Introduction
Listen to an inspiring podcast about women and leadership in the Australian environment movement. In this episode co-founder of Women’s Environmental Leadership Australia (WELA) Judy Lambert is interviewed by the current director of WELA, Victoria McKenzie-McHarg. They discuss Judy’s experience in many roles as well as her vision of a multilayered movement which features a diversity of people, skills and knowledge.
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Welcome Judy Lambert
Iain McIntyre:
Welcome to Commons Conversations, a series of interviews with campaigners sharing their experiences and insights into activism, learning and movements, radical history and more. Today’s episode is from our second series and was originally broadcast by Community Radio 3CR.
It features a conversation between Victoria McKenzie-McHarg, the Strategic Director of Women’s Environmental Leadership Australia, WELA, and Judy Lambert, a cofounder of WELA and an environmental activist since the early 1970s. Judy helped found the NSW Wilderness Society and served as a National Liaison Officer for the Wilderness Society in Canberra. She later became a consultant to the Federal Environmental Minister and co founded an environmental consulting business, Community Solutions. She was the first National Campaign Coordinator and Policy Coordinator for the Australian Greens, and was elected to Manly Council where she served as Deputy Mayor. In addition, she’s held leading roles in a variety of community and environmental groups.
Today’s conversation discusses Judy’s experiences in these many roles, as well as her vision of a multi-layered movement which features a diversity of people, skills and knowledge. This podcast was produced by the Commons Social Change Library, a website containing over 1,000 resources for campaigners which can be accessed for free at commonlibrary.org. The library contains many other podcasts including other episodes in our series.
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
Hi everyone. I’m Victoria McKenzie-McHarg. I’m the Strategic Director of Women’s Environmental Leadership Australia, or WELA. It’s a real thrill to be with you here today on the Commons Social Library podcast, and to be joined by Judy Lambert who I’ll introduce, or who will introduce herself, in just a moment.
I also just want to acknowledge that I’m hosting this podcast from the lands of the Wurundjeri people in Naarm and that this land was never ceded. Judy, where are you joining us from today?
Judy Lambert:
I’m joining you from Manly in New South Wales, Gayemagal country.
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
Wonderful. And what’s it like up there today?
Judy Lambert:
It’s a warm, warm, warm sunny day.
Judy’s Environmental Story
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
Judy, you and I have been working together at WELA for the last three and a half years. You’ve been involved in WELA since its inception. You are one of the original cofounders of WELA but your work in the environment space extends well back from there. Tell us about your career and your story, where you’ve come from.
Judy Lambert:
Well, I guess my environmental story started with the lead up to the Franklin Dam campaign. I’d been – we’d been living overseas and working for three years; came back and saw a local community event in Sydney that was inviting people to come to an information night about the Franklin River and that was 1977 or 1978, and it turned out to be a recruiting night for the early days of the Franklin River campaign and so in one way or another, I’ve been involved in various wonderful environmental campaigns ever since.
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
A four-decade history.
Judy Lambert:
Is it that long? That’s scary. Yes.
Passing on the Baton to Future Generations
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
And we’re having this interview at a fairly auspicious time in that you have just stepped down from the WELA board and so you were a cofounder of WELA in 2016, was its first year of the WELA leadership program running.
You helped shepherd through the expansion of WELA, forming a new organisation, joining the inaugural board, and now actually stepping back from that, and moving on so that you’re creating space for the next wave of women and gender-diverse leaders. Can you tell us how that felt because letting go and moving on is a pretty big leadership challenge in and of itself?
Judy Lambert:
No, it just feels wonderfully rewarding. It was great to be part of getting WELA established. But we’ve reached a point where it’s onwards and upwards from here. And the board needs a greater diversity which we’ve worked hard to get, and are getting there, and also, younger, more currently oriented people than I am.
People who have been around for as long as I have need to pass the baton on for the future of organisations.
And I’m so optimistic about WELA’s new board, and its staff. The staff team had grown under Vic’s leadership, thank you, Vic, and it’s just so rewarding. It’s way beyond my expectations of what WELA could get to at this point.
