We are pleased to welcome a host of incredible homegrown and international speakers to the
2018 Beyond Coal and Gas Jamboree.  

Karrina Nolan is from the Yorta Yorta nation in Victoria. She’s worked as an organiser, strategist, campaigner and facilitator alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities for more than 20 years. She has led programs and campaigns on women’s rights, globalisation and environmental justice with a focus on First Nations peoples and self-determination. She has most recently been working with communities fighting for land justice and for the protection of country.

Karrina is the Founder and Director of Original Power. An organisation with a mission to build the power of her people.

Debbie Carruthers helped establish and then lead a Lock the Gate group in East Gippsland that surveyed 900 landholders as part of the successful campaign to have unconventional gas mining being permanently banned in Victoria.

Bruce Nilles is the former Campaign Director for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

This campaign helped to slow and stop the rush to build 196 proposed new coal plants, retire and replace 266 existing coal plants, and stop the proposed construction of new coal export facilities.

Bruce previously worked as a staff attorney for Earthjustice.

Clare Land has been an active supporter of Aboriginal struggles since 1998, and the author of the landmark book Decolonising Solidarity.

Clare has worked in both academic and community settings. She is a trained community practitioner and facilitator and a trainer in Courageous Conversations About Race. She has worked in community development in Australia, for ANTaR Victoria: Working for Land Justice and Reconciliation (2004-06), and East Timor, as a volunteer with University Students for East Timor (2000).

Gary Rowbottom has worked in coal-fired power stations for more than 17 years, and has been a leading member of the Repower Port Augusta local community group since mid 2012.  

After a sustained community campaign, the Port Augusta community finally succeeded in winning state government support for Australia’s first solar thermal plant.

Dr Richard Denniss is the Chief Economist and former Executive Director of The Australia Institute, Australia’s leading progressive think tank.  

Dr Denniss is a prominent Australian economist, author and public policy commentator, and former Adjunct Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University.

John Hepburn is the Founder and Executive Director of The Sunrise Project, working to scale social movements to drive the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy.

With over twenty years experience as an environmental activist and social entrepreneur, John has worked on a wide variety of grassroots campaigns, co-founded several non-profit successful social enterprises and co-ordinated global environmental campaigns during ten years with Greenpeace. John is a Churchill Fellow and in 2016 became one of two inaugural Program Leaders of the Packard Foundation’s Climate Strategies Accelerator program.

John holds degrees in Manufacturing Systems Engineering and Business Management from the Queensland University of Technology. Prior to becoming an activist he worked for several years as an engineer making components for the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries.

Brianna Fruean is a nineteen-year-old climate change activist from the Pacific Island of Samoa.  Brianna has been already been campaigning for nearly half her life - at the age of eleven, Fruean was a founding member of the grassroots movement 350.Samoa, and a leader of the "Future Rush" environment group organising youth and wider Pacific communities to tackle climate change.

At fourteen years old, Brianna was one of the youngest people to attend the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development as a Pacific youth ambassador. Fruean was also the youngest ever winner of the Commonwealth Youth Award, and first ever youth ambassador for the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme.

Today, Fruean continues her work as a proud Pacific Climate Warrior.

Jo Dodds is a writer and accidental activist who found her quiet, rural life taking a wildly new course and is now a local government councillor and agent of change.

Jo works to include all voices, especially the quiet ones, in discussions about critical issues. As a resident affected by the recent, devastating bushfires across NSW which have been particularly devastating to the little town of Tathra, Jo is calling on our leaders to do something to reduce the risks of further climate change.

Tim Buckley has 25 years of financial markets experience, specialising in equity valuation, including as a top-rated analyst and as co-founder and Managing Director of Arkx Investment Management.

Tim is currently the Director of Energy Finance Studies Australasia at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). Tim has been a frequent commentator on the Australian renewables industry and the Adani coal project.  

Liuanga Palu joined the Pacific Climate movement in Sydney in 2015 in the lead up to the People’s climate march when she helped organised a contingent of over people from the Pacific diaspora. Since then she’s taken on a coordinating position for a new and exciting project at Sydney Alliance: VOICES FOR POWER.

This project sees her and 6 other ethnic Community Organisers organizing their relative communities to win on affordable energy (power bills) and a just transition to renewable energy for low-income and CALD communities in Western Sydney.

Sam La Rocca is the Deputy Director at The Sunrise Project where he drives the strategy across Sunrise projects and manages the Sunrise team.  

Sam has more than twenty years experience as an activist committed to building people powered movements for a socially just and ecologically sane world.

While completing his honours thesis on activist mobilisation, Sam co-founded activist education outfit The Change Agency to deliver campaign training for NGOs and community groups around Australia and the Pacific. He’s worked as a senior advisor to the Australian Greens and managed the campaign to successfully re-elect the first Greens lower house federal MP. This campaign is widely regarded as one of the best organising campaigns in recent Australian political history.

Boe Spearim is one of the co hosts of the Let's Talk program on 98.9FM radio.

Lutunatabua has over 10 years experience in radio and TV as a radio and TV personality. He is a writer, photographer, and an entrepreneur, founding Beyond the Narrative which is a public relations business based in Fiji that helps Pacific Islanders build their public image.

