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The Sustainable Hour no. 573 | Transcript | Podcast notes
A pub, a meal and a movement for connection, community – and climate truth
Our guest in The Sustainable Hour no. 573 is community builder Kate Shelton, founder of Peacemeals.
In this week’s Sustainable Hour we weave together three threads that matter more than ever in 2025: the climate truth we must face, the communities we must rebuild, and the kindness that holds us together.
Mik Aidt opens with a look at Australia’s political retreat from responsibility, as wild weather and surging heat deaths remind us that this crisis is not “Mother Nature’s fault” but the result of ignoring science for half a century. While fossil fuel subsidies rise and banks continue to bankroll coal and gas, the rest of the world races ahead with cheaper, cleaner renewables.
Colin Mockett OAM then takes us to COP30 in Belém for a global update – including a new international push to crack down on climate disinformation, record-breaking storms, drought-stricken cities running out of water, and the reality that the Paris Agreement is hanging in the balance. More details in the transcript.
. . .
Kate Shelton, founder and CEO of PeaceMeals, joins us to share her remarkable story of bringing refugees, new arrivals and long-time locals together over food, conversation and shared humanity. What began as home-cooked dinners has evolved into a growing network of communal pub meals supported by Bendigo Bank – a simple, repeatable model that breaks down stereotypes and builds real connection across backgrounds, cultures and life experiences.
“My belief is we can’t control what’s beyond us, but we can control our local, our family, our neighbours and our little community and that’s where we should reach out for kindness, respect, understanding and trust because that’s all we can do really.”
~ Kate Shelton, founder and CEO of PeaceMeals, in The Sustainable Hour no 573
Together with Kate, we explore how community dinners in pubs are creating safe, friendly meeting places, and why stereotypes fall apart the moment people actually meet. Kate is experiencing how local action can rebuild social trust in an era of polarisation, and she now has a vision to expand PeaceMeals across Victoria.
Currently PeaceMeals, a not-for-profit charity, uses food to connect refugees and local Aussies in the St Kilda area of Melbourne. Promoting awareness, trust, and respect, PeaceMeals hosts simple gatherings that provide an opportunity for people of widely different backgrounds to share a meal, share their stories and make connections.
→ For more details on PeaceMeals go to www.peacemeals.com.au. They are also on Facebook and Instagram.
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– A gentle song about rebuilding community through everyday acts of kindness, respect, understanding and trust – inspired by Kate Shelton.
The episode closes with reflections on The Pulse’s role as a multicultural, democratic space – a true public house for voices that rarely make it onto mainstream media – and with Kate’s suggested “Be…” for the week: Be respectful of differences.
“The stereotypes do so much damage. And that comes from the conservative press that we have, which seems to be getting worse and worse. It is important that we turn off the TV and come out to dinner because you’re coming out to meet strangers, and that is life-changing. To meet people from a completely different background and having a conversation with people, it makes you appreciate that we’re more similar than we are different and the stereotypes don’t exist.”
~ Kate Shelton, founder and CEO of PeaceMeals, in The Sustainable Hour no 573
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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“We need rapid, urgent, and systemic cultural change – a change that honours the rights and the knowledge of communities, powered not by fossil fuels but by the power of arts, the power of creativity, cultural memory and cultural practice.”
~ Thiago Jesus, We Make Tomorrow at COP30
“To the Nationals’ eternal shame, it is regional economies who are most affected by climate change and stand to gain most from action to mitigate fire, flood, storm and drought. Everyone is letting them down with lies, delays and failure to make the argument.”
~ Zoe Daniel, former ABC foreign correspondent and former independent member for Goldstein
Mixed messages emerge as flooding disrupts UN climate talks
Excerpt of a newsletter from The Age on 19 November 2025:
“On Monday at the United Nations climate talks in Brazil, Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen was to have joined Ralph Regenvanu, his counterpart from Vanuatu, in the Pacific pavilion to launch a program backing the uptake of renewables across the region.
The event had to be moved when the venue was flooded due to the intense rain that’s been battering Belém, the Amazonian city in the north of Brazil that is hosting COP 30.
As the global cohort of government officials, diplomats and climate experts in Belém grappled with the faltering collective response to the rapidly changing climate, back in Australia, the political class, or at least the opposition, returned to the warm nostalgia of climate warfare.