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
Judy, it’s been a real – I said at the start, it’s been a real pleasure and an honour to be working alongside you and for the listeners who don’t know your history, I think it’s important for us to draw that out because I know I have previously described you – and I hope not too rudely – as one of the hardest working women in the environment movement that no one has ever heard of.
Now, that’s unfair and true and on one level because you have extensive networks and influence in the spaces that you’ve been in. But compared to the level of work and effort and impact that you have created for our environment over four decades, that just does not match up to the recognition for that work that exists in the public sphere or the movement. I’d love if you can tell us tell us a little bit more about some of the projects and the campaigns that you’ve been involved in.
Judy’s Campaigning Journey
Judy Lambert:
Okay, well, I have sort of wandered around a lot in the movement. As I said, we were very much involved in the Sydney branch of the Franklin Dam campaign. Once that was over, I guess, Sydney’s part of the Daintree Rainforest World Heritage listing and protection not sure where I went after that.
Meanwhile, being a fulltime research scientist, which I was, doing this stuff, became disillusioned with the frustrations of research funding in – what at the time I thought was – the best scientific work I’d done up to that point and the Wilderness Society was looking for a new Canberra-based lobbyist. And so with a bit of arm twisting from my husband and from Bob Brown who was staying with us at the time, I decided that I really was fed up with my battles for good research at Westmead Hospital in those days – it wasn’t entirely Westmead’s fault, it was funding – and took on the job.
No real political training; yes, some activist background, but certainly no formal political training, not a broad knowledge of the internal political system but I spent the next three years being the Wilderness Society’s national lobbyist in Canberra at probably the most rewarding time for the movement in its recent decades of history, I think.
I was TWS NLO [The Wilderness Society National Lobbyist Officer] from ‘87 to ‘90, I think it was. So many things happening at that time; it was the move to Labor government with Graham Richardson as the Minister and whilst we might all have mixed views about some of his activities, he was a very forthright Environment Minister and great to contribute to programs at that time and from there, I got asked to join the next federal environment minister staff as a full time consultant.
That was both a rewarding but an incredibly challenging three years. At the end of that, I was taking a break before I did anything else and I’d taken a whole day’s break when somebody rang me up and said, “What are you going to do next? Do you know that Jane…?” meaning Jane Elix who became my business partner for 20 plus years, “Is moving to Sydney and looking for someone else who might want to start up a small consultancy business?”
So Jane and I had a cuppa together and little consultancy Community Solutions evolved very soon after that and using Jane’s arts, English, languages and women’s studies skills, and my scientific background largely for the environment, we did a huge diversity of projects together, the last one of which – because sadly we lost Jane to cancer about ten years ago – was a project which was very much Jane’s project, not mine, as part of an Australian Research Council grant looking at 100 years of women in Australian democracy. Grand title for a huge national project, and Jane was doing the environment part of it.
When she became really ill, she asked me would I take over and finish her part of the project. Me, with my science background, no literary skills, no women’s studies, a very dear friend about to not be with us any longer so I knew she’d done all the research. It was a matter of applying the science to analysing it and helping to write up and from that, one of Jane’s wishes for the whole of that project – because she was not a traditional academic but she was working with some very senior academic women – was they wanted an academic book out of it, but it’s got to be more than that. It’s got to have some practice outcomes.
So a few good friends, particularly Marg Blakers, Louise Crossley, Karen Alexander – I think I’ve left out someone – put our heads together and we had a gathering. Jane thought that there should be some sort of coming together of people who she interviewed for her project, and others who were very aware of it but she didn’t want a workshop and she certainly didn’t want a formal conference. She wanted an action gathering so that action gathering happened in Canberra in 2012, and the finalist of that was, “So we want some action. What are we going to do about it?” and what we’re doing about it is WELA.
Who are your people?
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
It’s a beautiful origin story, and really puts at the heart of it that relational quality of working together and just supporting one another as well but the origin actually grows out of that sentiment. Judy, you’ve obviously had people around you throughout your whole career. You don’t get to have such an impactful and big and expansive and diverse career as you have without people around you. Who are your people? Who are your supports?
