Update from Mark Ogge, Strategic Director at BZE

What a great week! Thanks to the people of Adelaide and Port Augusta for coming out in support of Repowering Port Augusta.

The Thursday night launch in Adelaide went really well. 130 people came, and there was a really positive response from the audience. We had a great meeting at Port Augusta on Saturday afternoon. Mayor Joy Baluch gave a really inspiring speech,  there was a turnout of about 70, and most of them stayed on after the meeting to form a Repower Port Augusta local group to build support in the community- which is a huge boost to the campaign.

 

The local state MP at Port Augusta, Dan van Holst Pellekaan was clearly keen to show he was supportive, emphasising that he has arranged a briefing for members of SA for Parliament by Doctors for the Environment and BZE on May 3.

We had a lot of media, that can be viewed on here . There was also a bunch of additional media, including Local ABC radio port Pirrie, the local paper the Transcontinental, the local TV station news, the main commercial radio station in Adelaide.

I also met with some union reps, including reps from the the coal mine and power stations, and will be meeting more next week when I am in Adelaide for the Parliamentary briefing.

We have an excellent alliance of groups in SA, including CLEAN, AYCC, The Conservation Council of SA and 100% Renewables, and have agreed on a general strategy of alliance building and broad community engagement, including some key tactics and time lines to get going on.

A big thanks to Hannah for setting up the excellent repowerportaugusta.org Website, media, following up with other organisations and doing a million other thinks organising that were a massive help. Dylan did a great job on the research, and thanks to all the other BZE volunteers and staff who helped in different ways. Agnes at Kish and Co did an fantastic job on the design of the plan and the flyer- including incorporating heaps of changes at the last minute, without getting grumpy- we couldn’t have done this without Kish and Co!!! And last but not least, Clean SA in particular did a huge amount of work organising the Port Augusta trip, and Dan Spencer from AYCC was a huge help with Adelaide.

Cheers, thanks for your support,

Mark