawrence became the first woman premier in Australia.

Since then there have been women premiers in every state except South Australia (it seems that, for Mike Rann, no women are eligible for promotion in his boys-club cabinet) and we have women leading Queensland, NSW and Tasmania, along with women as Prime Minister and Governor-General.

There is, however, a pattern emerging when it comes to the promotion of women in politics. It seems in Australia when governments are facing electoral oblivion, they turn to women to lead them from the abyss (perhaps in politics, like the household, it still takes a woman to clean up the mess the boys have left behind).

Lawrence was doomed in Western Australia, Joan Kirner's premiership was dead in the water almost as soon as it began and Kristina Keneally is head of the most dysfunctional and electorally unpopular government in recent memory. The fact that Kennelly continues to get up day after day and sell her party's message is a credit to her. Even Julia Gillard was elevated to the prime ministership only when her party was on the brink of defeat.

It's not unusual for there to be blood on the floor when a political party changes its leadership team, but the fact that few women have been given the opportunity to lead their party from opposition to government means they are all too often seen as illegitimate by the electorate or distracted by internal issues.

If women in politics are going to be given the chance to succeed, they need to be given the chance to take leadership when times are good, as well as bad.
But we can't assume that women in leadership will automatically mean women's policy will be front and centre. For instance, superannuation is still not included in the paid parental leave scheme of a government headed by a woman. It's great to see women leading government, but we still give men the key to the treasury coffers.

There is also a different narrative that characterises women in leadership. In the past fortnight, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has referred to the Prime Minister as "Lady MacBeth" and urged her "to make an honest woman of herself". Gillard has had to fend off criticism about the size of her earlobes, her dress sense and her marital status - not to mention being verballed by radio shock-jocks.

The idea that Alan Jones refers to the Prime Minister as "Julia" or "Ju-Liar" shows he has no respect for the office she holds. Would he have the done the same to John Howard? I think not.
The fact that any of these things are considered fair game, speaks volumes about the disparity that still exists between reporting men and women in politics. When it comes to true equality, we still have some way to go.

This blog was first published on the National Times online on Tuesday, 8 March 2011.

It's time the two main parties told us what they really stand for.

The idea of a carbon tax has Tony Abbott's speedos in a knot. The Opposition Leader has been rabidly calling for a people's revolution to bring down the Government.

But as the flop of Mr Abbott's dismal 200-person-strong "People's Revolt" in Melbourne on Saturday starkly demonstrated (when compared with the 8000 people rallying on the other side of town in support of the tax), hysteria and mouth-frothing doesn't always muster the troops.

While so many people of the Middle East are showing remarkable courage in striving to overthrow despotic regimes, in Australia we have a political leader hijacking their spirit over a policy designed to secure the future of our economy and environment.

This lack of perspective and proportion is characteristic of the Abbott-led Liberal Party; an organisation that is increasingly being run by extremists. Moderate voices are being gagged by those singing from the One Nation hymn book.

Just like in the United States where the Tea Party is transforming the Republicans into a fringe protest movement leading mass revolt against wickedness such as universal health care (oh dear - providing health care to people who can't afford it, what next?), the conservatives are becoming preoccupied with stoking community fear and resentment of any progressive reform. Using over-blown and hysterical rhetoric is their stock in trade. One frontbencher absurdly compared our Prime Minister to the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi.

Abbott's hysteria isn't limited to pricing carbon; we've also seen him and his immigration spokesman beating the anti-immigration drum for some time now.

The impact that this new hyperbole is having on Australian politics is disturbing. When new ideas are met with not educated critique, but frenzied threats that the sky will fall in, normally weak-kneed politicians become even more timid (just look at the policy paralysis of Labor in government). It also lowers the tone of public debate to the point where even more extreme and dangerous ideas can become legitimised.