Judy Lambert:
Like minded women. It’s difficult to pin down how I define that but I know them when I meet them. I am certainly by nature a backroom person so they’re people who I can work with to I guess activate my backroom work, and that’s very much what happened with WELA as well, but with other projects too.
I’m probably a bit of a bore in that I do have an attention to detail, and that comes in handy when you’re forming new groups and they need to look at all of the structural governance stuff and those boring things but also, a bit of a pedant let’s get the facts right first up and I think that was incredibly important in giving me credibility in my Canberra lobbying job.
People mightn’t have agreed with what I was doing, but having the skills to do the research, but then having other people who I could get guidance from on – not on presenting what I was talking but on conveying the message, I’m going to describe it as and so, it’s those people who I immediately can relate to even though they are much – usually much more outgoing people, and usually women, although I’d have to say that my husband Geoff has been an incredible backstop through what’s been a pretty torrid journey for him at times, me living in Canberra five days a week stuff, or going off to interstate meetings or whatever. So yeah, mostly a diversity of like minded women, but usually more by nature outgoing than I am.
The Power of Women Activists
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
Interesting that you pick up on that, Judy, because we do have a movement that can celebrate the hero style campaigner, and we love that story of the person out front, and that’s what is often held up as the most powerful, effective change maker but your career highlights, we actually need a whole diversity of skills and experiences to make change possible.
How did you go about identifying that role for yourself and being confident in what you could bring?
Judy Lambert:
I’m not really sure that I ever consciously – well, I did eventually. It was a long time before I recognised that that was a niche that I could fill. I was very aware, way back in the Franklin campaign or perhaps even before, that environment campaigns didn’t win with just one strand. Or now, I encompass climate change in environmental campaigns but in those days, it was much more natural environment focus that I was involved with but to me, it was always a conscious thing that we weren’t going to win just with our upfront activism and certainly, the more I observed the movement – and in those days, it was almost entirely outgoing, confident males who were the recognised leaders – and I thought, “We need more than that. We need substance behind what we’re doing.”
It’s great to make all these grand position statements. We didn’t have nearly the protest activism that we have now. The Franklin campaign was famous because it really was the first and biggest of the activism, in a very different operating climate to what we have now, too, with all the horrendous laws but I could see early on, without consciously identifying it was where I contributed, that we needed what I used to think of as the backfill and the backfill needed to be just as solid for us to have credibility as what that upfront stuff did and I think probably Jane – subconsciously, Jane helped to alert me to the difference in the way that women generally operate compared with the way that men do.
There were certainly exceptions in Parliament House. I won’t name any, but there was a very bouffant blonde senior liberal female who used to often commute to Canberra on the same flight that I did, who very much operated in the bloke system but I don’t think she was nearly as effective as some of the quieter women politicians that I knew.
How do you choose when and where to step up?
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
Judy, I asked you to explain your career beforehand, and all I can observe is also what you left out but there’s so much more. You were an elected member. You were the Mayor of Manly. Is that correct?
Judy Lambert:
Deputy, but only for six months. Then the Libs woke up that having a Greens mayor wasn’t such a good idea.
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
You also were involved in a whole lot of local nature-based restoration and protection work. You are involved in bushfire management committees. Your work has been quite extensive. When there are so many challenges, so many opportunities for impact, how have you chosen when and where to step up?
Judy Lambert:
I think other people choose it for me. My TWS lobbyist position, I was persuaded to take on bushfire committees. I’m there as a Nature Conservation Council’s statutory rep, and they certainly leant on me to nominate. The local stuff – I mean, there’s also a sense of my own affinity. My local stuff with North Head Sanctuary Foundation is very much because that’s my local place of restoration and refreshment and when we knew that was… Defence were moving out and that was under threat of development, then I’m not going to let my backyard disappear.
We need a group of people to do something about that and sure, as usual, there were other – again, mostly females who had the same view and it was a matter of us all coming together. So I think it’s a combination of fitting with my personal interests and being persuaded by other people that it might be a good idea if I accepted their “invitations”.