Having lost the last election under Peter Dutton, who was advocating for nuclear energy, and the one before that, with Scott Morrison championing a gas-led recovery, the National Party surveyed the electoral wasteland of Australia’s capital cities and opted to return to an Abbott-era embrace of coal.
Led by the Coalition’s junior party and her own right faction, current Liberal leader Sussan Ley now finds herself prosecuting two contradictory cases.
She is now for dumping net zero targets and for remaining in the Paris Agreement, which is predicated on achieving net zero targets.
And she is also for a “technologically agnostic” energy mix that would allow coal to be included in the energy subsidies scheme that the Labor government has in place to accelerate the replacement of coal.
Ley may well be tech agnostic, but the Nationals don’t seem to be. National Party leader David Littleproud gives lip service to the phrase, but during public appearances he refers specifically to the importance of coal and gas.
Senator Matt Canavan, the man Littleproud appointed to lead a review of the party’s energy policy, is all in. On Tuesday, he embarked on a social media binge in support of his favourite energy source. “Let’s give coal a chance,” he wrote at the end of one of many X missives. As though Australia has not already done so.”
~ Nick O’Malley, Environment and Climate Editor, The Age
“The Coalition’s move this week to abandon the bipartisan support for Australia reaching net zero emissions by 2050 is spectacular nonsense that misrepresents the clear evidence about what is really pushing up electricity prices – overwhelmingly, fossil fuels, not renewable energy – and how other countries are responding to the climate crisis. It is also a signal that some of the country’s most powerful voices are once again attempting to turn climate denial into a political weapon.”
~ Adam Morton, The Guardian’s climate and environment editor
→ The New Daily – 14 November 2025:
A Coalition government would need to subsidise ageing and new coal-fired power stations
“With its decision to dump net zero by 2050, the only way the Liberal Party could provide for Australia’s future electricity needs is by nationalising new power generation. So much for the party of free enterprise.”
→ Michael West Media – 18 November 2025:
“I only looked backwards”: A letter to my great grandchildren
“A letter from 2075, written by a former right-wing politician to his eight great grandchildren. Rex Patrick Junior reports on the deathbed confessions of a man who got it wrong.” By Rex Patrick
HEAT DEATHS: ONE DEAD EVERY MINUTE
The rate of heat-related deaths has surged by 23 per cent since the 1990s, even after accounting for increases in populations, to an average of 546,000 a year between 2012 and 2021.
“That is approximately one heat-related death every minute throughout the year,” said Prof Ollie Jay, of the University of Sydney, Australia, who was part of the analysis team. “It is a really startling number and the numbers are going up.”
Despite the harm, the world’s governments provided $956 billion in direct fossil fuel subsidies in 2023, which was the world’s hottest year on record until it was surpassed by 2024.
Governments gave out $2.5 billion a day in direct subsidies to fossil fuel users and producers in 2023, the researchers found, while people lost about the same amount because of high temperatures preventing them from working on farms and building sites. Reduced coal burning has saved about 400 lives a day in the last decade, the report says.
Australia provided $11 billion in fossil fuel subsidies in 2023.
The world’s 100 largest fossil fuel companies increased their projected production in the year up to March 2025, which would lead to carbon dioxide emissions three times those compatible with the Paris climate agreement target of limiting heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels, the report says. Commercial banks are supporting this expansion, with the top 40 lenders to the fossil fuel sector collectively investing a five-year high of $611 billion in 2024.
→ The Guardian – 29 October 2025:
Rising heat kills one person a minute worldwide, major report reveals
“Biggest analysis of its kind finds millions are dying each year from combined effects of failure to tackle climate crisis.”
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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 573
Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General: (00:00)
We are at the moment of truth, but we have a breakdown of trust.
Jingle: (00:15)
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. We’d like to acknowledge, as always, that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re broadcasting from stolen land, land that was never ceded, always was and always will be First Nations land. Now with the recent parliamentary decision to have a treaty with First Nations Victorians, we are hoping that in that process we learn much more of the ancient wisdom that they’ve accumulated by nurturing both their land and their communities for millennia because in that ancient wisdom lies many of the answers we are going to need for the way we treat, the way we live.
