United Tasmania Group
The United Tasmania Group ( UTG ) was the first "Green Party" worldwide, which was founded on March 23, 1972 in Hobart , the capital of Tasmania . The green movement in Australia grew out of the environmental campaigns in Tasmania. The United Tasmania Group was founded in 1972 during protests against the construction of dams of Lake Pedder established. Its first president was Richard Jones.
The United Tasmania Group was the forerunner of The Greens Tasmania , which was founded in 1990 and has the words World's first Green party in its logo on its website .
Founding occasion
The immediate reason for founding the United Tasmania Group was the construction of three dams on Lake Pedder to generate electrical energy in southwestern Tasmania. A Lake Pedder Action Committee was formed before the UTG party was founded in April 1971. Since the 1960s, environmental policy has only been pursued by various local groups in Tasmania that did not coordinate.
aims
The basic political principles of the UTG lay in a party built according to regional aspects, committed to the environment, history and culture and to the joint planning of economic and social life in Tasmania.
Furthermore, in its programmatic ideas, the UTG advocated the establishment of scientific institutes that were to investigate the resources on land and in the sea, for the establishment of farms for organic cultivation , for the preservation of traditional and development of sustainable fishing , investments in National parks , protection of natural areas and historical buildings as well as the development of environmentally friendly industries.
Lake Pedder Campaign
The Lake Pedder Action Committee was a group that opposed the government building the dam on Lake Pedder in southwestern Tasmania. She could not prevent the dam from being built, but achieved great notoriety in Tasmania and Australia. An environmental awareness developed that ultimately led to the establishment of the UTG. The Wilderness Society emerged from these experiences . This organization and other environmental protection organizations prevented the Franklin Dam from being built in the 1980s . This success was the most significant environmental achievement in Australian history.
In the campaign against the Lake Ledder Dam, the UTP was significantly involved with Bob Brown ; Brown was a member of the Australian Senate for the Australian Greens and its parliamentary chairman. He helped found the Tasmanian Wilderness Society in 1976 and became its director.
Since the 1990s, the Lake Pedder Restoration Committee (LPRC) has been trying to renaturate this reservoir.
Development and dissolution
The UTG put up candidates for the state elections in 1972 and 1976, but no candidate was elected to the parliaments. Bob Brown, one of the leading figures of the UGT, ran for the first time for the UTG for the Australian Senate in 1975. In the political disputes, other ecologically oriented organizations and forces such as the Wilderness Society since 1976 and the Australian Democrats since 1977 gained political power, while the UTG weakened and ceased its work on December 31, 1979. In the 1990s, the UTG was reformed for the Australian election and incorporated into the Tasmanian Greens as part of the Australian Green Party. Many former UTG members, including Bob Browns, became members of the Australian Greens .
Web links
- Website: The Greens Tasmania. The world's first green party
- The New 'Ethic' 1972. Statements by the United Tasmania Group
Individual evidence
- ↑ Website with logo and lettering: The Greens Tasmania. The World's first Green Party , accessed January 10, 2010
- ↑ a b Information on archives.tas.gov.au accessed on January 10, 2010
- ↑ History of the dam on lakepedder.org ( Memento of the original from August 27, 2012 on WebCite ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 10, 2010
- ↑ Lake Pedder & Franklin River Environmental Issues - Historical Summary ( Memento of the original from January 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed January 10, 2010
- ↑ Information on lakepedder.org , accessed January 10, 2010