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
So this means that you have been a researcher, an activist, a politician, an advisor, a small business owner, a consultant and a grassroots community member and a lobbyist.
I don’t know if I’m missing anymore. That’s a really broad way of understanding how change can happen, and your role within it. Tell us how you’ve occupied those different spaces.
You See a Need and You Do It!
Judy Lambert:
Gee, that’s a hard question. That just happened. You see a need and you do it and I think if I’ve done something consciously, it’s been, “Is it something worthwhile to do when they are so – ? ” not to say that lots that I haven’t joined in haven’t been worthwhile.
Pick your targets, I guess; pick your targets where you can see something that you can contribute and I think apart from that, being at least vaguely conscious of the fact that I do often bring perhaps an analytical approach to it; some would say a pedantic approach.
I have to admit, I don’t any longer participate. I get into trouble from one of my local colleagues that I don’t go to nearly enough protest actions. Now, that’s my way of stepping back and saying, “Hey, I can’t do as many things as I used to all at once.”
I’m not as good at juggling all the balls as I used to be and that’s the first one that I’ve decided to step back from. I guess stepping down from WELA’s board is also partly on that basis but I think stepping down from WELA’s board is much more about we don’t need people who are approaching 80 to be board members. WELA is a much more dynamic organisation than that.
More Powerful if we’re United
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
We often talk about the movement, the environment-climate movement and quite often, I think, when people – I use that term. They’re actually just talking about quite a fairly narrowly confined segment which is often grassroots groups and NGOs.
Yet, your experience highlights that there’s a breadth of work and opportunity far beyond that more narrow definition. How do you think about what makes for a powerful social movement?
Judy Lambert:
That question is one that was – my answer was very much reinforced in my time working in Canberra both as a Wilderness Society lobbyist and then for the minister and to me, unless you’ve got an integrated army with all that diversity, campaigns will struggle and I think where it was – came home most to me was probably in Canberra where finding sometimes quite senior public servants – and not always in the environment portfolio – who were personally very sympathetic to what we were trying to achieve, but who were in positions where they couldn’t be overt activities, for example.
It was hugely important to making gains in what we were trying to achieve; finding the scientists who had the time and the inclination to work with the movement and there are some wonderful examples of that all around the country these days but a lot of research scientists, even back in my scientific research days, were really under pressure to maintain funding for themselves and their research teams and…
…sometimes it wasn’t helpful to their funding to be overtly a greenie activist but recognising that and being able to use their skills, use it discreetly, was just to me such – almost an awakening that that was as much part of our campaigning as the upfront.
The other thing that came out very clearly while Jane was doing her 100 year of leadership was how disparate the environment movement is and I do think that that overall we could be a more powerful force if we could work more collaboratively.
Again, that’s competition for recognition, for resources, for volunteers, and everybody wants to retain their own identity and I think sometimes we’d be more powerful if we were more united.
Different Strategies
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
On one level, Judy, I couldn’t agree with you more, and would always support that drive towards collaboration but I think in that mix of what’s holding is back is a lot of that barriers. But sometimes there’s also just very different strategies and that’s okay isn’t it?
Judy Lambert:
That’s essential, and in fact, I had that debate with Graham Richardson when he was the Minister and I was Wilderness Society lobbyist more than once. Graham was of the view that the environment movement should be just like the union movement, and there should be a few heads of the movement that he and other ministers could talk to and that would reflect – so he tried to convey – what we were all on about and I could see that we needed the whole spectrum of – ACF lobbyists and myself worked closely together.
In fact, that’s where Jane and I first met each other and worked very closely together but we deliberately, from our organisation’s points of view, had very different approaches and that diversity and the local grass roots community groups are so much a part of that as well.
So yes, we need that diversity but I think my concern is that given the challenges we face, we don’t always talk to each other enough to make sure that that’s complementing each other.
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
Judy, throughout all of this work, what’s been the hardest thing you’ve had to deal with or learn?
