Australians need to become more radical and learn how to protest

As women get older they realise you don’t change the world by writing letters - you’ve got to blow up the status quo. Whereas men get more conservative. Here’s why.

As women grow older they realise they need to take tougher action to make their point. Picture: Lukas Coch

Feminist Goria Steinem once observed that women grow more radical as they age, men more conservative.

The thought being, that many women, as they age, realise the system has not worked for them. That it is stacked. That they have worked all their lives raising children and grandchildren, cared for ageing parents and many others, and are left powerless with … not much. Therefore, they believe in challenging the system and blowing up the status quo.

On the other hand, many men find the system has worked quite nicely for them – they’ve worked hard and have a tidy little super pile to retire on. Any challenge to the status quo feels like treachery.

A female protester outside Parliament House in Canberra. “Women get feistier as they get older”. Picture: Lukas Coch

Thinking of this, I’m reminded of the many older women and grandmothers I know who have taken unapologetically to protesting and fighting injustices.

“Asking nicely for something, setting out a convincing case, writing a letter to the minister, talking logic does not always work in today’s world,” one said. “You need to fight and fight tough.”

They cottoned on to what social reformer Frederick Douglass did in 1857: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

Maybe it’s the youngest child in me, but I love the smell of a good protest in the morning (after coffee, of course) and, if needed, civil disobedience when a government acts contrary to public interests.

The right of citizens not to support “bad laws” is an essential part of democracy. In 2017 the High Court accepted that peaceful protest is a legitimate part of Australia’s representative democracy.

Former Australian politician and environmentalist Dr Bob Brown is planning a convoy to protest against the Adani coal mine. Picture: Jeremy Ng

This leads us to Bob Brown, veteran environmentalist and former Australian senator, who, at 74, obviously did not get the men-grow-more-conservative memo.

When I last spoke to Canadian scientist David Suzuki he called Brown a “global treasure, a man of great conviction and integrity”. If you think he’s stopped fighting to protect the planet since retiring from politics, you don’t know him.

Brown is planning a convoy. To peacefully protest the proposed giant Adani coal mine, his foundation is planning a road convoy travelling from Hobart to Bowen starting April 17, snaking through Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane on its way north.

“The decision-making process on the Adani mine is no less murky or corruptible than that for the Murray-Darling,” he has said. “The option of doing nothing is not on.’’

French farmers drive their trucks on the highway near Strasbourg, eastern France during a demonstration against high fuel prices in 2000.

Have a guess who else is against the Adani mine and development of the Galilee Basin? Those well-known radical, latte-sipping, inner-city, mung-bean-eating eco-warriors – farmers! Farmers for Climate Action (farmersforclimateaction.org.au/) are urging the state and federal governments to reject Adani’s Groundwater Dependent Ecosytem Management Plan.

Every day as we wake up to less farmland and more mouths to feed, protecting Australia’s groundwater makes perfect sense to these people, at the front line of climate adaption.

We’re nowhere near radical enough in Australia. We don’t protest enough. Especially the rural sector. Mostly they are too exhausted. They need to take tips from French farmers who really know how to protest – dumping manure on the Champs-Élysées – who don’t ask nicely and have enjoyed iron-clad farmer subsidies. French farmers know the power of the protest, as an essential part of democracy.

When school students across Australia took a day off to protest for climate action, Resources Minister Matt Canavan said they should stay at school and learn how to build coal mines instead. It’s a trend.

A demonstration against the Franklin River dam in Tasmania lead by Bob Brown in 1981.

Brown’s getting himself a convoy. I know nurses and doctors and retirees and small-business owners and farmers planning to take time off to join it if needed.

As one woman said: “ … taking leave from my professional role as an intensive care nurse if it comes to this. No life on a dead planet.” Of course, Adani backers will slam any protest, predictably warning: “Here come those uppity southern science-believin’ elites to tell us Queensland yokels what to do”.

When people like Brown first tried to stop the hydro-electric scheme on Tasmania’s magnificent Franklin River, they were told it was a “lost cause”.

It became one of the largest conservation battles of its time in Australia and ultimately the environment won.

Bob Brown believes this Adani road convoy will be bigger than that. All in the rocky run-up to the federal election.

Now, won’t that be something?

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