Mik Aidt: (01:27)
Power outages, travel and transport delays, flash flooding, once again, road closures, damage to cars, damage to houses, the list goes on. Giant hail up to 9 cm wide, people injured. Again, media calling it ‘wild weather’, ‘extreme weather’ and so on. Let’s blame Mother Nature, right? So when the horse races are cancelled because of wild weather, it’s ‘Mother Nature’ we blame, or when the roads are closed because of flash flooding.
Instead of having an honest discussion about that this is actually not Mother Nature’s work, this wild weather is something we have brought upon ourselves by refusing to listen to the scientists who have warned us loud and clear since the 1980s. That’s 50 years of warnings from the scientists with a very clear message unless we stop polluting the air with all the smoke from our cars and buses and factories. We are disrupting the weather, the climate and heat is the big killer in this. 2023 was the world’s hottest year on record until it was surpassed by 2024.
Heat is killing half a million people on average every year. That’s through the last decade. Which means that globally, every minute throughout the year, every minute someone is dying a heat related death. Think about that number, every minute. And what’s worse, the numbers are going up. None of us is immune to this impact of climate pollution.
And then in the middle of all of this, in Australia, our political leaders are suddenly pulling the handbrakes on solutions. We saw here on Sunday, the Coalition walking away from having a target of net zero in 2050, saying, ‘This is all about affordability and responsibility’.
‘Responsibility!?’
We’re hearing from the energy experts that they’re saying that there is no economic or even scientific basis for this whatsoever. It is nonsense because fossil fuels are pushing up power bills and wrecking our weather systems in the process, by the way, not wind and solar.
Meanwhile, our government continues to pour billions of dollars into fossil fuel subsidies. $11 billion of our taxpayer money was handed out to the fossil fuel industry last year. And the banks keep backing coal and gas expansion that takes us way beyond the Paris limits.
In this last decade, since the Paris Agreement was signed, Australia’s four big banks have pumped $60 billion into the fossil fuel industry. That’s despite all the scientific warnings. And even as we can see the climate crisis intensify.
This is not ‘responsibility’. This is a failure of responsibility. At the exact moment you could say when responsibility and honesty speaking truthfully about these figures is what our country needs. The truth is that wind and solar are expanding rapidly all over the world.
MacKenzie King, Canadian Prime Minister, speaking in the 1940s: (04:54)
“Unite in a national effort to save from destruction all that makes life itself worth living”.
Mik:
There’s a major shift happening towards renewable energy. Why? Because it’s cheaper, it’s better. And why would Australia not want to be part of that transition? The truth is also that the two banks that are the worst, most destructive banks in this country are Westpac and ANZ. And let’s call them out. They accounted for more than 80 per cent of all the lending into fossil fuel companies in the last two years. Westpac and ANZ backing a wave of destructive fossil fuel expansion.
So if you have your money in Westpac or ANZ, it’s time to get your money out of there. Australia has several other good banks that you could invest your money or put your money in that are not being put into fossil fuels.
The truth is also, and that’s important, that this climate war is transforming how we build and retrofit our houses to save energy and how we create new connections and gather, come together as communities to become more resilient communities. And that’s what we’ll be talking about in The Sustainable Hour today.
But before we do that, let’s hear a bit about what’s been happening out there around the world. And for that we have Colin Mockett OAM, who is ready with the global outlook.
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COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK: (06:27)
Yes, thank you, Mik, and my roundup this week begins of course in Belém, Brazil, where COP30 is underway. It’s a week now. The conference began on a refreshing note when Brazil’s President Luiz Lula da Silva set the tone at the opening session by declaring that the battle for truth has become just as critical as the fight to cut emissions.
COP30 must mark a new defeat for climate denialists, he said. As a result, 12 nations, including Brazil, Canada, France, Germany and Spain – but not Australia – signed onto the first ever Declaration of Information Integrity on Climate Change. That means that they pledged to fight back against the flood of false information, greenwashing and data smudging that has marked every previous COP meeting.
‘The declaration calls for concrete steps to be taken during this COP to dismantle networks of climate lies and shield evidence-based voices from harassment and attacks.’ Now that’s a direct quote from President De Silva’s speech.
It’ll be interesting to see if it makes a difference bearing in mind the estimated 1,600 lobbyists at the conference from the fossil fuel industry.
But now to the United Kingdom, which is at present in the grip of a snowy cold snap, which arrived in the wake of Storm Claudia, and that was actually named by the Spanish Meteorological Office. Claudia is rated as a category 5 storm with elements of hurricanes and typhoons packed inside it. It brought havoc and floods to Spain, death to Portugal, and then it crossed the Channel and the Irish Sea to cause widespread damage and flooding in Ireland and then Wales, most notably parts of Monmouthshire.
