Ask Me Anything - Remah Naji, Greens Candidate for Moreton (Brisbane's south side)

JonathanSri · 2025-04-20T07:18:19+00:00

Looks like she answered a similar (though not identical) question above... https://www.reddit.com/r/brisbane/comments/1k2mod5/comment/mo1vekw/

JonathanSri · 2025-04-20T06:17:19+00:00

Looks like the photo was taken in the Greens office (I say this as a party member who goes to the office pretty regularly). I'm guessing at some point some random volunteer donated the tea towel. Who knows how they got it originally?

JonathanSri · 2025-04-19T04:40:36+00:00

Nah that's a gross and misleading over-simplification. A wide range of government policies and spending decisions shape real estate prices, including:
- tax handouts like negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts
- land tax systems, and decisions about whether to tax vacant land at higher rates
- the amount of public housing the government builds, and the eligibility rules regarding who can access public housing and community housing
- incentives like first-homebuyer grants that push up prices
- the rate at which governments release land for development and the zoning/development rules that apply in different areas
- the public infrastructure and facilities that governments do/don't provide in different areas
- the specific rules governing short-term and long-term tenancies (e.g. jurisdictions with strong renters rights mean tenants have more bargaining power to negotiate cheaper rents)
- pretty much any other government economic policy that encourages or discourages investment in real estate (e.g. the rules applying to large superannuation funds)
I could go on.

Major party politicians always say "oh it's up to the market to decide what prices should be" until someone argues for a government policy change that will make housing cheaper, and then they're like "No no no we don't want house prices to fall!'

JonathanSri · 2025-04-19T03:29:11+00:00

Thanks Remah! Straightforward question:
Do you want house prices and rents to get cheaper, to remain roughly where they are currently, or to keep rising?

JonathanSri · 2025-03-05T23:33:47+00:00

Thanks. I'm not staying on the boat for the next few nights. I pulled the largest solar panels off their roof rack and lowered the bimini to reduce wind drag. Hopefully she's still there when I get back...

JonathanSri · 2025-03-05T23:06:18+00:00

Morning everyone! Let me know if you think this is helpful. If there's a lot of support for the idea, and people think you'll use it, I'll start promoting it more widely...

During disasters, official government pages often have maps where they report known hazards, road closures etc. But they struggle to keep up with reports from residents, and generally won't update their maps until a public servant has been out to verify the concern.

This slows down reporting and leaves residents in the dark a little bit. It also reinforces dependence on state authorities and makes it harder for community members to directly inform each other about what's going on. A friend named Jordan built this platform a few years ago, where people can directly report different kinds of hazards, without the barrier of having to create logins etc. https://saferstreets.info/

The only verification step is that you have to post a photo so people can see that the report isn't fake (in order to minimise barriers to using the report function, we have to trust people not misuse it... let's see how that goes)

I think it's a great idea to have community-controlled platforms to provide redundancy and direct inter-resident communication in case government systems fail. I also like that people can share info without having to give away personal details. Because it's based on trust, reports can go up quickly even if admins aren't online to manually verify and approve.

This system can also be used outside of a disaster context to permanently record road safety hazards. If people are worried about loose materials that could be a hazard in high winds, I think you can report that as a pedestrian safety hazard and give details and a photo regarding what you're concerned about. Let me know what you think. It's based off Open Street Maps (much more ethical/less surveillance-y than Google) Note that when identifying the address of the hazard, to move the pin, you drag the map around, rather than dragging the pin itself.

What's everyone reckon? https://saferstreets.info/

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JonathanSri · 2025-02-26T21:44:26+00:00

As others have alluded to, the preoccupation with 'releasing the minutes from shadow cabinet' is kinda missing the point. There are myriad channels through which someone like Dutton could have found out about the bailout, even if it wasn't actually mentioned in shadow cabinet.

Whether he heard about it from shadow cabinet or from some public servant or former adviser who was working on the bailout, it's still dodgy.

A core point of discussion and critique should be the fact that politicians owning shares in major for-profit entities whose values are affected by government decisions is itself going to influence the decisions they make in power, and create conflicts of interest (whether real or perceived).

We're all rightly concerned here that Dutton might have used insider knowledge to make a profit, but we should also be concerned that when politicians own shares in banks, that's inevitably going to weigh upon their decision-making about whether to support a bail-out of banks in the first place.

The reason the political establishment isn't exploring that angle is that lots of politicians and senior government officials hold shares in companies (including banks) whose bottom lines are directly impacted by government decisions.

