Jul 17, 2026 10 min read Green Urbanism

Civil disobedience, cultural diversity, and left populism's colonialism problem - latest news and articles

Can you believe my kid is 10 months old now!? He loves ball games

Hey all,

Here's another roundup of my recent publications, plus some upcoming events and other stuff I've been thinking about lately.

Welcome to new subscribers! For those who haven't completed it yet, I've been running a super-short, 2-question survey about what topics you're most interested in me writing about. Please take 20 seconds to let me know what you think I should focus on.

Based on roughly 90 survey responses so far, it seems like subscribers are most interested in hearing from me about radical activism and green politics, as well as degrowth living and racism/cultural commentary, with slightly less interest in reporting/analysis specifically about Queensland politics and about South-East Queensland local government affairs. Please email through more feedback if you have it!

Recent articles

I only just published this shorter article on Wednesday. I feel like it's one of the more important pieces I've written lately. Please share it with anyone you know who volunteers with a community organisation or who works as an elected representative – particularly any independent or Greens city councillors around the country.

I didn't share this piece on social media so you might've missed it, but I felt I had to write *something* about how little media coverage local government attracts, despite how much power it wields. It includes commentary on the ridiculous sums of money higher levels of government allocate to road widening at the behest of local councils.

Following on from the Stafford by-election in late May, I looked at the impacts and lessons from the Greens running an 'open ticket' – not explicitly recommending preferences towards any other particular political parties – and suggested the party might have more to gain than lose by distancing itself from the Labor party in terms of preference recommendations.

This piece takes a critical look at 'left populist' social democracy platforms that revolve around taxing the mega-rich. I think this is an important critique that parties like the Greens will have to engage seriously with at some point, otherwise all we're ultimately calling for is to redirect wealth from poorer countries to fund public services and infrastructure in Australia.

This article sparked a lot of commentary on my social media pages, and I think offers an important angle on current debates about multiculturalism. Maybe our first defence of 'cultural diversity' shouldn't be to default to shallower conversations about food and music...

That last article about cultural diversity also led to me being interviewed on ABC Radio. I thought the interviewers' questions were a little simplistic, and perhaps underestimated how open-minded and politically engaged her listeners are, but maybe it's true that most people don't think very deeply about this stuff.

One of my challenges with such conversations is that the questions are often based on premises and assumptions that I don’t necessarily agree with, or require a lot of additional context to answer properly – and there’s never enough time for all that extra nuance in a short interview. Still, I was very grateful for the opportunity.

Upcoming events

No Phones, No Phascists – Friday, 31 July

Our monthly free community event, No Phones, No Phascists, has been humming along joyfully, feeding dozens of people nutritious home-cooked meals, producing amazing artwork, platforming some great local musicians, and building stronger connections between Brisbane activists and artists. Our June event featured a timely discussion forum about the connections between fascism and transphobia, and our next event on 31 July will include a discussion about the dark side of artificial intelligence.

If you live in Brissie or are passing through, please come along and tell your friends!

Where: Understory – 30 Joachim St, Holland Park West
When: Friday, 31 July, 4pm to 8pm

Headline artists for July include the extremely talented soul/folk singer Rosa Mack, and Ipswich band Milly & the Maths Show, who describe themselves as playing folk, indie pop, alt-country and dreamscape art rock.

For more details, check out this event page, which will be updated monthly, and is also the best place to check for last-minute changes.

Casual soccer in HPW

This next event is perhaps a little too local/niche for some readers, but if anyone on Brisbane's south side is looking for an opportunity to stretch your legs and have some fun, we're starting up a recurring casual soccer game in Joachim St Park, Holland Park West, on Tuesday afternoons. We'll kick off at 4pm and play until sunset.

We're aiming for a super-casual vibe (barefoot encouraged – definitely no soccer boots with spikes) so even if you haven't played much sport before, you'll be very welcome to come have a kick, or just chill and hang out in the park. Facebook event here.