Like most weather events these days, not only is Claudia attributed to climate change, as is its high strength and intensity. That’s no longer unusual to hear it’s extremely high and intense due to climate change we now just expect it.
Now I have an unusual story from Texas in the US. There there’s a place called Corpus Christi. It’s the state’s eighth largest city and it had plans to build a desalination plant by 2023 at a cost of 140 million US dollars. Now this was in order to convert seawater into fresh water that could be used by its many refineries and chemical plants. The city committed to provide tens of millions of gallons of water per day to its industrial operations. These include a plastic plant co-owned by ExxonMobil and Saudi Basic Industries Corporation. It also included a lithium refinery for Tesla batteries and a speciality chemicals plant operated by Chemours.
Now these factories are now in full operation, but the desalinisation plant stalled at the planning process as its projected costs ballooned to more than a billion dollars. So it didn’t go ahead. Now in the meantime, the city has experienced an ongoing drought, with its reservoirs at an all-time low levels.
Today, the residents face water restrictions that we would recognise here in Australia, while the industrial operations, which are exempt from all water restrictions, keep on drawing the water that they were promised, but this is from the city’s drinking supply. Officials predict that Corpus Christi’s water demand will likely exceed supply within six months, making Corpus Christi, Texas, a city which is slightly larger than Geelong, it’s got 350,000 people, making Corpus Christi the first to be ruined by its own chemical industries. And its story clearly illustrates the level of responsibility that’s accepted by multinational chemical companies.
Now back to the COP talks in Berlin. Delegates heard in the first days that if countries live up to their commitments, global average temperatures were still expected to rise between 2.3°C and 2.5°C degrees by 2100. That’s a reduction on previous forecasts. And without further ambition, the world is still on track for a 2.8°C degrees of warming. An Australian at the talk, such climate scientist Bill Hare, said that negotiations would be a test of whether the world is serious about fixing the projections where we’re heading now, which is towards two and three degrees over pre-industrial levels.
“My feeling is that the Paris Agreement is at stake at this COP,” he said. “If you can’t deal with this central problem, where the world has agreed on a temperature goal and it’s missing it by a mile and a half, the magnitude and duration of this overshoot must be limited as much as possible,” he added.
Now in his opening speech, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres lashed leaders for their “moral failure and deadly negligence”. “The hard truth is that we have failed to ensure we remain below 1.5°C degrees,” he said.
“After decades of denial and delay, science now tells us that a temporary overshoot beyond the 1.5°C limit, starting at the latest in the early 2030s, is inevitable.”
The most positive news from this COP so far is that this year, for the first time, renewables overtook coal as a generator as most of the world’s energy.
Now Australia is represented at COP30 by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen and Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy Josh Wilson.
South Australia’s Premier Peter Malinauskas is there too, hoping to land the next COP for Adelaide. He didn’t sound too hopeful though, saying “It’s a long way to go to not make a difference.”
He was referring to the COP31 host decision that’s between Australia and Türkiye. Because it was announced in the first week of this COP that if neither Türkiye nor Australia reach a deal to secure the event by the time that this COP has finished, next year’s conference won’t go to either of them. It will go to the default city. That’s the German city of Bonn. So that’s given the Australians and the Turkish an incentive to come to a deal.
And so finally, I’ve got news of the world’s most environmental sports team, Forest Green Rovers, who played Gateshead in their English National League at the weekend. They won 4-1, putting them back on top of the ladder in what has become a very tight contest.
Meanwhile, the Forest Green Rovers women’s team slipped from first to fourth in their Premier Division Tier 5 league, not because they lost, but because their match was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch. They have now played three fewer matches than the leading teams and they’re three points behind. Unfortunately, they play in Gloucestershire and their ground copped the edge of Storm Claudia. And that piece of mixed and sort of complimentary news finishes my roundup for the week.
. . .
Jingle:
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Tony: (15:30)
Our guest today is Kate Shelton. Kate is the founder and driving force behind a group called PeaceMeals. That’s P-E-A-C-E Meals. So Kate, welcome to the Sustainable Hour. Thanks for coming on.
Kate Shelton:
Thank you.