The Distressing sides of Campaigning
Judy Lambert:
Probably the distress of some of my colleagues working within the political system who received lots of flak when we failed at stages in campaigns. At the time I worked for the environment minister, I had two friends who left those jobs in tears after we’d lost battles in Cabinet, not because we’d lost, but because of the abusive phone calls they got from people that we thought were friends or colleagues and to me, that was more distressing.
It was something that I had to just say – I had to learn to say, “I’ve done my best. We’ve done our best. Move on to the next step.”
The loggers blockading Parliament House and threatening me and being told that I shouldn’t leave by myself after hours when they had their log trucks lined up around Parliament House was – that’s just part of the job, as I told a local fisherman who I took out an AVO after I’d been campaigning to get a no-take reserve declared where he fished occasionally, and I was warned that I shouldn’t leave – it was while I was on council.
I was warned I shouldn’t leave council by myself at night by one of his colleagues and my response to that was, “Thanks for that. I’ll be careful. But if the loggers blockading Parliament House aren’t going to stop me, then I’ll deal with him.”
So that stuff was ugly, but not nearly as hard to deal with as attacks from people that you thought were your allies and knew what you were doing.
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
I mean, it is very bruising work and we know so much of the inter movement politics is some of the most exhausting, what you’re alluding to here but then you do have very organised and very powerful and sometimes very aggressive opposition you’re taking on and then you can layer on top of that the pretty extreme existential crisis we are now facing with the climate biodiversity crisis bearing down on us.
How do you hold yourself with such resilience and hope as you keep stepping forward, the next campaign and the next campaign?
Hang in There and Keep Going
Judy Lambert:
I say to a lot of my younger friends now, “I’m glad I was at the core of campaigning when I was, and not now.” It is so much more challenging both because of the existential threats and the immediacy of them, but also because of the climate we’re operating in. I’m not sure that I could still be an upfront campaigner now and survive as well as I did when I was in the thick of it and all I can do – and I do talk to a lot of young colleagues who get disillusioned and I say,
Look, I know it’s out of date. I know we’re in a different operating climate but we lost the Franklin campaign twice before we won it. Hang in there. Find friends around you. Gather them around you and keep going and take a break when you need it is my other message.
Self Care – Take a Break
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
How did you take breaks, Judy? What is a break for you?
Judy Lambert:
In those days, it was go bush where there was – well we didn’t have mobile phones for my half of my peak campaigning time, but go bush were I was uncontactable for a walk.
Connection to Nature
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
Well that brings us right back around, I guess, full circle in the story of your life, Judy, because you grew up in Benalla in North East Victoria.
Can you tell us about your experience and whether that location of growing up, your childhood, gave you your connection to nature?
Judy Lambert:
In a very different way. I mean, I hadn’t bush walked until my first cross country walk in Tassie with my husband and his brother but I had done a lot of horse riding by myself in places that were accessible from our farm and growing up on a farm even was outdoor life – not the same as when we were environmental campaigning but outdoor life was just – it was the only place to be.
And if I was in trouble at home, my mother and I – my mother was fairly conservative and we didn’t always have the same view of the world and if I was in trouble for something, going for a horse ride was the best thing to do and I think going bush was the best thing to do when campaigns were tough.
Introversion
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
And you were doing that campaigning in a pretty different – you’ve acknowledged yourself it was a pretty different time in lots of ways but one thread of that I want to draw on Judy is it was a very different time for women raising their voices and yet, you’ve acknowledged you’re a behind the scenes person.
You’re not necessarily the out-front campaigner. You can come across as a more reserved person. Yet, you managed to raise your voice and find your place for impact and do that at a time that it was not normed or easy.
It was a more challenging environment. It’s still a challenging environment for many women and gender diverse people but it was a particularly challenging time.
How did you find your voice in that environment at that time? What helped you recognise the change you could make?
Judy Lambert:
I guess a couple of high school teachers who when I showed much more interest in following – in whatever we called it. It wasn’t majoring. My main subject in my senior high school was certainly science-based subjects. I think our final year at high school, there were – it was a very small country high school. There were eight or nine Year 12s and two of us doing science were girls so that was a good start.