It is here that Pauline Hanson's return to the political stage is a worry. This ghost from a dark chapter in Australian political history has nominated for the NSW Upper House. Just as she was able to exploit ignorance and fear in 1996, the times could suit her again in 2011. Abbott and Morrison haven't just laid the foundations for her return, they've rolled out the red carpet.

Abbott and his attack dogs need to take some responsibility for the ugliness that is once again seeping into Australian politics. Rigorous debate is crucial to any democracy. But threatening to burn the house down when you don't get your own way, isn't what democracy is about. The result of last year's election was an indictment on both major parties and a sign that Australians want an end to politics as usual. Instead, all we've seen from the Opposition is hyper-partisanship.

The challenge for the Gillard Government is to rise above the base politics of the Opposition and lead a progressive public agenda. They must reject Abbott's scaremongering on asylum-seekers and carbon pricing, and refuse to legitimise it. It's time for common sense that puts the future prosperity of our great country front and centre.

For both the Government and the Opposition, it's time to show what they actually stand for, rather than just what they are against and start considering the best interests of the nation they aspire to lead.

 This was first published on the National Times on Tuesday, 15 March.

The Australian Greens MPs team will expand to ten on July 1.

With this in mind, and with web technologies eveolving at a rapid pace, we're seeking tenders for a comprehensive redevelopment of this website.

If your company would like to submit a proposal, please contact our Digital Communications Coordinator at webeditor@greensmps.org.au to receive the tender documents.

Having spent months inciting a people's revolt, Tony Abbott needs to take responsibility for the revolting tactics of his ''revolutionaries''.

Like many Australians, I was stunned to see the Leader of the Opposition and his some of his frontbench colleagues standing in front of a placard referring to the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, as ''Bob Brown's bitch''. It defies belief that none of them read this sign before standing in front of it.

However, Mr Abbott's response to the abusive chants of ''ditch the bitch'' from protesters was far more disturbing. Rather than seeking to calm the crowd or reminding them that this language was inappropriate, Mr Abbott seemed to be lapping it up.

Advertisement: Story continues below As the one holding the microphone, he could have intervened, but didn't. Instead, he and his frontbench colleagues set the tone, with Barnaby Joyce chanting hysterically that the Prime Minister ''lied to you''.

Abbott described the crowd as ''fine Australians'' and ''a representative snapshot of middle Australia''.

Here, I think the Leader of the Opposition was seeing what he wanted to see. The crowd represented the extreme right of politics and was out of step with mainstream Australia. One Nation founder Pauline Hanson was there, along with members of other fringe movements such as the Climate Change Sceptics and League of Rights.

That Mr Abbott perceives these as representative is further evidence of his political extremism.

These people, of course, have the right to protest, even to insult the people they are trying to lobby. But this behaviour is not becoming of an alternative prime minister. Mr Abbott's decision to not only indulge these sentiments, but actively encourage them, demonstrates how out of touch he is. While I was no supporter of former prime minister John Howard, it must be said it's hard to imagine him displaying such a grave error of judgment.

As always seems the case with the Coalition under Tony Abbott's leadership, he and his colleagues were bemused by the public outcry that followed the protest. It was only once it appeared the rally had backfired that they tried to retreat. Of course, there was no sorry, no responsibility taken for encouraging this kind of extremism, rather just regret that some of the protesters had not behaved appropriately.

When it comes to firing from the hip, then seeking to take it back, this bloke has form. It's time for him to stop offending in the first place.

I've heard some commentators suggest that Mr Abbott should never have turned up at the rally. Having instigated it, I suppose he had little choice - but he has to take responsibility for what occurred. Instead, he's behaving like the bratty teenager who throws a party, invites his hardcore mates and then tries to excuse them as gatecrashers to Mum and Dad when they trash the house. I think the electorate can see through this Corey (that smart-arse teenage with the glasses) defence.

Rather than appealing to the extreme fringe of Australian politics, Mr Abbott needs to start focusing on the broader needs of the Australian community. He is the alternative prime minister, after all.

This blog was first published on the National Times on Tuesday, 29 March.