Tony:
Okay, can you give us a bit of an idea of the thinking behind PeaceMeal? What is it exactly and how did it come about?
Kate:
Well, for a little bit of background, I have to go far back really to my childhood in northern New South Wales on an isolated property at Moree, which was a very racist town. And my father employed First Nations people to work as casual workers on the property. their conditions, they lived in a little cottage. Their conditions probably weren’t great. They were given meat, but not vegetables, and they would come and go at different times as itinerant workers, but my father had a deep respect for the Aboriginal people and when he went fishing, he connected up with them. They gave him advice about fishing. They went fishing with him in the Gwydir River.
So then as an adult, I went to live in Sydney and I witnessed people making decisions about First Nations people in rural areas and decisions about housing and education in the public service, but that never actually met a First Nations person. There are people in the city making decisions, policies, government policies. So that struck me because I taught in Moree, so I was quite connected to the First Nations people there and the complexities of the problems and the racism. And so I was amazed that we were still making decisions, but were uninformed about First Nations people.
And then as a young adult, I went to live in Greece and I was a tourist girl in Greece, but I stayed and I lived in Greece for two years, so I didn’t know the language. So I lived and worked there. And so I was an outsider. I wasn’t well respected in Greece because I was a tourist girl. And so I got the feeling of being an outsider and I got the feeling of not understanding the language and trying to communicate in a second language, which I was trying to learn. So I had those two things in me.
And then as a mature person, a very mature person, I moved to Melbourne and I felt very isolated when I came here and I really couldn’t get appropriate work for me or I didn’t have a community. I had family but they were all busy in a way. So what was happening at the time in Murdoch Media we were hearing all the children overboard, all the refugees coming, refugees are taking over.
Refugees were in prison, in detention, and I realised that people that I knew had strong views on refugees, but they hadn’t met one. Just like people had strong views on First Nations people, but they hadn’t met them. And so I knew at my strengths, I have a cooking background, and I knew that I have been able to bring people together.
So I thought, okay, what I’m going to do is I’m going to cook some meals and I’m going to bring the refugees together with the middle-class educated people that I know. So I used a little cafe in Collingwood. It was a social studio. They already were dealing with refugees there. And so I cooked a meal for 20 people and I had 10 refugees and 10, you know, around about. So I went out to Dandenong. I went to markets. I went to live music where new Australians were performing or where they were functioning and I engaged them and invited them. And I did all this through Facebook really because new groups in Australia, they tend to all have Facebook pages so they can connect with each other. Facebook was the platform that I could connect with people. So I established it through Facebook.
So then it grew and then through Lander and Roger, a legal company in Melbourne, they did all the legal work for free and set it all up legally and did the constitution. And so then, you know, we had a non-for-profit business. And so then instead of trying to have these dinners in places where we had to pay rent,
We used cafes that were closed at night. we used cafes that functioned during the day. And so they allowed us to use the kitchen at night. So we’d go in and I always got the refugees to cook and cook their traditional food and we helped them. we had a big group of us in the constitution as all volunteers. No one is paid and no CEO, no board member is receiving any money. And so, I was quite adamant about that, but we were able to pay the refugees for their cooking. so all the dinners are paid for by donation at the end of the dinner. So people who have secure income can pay whatever they wish, and people who don’t have secure income aren’t expected to pay at all.
Colin: (21:35)
Lovely! I’ve got two queries. Number one, over what sort of a time span are you talking? Over how many years have you grown the business to its current state? Number two, this is a sustainable hour, so we always look for a sustainability element. How do you collate the sustainable, the sustainability of the planet with what you’re actually doing for refugees and First Nations people?
Kate:
Okay, so we’ve been going since 2016. Well, I suppose our most sustainable aspect is that we haven’t gone out and rented a new venue and established a new venue. We’re using venues that are already there and are already established. So that would be our most sustainable thing. And everything is done online. We don’t have to use paper. We’re an online sort of connected business. But I thought… Yeah, right from the beginning I thought, why there’s hundreds of cafes in Melbourne? Why would we start up another cafe? So we use what’s already established.
Colin:
Yep. And where do you get your food from? Do you purchase it?
Kate:
The food, yes, we haven’t got donations for food because refugees need particular food. They often get it from a local place where they get their food, whether it’s an Indian spice shop or whatever. So, yeah, we purchase the food wherever we can at markets and things, but that’s a bit ad hoc.