Other stuff

Housing is still a key untapped issue for resistance and collective organising

Despite a slight (but welcome) cooling of the residential property market, millions of Australians are still experiencing severe housing stress and precarity. The need to maintain a stable income to pay the rent/mortgage is perhaps one of the biggest handbrakes on more people getting involved in various kinds of activism, but there's still a major gap in direct action around housing justice – particularly in Queensland.

On the progressive side of politics, the advocacy space is crowded with reformist NGOs and pro-capitalism think-tanks, as well as charities and service providers who are great at documenting problems but generally ineffective at applying political pressure.

But I've been following with interest recent victories in other states – such as in WA, where it looks like the right-wing Labor government will be introducing rules against refusing to renew rental leases without a good reason (i.e. a ban on no-grounds evictions). And I'm increasingly feeling like now might be a good time for some stronger grassroots activism against evictions into homelessness and the persecution of rough sleepers. Flick me an email if you live around Brissie and you're interested in hearing more about this.

Don't give up on the fight to save Barrambin/Victoria Park

As I said in a social media post in early June, just because the fences have gone up around Barrambin in Brisbane's inner-north (where the LNP want to bulldoze most of the park to build new Olympic stadiums, and likely sell off some of the land to private developers) it's not too late to save the park.

Even if the stadium project does ultimately go ahead (which honestly isn't a sure thing given how quickly costs are blowing out), the more protest pressure the community maintains, the better the final design outcomes will be. The goal of protesting this kind of project shouldn't be seen as a "it's happening" vs "we stopped it" dichotomy. Civil disobedience activism against the new stadiums keeps government and private sector decision-makers on their toes, pushing back against the capitalist imperative to maximise profits and minimise public green space.

Now that the government is apparently trying to ban unionists from Olympics-related construction projects, I think there's a real possibility we could build towards a green ban boycott of the Olympic stadiums by targeting contractors and bringing workers on-side. A good starting target is Cox Architecture, who have won some of the contracts to design the new stadiums in Barrambin. If you know someone who works for Cox Architecture, ask them how they can justify working for a company that's profiting off the destruction of such a culturally significant Aboriginal site.

Contesting attacks on local public green space in Brisbane

I won't write a whole article about this, but social media followers might have seen me commenting on Brisbane City Council's attempts to concrete over green space within a mapped biodiversity corridor in a local park. The council has recently backed away from this plan after a solid local community campaign, but it reflects a broader pattern of cramming more active recreation facilities into supposedly-protected wildlife corridors because the LNP-led council has failed to create enough new public parkland to cater for population growth.

One reason the council cancelled its plans in Holland Park West was that the proposed new facilities represented a significant intensification in how the park would be used, which meets the City Plan 2014's definition of a Material Change of Use, thus requiring a development application (which adds a lot to cost and complexity). So if you're concerned about a particular council project in a park, double-check whether BCC has lodged a development application (feel free to email me if you have more questions about the technicalities of all this).

Content recommendations:

For those who've already worked your way through all my recent articles, here's some other stuff I've been getting into lately...

This article by Amy McQuire offers some important insights and context on One Nation's recent surge and far-right racism more generally.

This piece by Tim Hollo (Christine Milne's former chief of staff and the former director of the Green Institute) is a couple months old now, but offers a thought-provoking critique of the kind of left populism that various Green and Democratic Socialist political parties around the world have been orienting towards.

And of course as usual the Radio Reversal podcast continues to deliver some great commentary and analysis on the hot political topics of our time.

By the way, I've recommended it previously, but if you haven't already done so, you might also like to subscribe to the Brisbane Radical Events Diary, a weekly newsletter publicising upcoming activist events and protests in and around Brissie.

Ok that'll do for updates for this newsletter. Thanks as always to my paid subscribers, whose contributions help me find the time to write and organise (if you're on a free subscription but are now in a position where you can afford to pay for my writing, you can always upgrade via this link).

Please forward this email to anyone you know who might be interested in my writing. And don't be shy about saying hi if you see me out and about.

Warm regards,
Jonno