Fenton has worked with Greenpeace as a volunteer Oceans campaigner and local group coordinator for several years, and has also worked as a Greenpeace Australia Pacific part-time Media Advisor. Fenton has done three international ship tours with Greenpeace vessels, the Esperanza and the Rainbow Warrior III.

Fenton is the Pacific Ambassador with UNICEF Pacific focusing primarily on working with children and young people in the Pacific navigate the digital world of storytelling.

Dan Coleman’s work with the Upper Hunter community is focused on developing a shared vision and drive for a plan to transition from coal-mining dependency to a diverse and sustainable economy.

Dan works to help communities find common ground, making meaningful connections, and facilitate easy and rewarding participation.  Dan’s background includes international aid coordination, volunteer management, and organising communities to unite to protect their water catchments.

Shay Dougall is a Health and Safety professional of 20 years, wife and mother of two.  Shay lives on Queensland’s Western Downs. The contamination caused by Linc Energy’s gasfields operation nearby has had a disastrous impact on Shay’s family.  For the past six years, she has been dealing with unconventional gas companies organising with around 30 other families in the district.

Shay’s advocacy has taken her into government departments, courtrooms, and local town halls.  Most recently, Shay convened the Australian contribution to the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate Change.

Naomi Hogan has spent the past eight years working to secure greater community protection from unsafe mines and gasfields.

Earlier, Naomi trained at ANU in Science Communication, before working for the NSW Government where she witnessed firsthand the industry pressure for mining approvals at all costs.

Naomi is always learning, and works towards the Lock the Gate vision for healthy, empowered communities to have fair processes available to them to protect their land and water, and to deliver sustainable food and energy solutions.

Mark Ogge is a researcher and advocate working on mining and resource issues, climate, energy and accountability at the Australia Institute.

In a previous role with Beyond Zero Emissions Mark was closely involved with the Repower Port Augusta campaign in South Australia, which recently succeeded in winning government support for Australia’s first solar thermal plant.

.

Ursula Alquier has been a climate activist for more than a decade. She has spent the past six years working as the Victorian Lock the Gate Coordinator, employed by Friends of the Earth.  Ursula played a key role in the successful Victorian gasfield free campaign which has led to a permanent ban on all unconventional gas mining and fracking in Victoria.

Ursula lives on a farm in Gippsland and has well-developed relationships with farmers and farming communities. Ursula is passionate about grassroots community campaigning, with proven success in facilitating diverse and creative strategies with regional communities.

Gemma Borgo-Caratti is the National Director at the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC), Australia’s largest youth run organisation.  AYCC is building a movement of young people fighting for climate justice.

Gemma is passionate about ensuring that all young people, no matter where they come from or how much time they have to offer can get involved and take action on climate change in their communities.

Alison Orme is Communications Director at the Sunrise Project, responsible for overseeing the comms (media + digital) strategy for the #StopAdani movement.

With an Arts/Law degree, Alison began her career in law reform, working for state and federal government agencies including the Australian Law Reform Commission and the Federal Health Department before working for almost a decade as a senior political advisor to state and federal MPs.

Alison has managed media for numerous election campaigns and worked in journalism and publishing during university.

John Dalton  is one of the founding members and a spokesperson for the Kingaroy Concerned Citizens Group (KCCG).

Over the last nine years, he and local landholders have been involved in four campaigns opposing different mining proposals for the rich red soil farmland near Kingaroy. These include the current proposal by Moreton Resources for an open cut coal mine, and previously, the UCG trial by Cougar Energy, bauxite mining by Qld Bauxite, and Stanwell’s Kunioon Coal Mine. All four projects are within a stone’s throw of John’s home.

Joan Staples’ career background is civil society advocacy and policy.  Joan has worked mainly on environmental campaigns for the past thirty odd years, but she also had a decade in Cape York and in the Torres Strait Islands, working for Indigenous organisations, and later training human rights activists throughout the Asia-Pacific.

Currently working as an academic, her publications now focus on the democratic role of civil society.  Joan also contributes to the Community Organising Fellowship training program.

Tabatha Fulker is Executive Director at OrganiseUs, a strategic digital communications and training agency, and oversees the digital strategy of the #StopAdani movement.

Tabatha has more than 18 years' experience developing engagement, media and communication strategies for progressive non-profits, and more than seven years as a daily news and feature journalist.

What motivates her? She once lived 30 metres up a Karri tree and has never lost sight of the view.

Laura Melville is the Lead Organiser at the Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC).

Laura supports AYCC’s  huge grassroots youth network right across the country. Laura is passionate about building a powerful youth climate justice movement, and ensuring young people lead the transition from fossil fuels to renewables.

Louise Matthiesson has been involved in environment and climate campaigns for around 20 years, working for a range of community groups in Victoria and Queensland.

Most recently she has played a lead role in the Fight for the Reef campaign against new coal mines in the Galilee Basin and port expansions along the Great Barrier Reef Coast.

Louise is currently the Queensland Campaigner for Solar Citizens, based in Brisbane.

Josh Meadows looks after media and communications for Environmental Justice Australia. Before joining EJA he was the Australian Conservation Foundation’s media adviser for 12 years.

He has also worked as a media adviser to Victoria’s Privacy Commissioner and Papua New Guinea’s Ombudsman. Josh loves getting a big story up in the media. He also loves bushwalking, making music and watching North Melbourne Football Club defeat a more highly-fancied opponent