Colin:
But they turn up with their food and do you pay them for it or is that just their donation too?
Kate:
No, no, we don’t ask them, we don’t ask refugees to donate for us white people, us white established people. We make sure they’re fully paid. They have to, they have to give receipts. And so they’re paid for the money. We sort of, we have a recommended amount that, you know, we need, we’d give them advice on how many kilos of meat and so our didders would, would be serving 60, 70, 80 people in the last couple of years. But after COVID, things changed because we were unable to sustain, of course, during the lockdowns. And some of the venues that we’ve been using were not available. So I thought, well, the next thing that is in our society are pubs. And there’s a pub in every country town. There’s a pub in every suburb. So I said, why are we using the pubs? So I frequented a pub here near where I lived.
In the dead of winter, I went into a pub one night, into the public bar, because we had pubs in the country. And there were eight men in that, it was probably a sporty bar, you know. And there were eight men in the pub and none of them were talking to each other. They were all facing away, they were on the phone, watching the TV, they weren’t engaging. So I thought, okay, we can change this one night a week. So I asked the public could we have a communal table set up for the Parma Nights. And so we invite people to come and sit at the communal table if they want to.
Now the Bendigo Bank, talking about banks, the Bendigo Bank is a fantastic bank. 80 per cent of their profit goes back into the community. So they give us $100 for every meal so we can pay for people who are not able to pay. So we can invite people who don’t have secure income so they can attend. So we mix new Australians up with established Australians and the locals in the pub. Because pubs are usually friendly places. So that’s been the focus this last year of having PeaceMeals in the pub. And the interesting thing is that a lot of women want to come. Because by having a group and a communal table and we share the food, we order food and we share, we pass the food to each other, that women feel comfortable to come. So I’m hoping one day that we can have many different nationalities feeling at home in a pub and not having to drink alcohol. So that’s where we’re going.
Mik:
This is happening at the same time, Kate, as we’re seeing streets filled with people who are angry about too many immigrants and so on.
Kate:
What I’ve seen, I think it’s criminal for a government to allow immigrants in and then not provide the proper services for them to assimilate or to adjust. So one, we need to have the right number of immigrants for the facilities that we have in this country. And there’s no point just bringing them in. Now I’ve seen many immigrants suffer, suffer from before COVID, lack of doctors come here, can’t get jobs. Engineers come here, you know, they have to get cleaning jobs. There’s usually pretty good teaching of English. you know, immigration should be a very strategic thing that is reflected in our capacity to have more people here and the sorts of jobs that we want immigrants for. I’ve seen a lot of immigrants suffer terribly because of the lack of services and lack of government policy to support them.
Tony:
Kate, you mentioned a hotel. Is it just one that you guys go to?
Kate:
Okay well we’ve um yes, we started at the Balaclava Hotel in St Kilda East. Then to The Inkerman Hotel in Inkerman Street St Kilda East. it’s a small family hotel and it’s a very friendly place and they have accommodated us and they have a table set up for us every fortnight. The Bendigo Bank in this area funds us for publicising.
And we have about 25 people every fortnight. And so we’ve got a core group of probably 50 people that come and go, not every fortnight, but there’s now people supporting each other, knowing each other, exchanging numbers. And some of them are new Australians and established Australians. There’s scientists, there’s lawyers, there’s young people suffering from domestic violence, there are refugees. And so it’s a real mix. And the pub has been a great place because it’s friendly and relaxed.
Colin: (28:00)
When’s the next pub event?
Kate:
Okay, so we’re having a break over Christmas, December and January. We will be back in February and we’ve received funding again for next year from the Bendigo Bank. So we’ll be starting again in February.
Colin:
That’s excellent. I’m an avid viewer of Landline on the ABC. I recall over the past couple of months, I’ve seen two items on Landline, both regarding refugee communities. There was an Indian community that was growing, I think it was tomatoes and zucchinis and giving free food away because they were Sikhs and that’s what Sikhs do. They give vegetarian food away to the poor or to anybody who turns up. They don’t make any restrictions on the thing. The other group was a Vietnamese. The Vietnamese who had taken over a business, again it was a growing business, and turned it around to the point that it’s now exporting, and that was vegetables, and various groups of vegetables. That put me in mind when I was watching that, that the time when the Vietnamese arrived in large numbers in the 1970s, we in Australia welcomed them and had the sort of programs in place for learning English, for learning how to integrate with us. And it really highlighted in my mind watching this just how far we’ve gone in the opposite direction. We now put them in jail and treat them as criminals instead of welcoming them and teaching our language to them. And landline showed that when you do treat people properly, they come back and become really very good members of the community.