I trained in pharmacy before I switched over to research science and pharmacy is a pretty good science-based profession for women. So you find your feet much more there; find more likeminded female voices but I do think also growing up as the only girl in a family of three siblings and being the oldest, I was much more the farmhand. It was just what you did and so when it came to doing it for the environment, it was just again what needed to be done.
Have Support Around You
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
So Judy, when campaigns do get tough, where do you get support? What do you draw from?
Judy Lambert:
I think first and foremost, my own past experiences, and I can always find something to encourage myself out of that. Secondly, certainly my husband Geoff is a powerful backup; has more confidence in me than I have, I think and probably too, other women that I’ve campaigned with over a long time and Karen Alexander would be one that comes to mind, Louise Crossley when she was with us; women who have been around campaigning in different but similar ways to what I have.
And they’re close enough friends that we can give each other a call and talk about how the world is being pretty crap at the moment, and find ways forward to – shared ways forward rather than thinking you’re marking time and getting nowhere on your own and also retreats to the bush, for a walk.
Starting WELA
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
You talk about the power of a strong group of supportive women around you, and I want to draw you back then to the founders, yourself, Karen Alexander, Margaret Blakers and of course, Sue Lewis, and what that experience was with the four of you.
There was obviously other conversations initially feeding that process but it was the four of you who really leant in and created that first program, and Holly Hammond from the Commons who was the facilitator for that, Lou Duxbury who got on board and is still our Lead Facilitator today but what was that process with the four of you like?
Judy Lambert:
I do think it was very much driven by a desire to – we all knew Jane and knew her well. We wanted to fulfil her hope that that ARC funded program would be more than just a book and she had talked about having a gathering.
I think in the early stages of us talking about it, we had hoped that Jane was going to be well enough to join the gathering if we organised it but that didn’t quite happen but it was really – that was probably the main driving force, and the recognition that the recognised environment movement was almost exclusively led – in the traditional leadership sense – by blokes and we didn’t think we were getting the right leadership to get the best possible outcomes. So let’s see if the women can do something better. We think we can, and let’s do it for Jane.
Diversity in the Environment Movement
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
And since then, since that founding moment, many other women have been a part of shaping what is WELA: Cheryl Buchanan, a very powerful First Nations woman who attended that very first retreat and was core to really shaping what it is has become; a whole range of women from diverse backgrounds, sectors, cultural backgrounds, women of colour, and an increasing number of First Nations alum are shaping what the program is. It evolves every year with and because of the participants.
How has that changed not just within WELA, but how have you seen changes in the movement in terms of creating space for diversity and inclusion in a really genuine way?
Judy Lambert:
I think the sincerity of it for me is the biggest reward, perhaps is the right word. I think there’s been token conversations about diversity in the movement for a long time but I feel as though it’s really now – it’s a reality now much more than it was when I was more directly involved and that is just so rewarding because I think what we lacked initially was women in real leadership positions in the movement, but then recognising that diversity and more recently, acknowledging the base of First Nations women, and the cultural recognition of what they can bring to how we all make more progress has just been enormous, and continuing to grow is really rewarding. I think that’s one of the really good things about WELA’s growth is just how much the diversity is happening.
Inspiration
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
And I think what’s really interesting there is how much it’s happening, how much demand there is, and how many different ways there are to conceive of the process of change and what different people with different intersectionalities and perspective and skillsets as well will bring to the challenges that we face together. Who have been your inspirations throughout your career? Who have you looked to and who’s inspired you, or today?
Judy Lambert:
Certainly, Val Brown, retired in Canberra. Val and I, at various times, have collaborated. She has had the most amazing career: public servant, senior academic, I think invited founder of the environment course at Western Sydney Uni. She’s moved backwards and forwards to consultancy which is where I first encountered Val. Val, who is now in her 90s, jokes that for many years she wasn’t known in her own right. She was known as AJ Brown’s mother, AJ Brown now being a very respected international lawyer. So Val has certainly been one of them.