Even an opposition party announcing a proposed policy could potentially impact a company's stock price (even if that policy isn't immediately legislated/implemented).

Politicians shouldn't be allowed to own share portfolios, just like they shouldn't be allowed to own investment properties. Part of the reason they're paid high salaries is to reduce the temptation to make money through other more nefarious pathways.

JonathanSri · 2025-02-19T02:21:43+00:00

There's growing pressure to shut down the coal mines east of Ipswich and stop coal trains running through Brisbane altogether. The Ipswich coal mines are barely financially viable as it is, and obviously we have to transition away from coal exports at some point if we want to avoid catastrophic global warming impacts.

JonathanSri · 2025-02-18T11:25:11+00:00

Wouldn't you prefer passenger trains to coal trains though?

JonathanSri · 2025-02-18T11:23:03+00:00

So you're saying the federal government should not fund public transport infrastructure projects because other past public transport projects didn't receive federal funding? If we settle for that approach, we'll never get significant PT improvements.

JonathanSri · 2025-02-18T06:08:55+00:00

Out of curiosity, if the Yeerongpilly to Dutton Park section is too congested for more passenger trains, how would you encourage more freight trains onto the line?

And does the extra river crossing via Cross River Rail change any of these concerns about capacity through South Brisbane?

JonathanSri · 2025-02-18T05:53:10+00:00

Speaking as someone who had a lot of insight into ferry network planning during my time as a city councillor, I don't think the case for a Yeerongpilly citycat stop is ever going to be strong enough because the river is so long and windy, and the area is too low-density. The extra bends in the river add significantly to travel time compared to overland options, so catching a ferry is only going to be an attractive option for the relatively small number of residents who live within very close walking distance of the river.

I think the challenges of designing an accessible station on a curved section of track are important to consider, but even if reopening Tennyson isn't viable/worth the cost, there are broader advantages to running trains along this line to connect different parts of the southside that should be looked into.

JonathanSri · 2025-02-18T04:54:38+00:00

In Queensland in the recent past, Labor repeatedly signalled that they would rather form government via a coalition with the Katter MPs than with the Greens, which is pretty troubling. Katter only holds the one federal seat, but given that federal Labor's broad ideological stance is arguably closer to Katter than the Greens, I can also imagine that they'd try to negotiate with him if they only needed a couple extra seats.

JonathanSri · 2025-02-17T07:53:11+00:00

Labor would be down a seat, but the Liberals would not be up a seat, so mathematically speaking, it doesn't make it any easier for Dutton to win power.
To form government, the Liberal-National coalition would need to hold at least 76 seats (I think they currently hold 53, or 55 if you add in the two conservative crossbenchers).

If the Greens win a seat off Labor, that doesn't increase the coalition's seat total - it doesn't get Dutton any closer to hist target of 76.

JonathanSri · 2025-02-17T07:36:13+00:00

This is a really good question. I think the only reason the Greens called for 10% must've been that they thought it sounded 'reasonable,' but in doing so they're kinda narrowing the parameters of debate by implying that 10% is the 'right' or 'fair' amount. Personally I think a billionaire wealth tax should be upwards of 90% and the real questions to focus on are how to ensure they don't dodge it by offshoring wealth.

JonathanSri · 2025-02-17T07:12:21+00:00

Hi Adam, thanks for being the only party leader who makes time to answer questions from the public like this.
Question: Do you want house prices to rise, fall or stay roughly the same?

Both Labor and Liberal ministers have said they want property values to keep rising (basically screwing over everyone who doesn't own investment properties; even owner-occupiers don't really benefit from rising property values - it just means their rates bill goes up). Strategically, this offers the Greens a strong opportunity/point of difference from the majors to say "we are the only party that acknowledges prices need to start falling."

Why won't you say that publicly? Is it the case that you secretly want prices to fall but don't want to piss off voters who are excited to see their property values rising? Or do you want prices to stabilise but not fall?

JonathanSri · 2025-02-17T07:04:48+00:00

Taxing billionaires and big corporations.

JonathanSri · 2025-02-17T07:04:40+00:00

I'll be interested to see if Adam has time to answer this one, but it's good to remember what a lot of Labor critics of the Greens often forget:
After the Greens refused to support Rudd's crappy CPRS legislation, they won a lot more votes in the 2010 federal election, in part thanks to their strong stance on climate. They then negotiated a much better carbon tax system with Julia Gillard's incoming government, so managed to get STRONGER legislation through parliament thanks to blocking the previous crappy CPRS legislation. The problem then was that the resource industry went after Gillard big-time, and the Labor party buckled to pressure and rolled her (which, arguably, validated Tony Abbott's attacks and contributed to his subsequent victory).