Bob Brown I’d have to acknowledge certainly has been. Bob has been a friend since very early Franklin days and has been a contributor to a few of my career change, direction changes, most notably becoming the Wilderness Society’s lobbyist instead of being a research scientist and the current bunch of WELA women; I mean, it’s just so inspiring to see how WELA has developed relatively so quickly and so influentially.
I was talking to a young woman yesterday who would love to do a WELA course but doesn’t feel that her job will let her at the moment, and she said, “WELA is so good. All the women I know who have done it are inspiring,” and that inspires me as well.
What gives you Hope?
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
Well, Judy, I was going to give you a last gimme question and so you can’t use the same answer. But it was: so looking forward, you’ve seen what has come over the last 40 years.
You’ve been at the very front facing from the backroom of so many campaigns and innovations, and stepped towards pretty diverse and broad movements, and winning some serious outcomes but we know things are really on the line at the moment. Facing what we know is ahead, what gives you hope?
Judy Lambert:
That there are so many good people coming on board to recognise that we are in a critical situation. We, humanity, certainly does. Unfortunately, politics, as the two major parties play it, is not inspiring me but the fact that there are visible changes, particularly in national politics – so Greens and Teals and other independents – are changing the face of politics.
Whether that’s going to happen urgently enough, I’m not sure but I guess the other thing is just my own, in a sense, belief in humanity; how can we have belief in humanity at the moment with what’s happening in the world?
I know that’s a crazy answer but so many times I’ve been part of campaigns where we’ve felt like we were losing, and then something has flipped and the tide’s changed and I’m sufficiently much of an optimist that I still hope and think that’s going to happen but it needs to happen first.
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg:
Well Judy, on behalf of many generations, environmental change makers who have come in your wake, thank you so much for the work that you have done throughout a very varied, diverse and incredibly impactful career. It has been such a pleasure to work alongside you and learn from you. Your tenacity, your hard work, your passion is unending, and it is a real inspiration to so, so many of us. So I just want to take the opportunity to thank you for that, Judy, and for everything that you’ve created.
Judy Lambert:
Thank you, Vic. It’s been a pleasure to work with you and with so many other people.
Iain McIntyre:
You’ve been listening to Commons Conversations, produced by the Commons Social Change Library, a website containing over 1,000 resources for campaigners, all of which can be accessed for free at commonlibrary.org.
Bios
Judy Lambert AM
Judy is a passionate environmental advocate and collaborator. She helped found the NSW Wilderness Society, and was National Liaison Officer for The Wilderness Society in Canberra. She became a consultant to the Federal Environment Minister and co-founded an environmental consulting business, Community Solutions. She was the first national campaign coordinator and policy coordinator for the Australian Greens and was elected to Manly Council, and has held leading roles in many community environmental groups.
Judy sees herself as someone who sees a need and fills the gap by stepping in. She places strong emphasis on working with people, and operates on respect and trust based on sound, fact-based argument. She has been instrumental in the governance and foundations of WELA since it was conceived.
Victoria McKenzie-McHarg
Victoria is the Strategic Director of Women’s Environmental Leadership Australia (WELA), bringing 15 years of experience as a climate campaign manager to the role. She is the immediate past Chair of the Climate Action Network Australia (CANA), and a Steering Committee member of the Forrest Gateway to the Otways project.
About WELA
Women’s Environmental Leadership Australia (WELA) is empowering, supporting and funding women’s leadership for our environment and climate action, in order to transform Australia’s response to these crises. Find out more about WELA.
Explore Further
- Commons Conversations Podcast
Listen to more inspiring interviews on the Commons own podcast. - Films about Women and Social Justice and Change
An inspiring list of feature films and documentaries about women and social change including Women of Steel, Suffragette, Mission Blue, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry and more. - Inspiring Quotes from Women Leaders and Activists
Over 40 quotes by inspiring women leaders and activists from Australia and around the world about leadership, diversity and the environment. - Books about Women & Leadership
Five books recommended by participants and convenors of Women’s Environmental Leadership Australia. This list includes comprehensive discussions about women’s leadership, practical guides, and two memoirs from inspiring women leaders. - The WELA Collection
Explore more resources from the WELA Collection in the Commons Library.