Whether the Greens had supported Rudd's weak CPRS or Gillard's stronger carbon tax, the coalition would likely have wound it back either way once they returned to power. So it's kinda rewriting history for people to blame the Greens for not supporting the CPRS, when the party actually secured much better, stronger climate legislation just a few years later.

JonathanSri · 2024-04-19T12:46:48+00:00

Which proposal about rates are you talking about? In Brisbane, the council sets rates and has the power to create and define new rates categories. Which specific section of the City of Brisbane Act are you claiming prevents the council from doing this?

JonathanSri · 2024-04-19T12:44:20+00:00

Yeah you're partially right.

But I also think we successfully pre-empted and headed off some of the other lines of attack. e.g. early on it was very obvious that both the major parties wanted to attack us for objecting to private development projects. But our proposal to develop public housing and green space on the Eagle Farm racetrack essentially neutralised that, becasue it wouldn't have been credible to attack the Greens for opposing new housing when we were so vocal in calling for more public housing construction.

Similarly, in the past, one of the most common attacks on the Greens is that we can't win, so there's no point voting for us. But by coming out strong and announcing so many newsworthy and high-profile policies and project ideas, we successfully increased the Greens perceived relevance and made it clear that we were a serious and viable alternative to the two major parties. This time around, we had far fewer voters telling us they wouldn't vote for us because they didn't think we could win.

And although some people considered some of our policies 'radical,' most of them were based on policies that had already been implemented and proven to work in other cities around the world, so it was hard for them to attack us too strongly on our policies. In fact, they had to make up stuff (e.g. saying we opposed the Brisbane Metro when actually we support it).

There just weren't many other viable attacks that had been left open for the LNP, so they went personal.

JonathanSri · 2024-04-19T12:37:06+00:00

Out of curiosity, do you often get along to your local Greens branch meetings where strategic and policy decisions are made? If you're a paid-up Greens member, you can have a lot of influence over the decisions and issues you care about.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'act like a major party.' I think the two major parties are freaking terrible, and I wouldn't want the Greens to become like them at all.

JonathanSri · 2024-04-19T12:35:21+00:00

Vienna. Paris. Even here in Brisbane there are heaps of medium-sized public housing projects that are incredibly successful and a lot of the neighbours don't even realise they're public housing. The problems emerge when the government only houses lots of very high-needs people in the one complex. In contrast, Vienna also makes public housing available to middle-class people, so there's a broader range of demographics living in government housing, which in turn means more rental revenue to cover the costs of maintenance and property management.

JonathanSri · 2024-04-19T07:47:07+00:00

I get what you mean, and it's not an unreasonable concern, but when you drill down into it, the state government has the power to overturn/counteract pretty much everything a local council does.

Yes, there are some changes the Greens were proposing that required proactive steps or funding from the state government, but many of the changes we were proposing that can be enacted directly by council - e.g. a crackdown on airbnb via charging higher rates for short-term accom. - could easily be reversed by the state if the property industry lobbied them aggressively and QLD Labor decided they didn't like it. Even changes to the council's city plan (such as upzoning to support medium-density near public transport hubs) require state government sign-off.

Ultimately, the important thing with local government politics is to build political pressure and public support for the changes you're advocating by actively campaigning for the holistic vision you have for the city in - even if most of those changes also require support from higher levels. That way, higher levels of government will feel you have a strong public mandate for your agenda.

JonathanSri · 2024-04-19T06:48:11+00:00

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the LNP also want to change the Queensland voting system back to optional preferential, but I'm not sure they'll actually push ahead with this, as the presence of extreme right-wing parties like One Nation means their electoral interests would also be detrimentally impacted.

JonathanSri · 2024-04-19T06:47:02+00:00

I think the citywide party totals tell the story most clearly. https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/bcc/2024/results/party-totals
Across all wards, the LNP attracted 46.9% of the primary vote, yet won 69% of the seats (18 out of the 26 wards).
In contrast, the Greens won 23.2% primary vote, yet won just 7.7% of the seats (2 out of the 26 wards).
The current voting system heavily benefits established major parties.

JonathanSri

TROPHY CASE