Kate: (30:15)
Yes, yes, yes, I agree, yep. And the psychological suffering of people that are put in detention or community detention, there is a family that’s been 13 years waiting for approval and during some of that time they’re not allowed to work, they’re not allowed to study. Even refugees recently that came from Ukraine weren’t allowed to study, weren’t allowed to work, were stuck in a unit for two years.
That’s improved now, but the psychological treatment of people, you know, it ends up costing the government more money for recovery. But yes, 99 per cent of people are good and there’s always some issues that we hear about in the press, but the large percentage of people, I think, know, are treated with respect. So that’s our mission is to treat people with respect and have trust and understanding.
Colin:
99 per cent of people are good, it’s the 1 per cent that are the difficult ones – and we keep voting for the buggers.
Kate: (31:26)
Well, politicians might be a different. There might be a higher percentage!
Tony:
Kate, I’m wondering what this work has done for you personally.
Kate:
Well, people say to me, ‘Kate, you’re doing a great job. You’re doing a great job’. And I say, but I’m doing it for me because I’ve created a community for myself. And look, a lot of people have come on and volunteered and helped people. We’ve helped people get work. We’ve helped people get training. We’ve helped people get permanent jobs. It has helped a lot of people. And when people would come to a dinner and they say, I want to help that young man to buy a bike so they didn’t go to soccer training.
I say don’t give the money to us, don’t give it to PeaceMeals, just give it to him directly. Don’t come through us. And so a lot of friendships and relationships have formed because we’re quite ad hoc. If you sit beside somebody and have a meal and you pass your food to each other and you have a nice conversation, then often there’s a connection. And that’s all we do really is offer an opportunity for people to connect.
We don’t provide housing, we don’t provide language, we just offer a place for mutual understanding and mutual respect. And we can’t dictate that. If it happens, it happens. And it has happened a lot. And so it has had profound effect on some people. One Afghan refugee who was studying law, he finished his law degree and his wife. We helped them get work experience, we helped them get a job.
And he’s now policy advisor, moved to Canberra. He’s policy advisor for Southeast Asia for the government. So, you know, if people are given the right opportunity, they flourish. Not everybody, but a lot do.
Mik:
Here in Geelong we started a Connection Café just a couple of months ago. It used to be called the Climate Cafe. For about a year it ran as a Climate Cafe, a monthly event on the fourth Friday of the month where people would come straight in from the street, you could say, and a very mixed group, similar to what you’re describing. Not, as I recall, many refugees, but certainly people from all levels and corners of society. And it’s been interesting how… that development of that connection, how it’s grown. And it’s empowered people, I think, to be more active and new ideas and new events are happening.
Just this weekend, there was an event where about 20, 25 people did a meditation walk in Eastern Park in Geelong to get out to this colony of bats that we have out there. And then there was a lecture, some presentations by scientists about bats. And it was amazing to see, you know, that sort of conglomeration, you could call it, of people connecting both with each other and with nature. And there were people doing artworks about the bats. And there was a lot of talk about how bats connect with humans and so on. All this under the umbrella of one big word, which is connection.
Kate:
Yes, yeah. Well, it’s quite amazing really when you see, as you said, different people from different backgrounds are meeting in a cafe to connect. Because if people are born in the inner city and maybe go to a private school and then maybe go to a university and then maybe go to work for a corporation, they don’t actually go to the suburbs very often. They don’t know what’s happening in the suburbs and they don’t mix with anyone in the suburbs.
And so we have a lot of policies, even journalists, who are inner-city based and don’t have the opportunity to mix with different people from different backgrounds. And I think that’s, you know, it’s a failing of our society to not be able to come together from all backgrounds. In small villages in Greece, and you know, not wealthy people, small communities, they have lots of religious festivals. So, you know, the day starts with a religious festival, but at night, the community gather, everyone gathers, you know, they have communal food, they have plastic chairs and tables, they have a couple of fiddle players, a bazooka player, and everyone dances together, and it’s all ages, and it’s everyone in the community, the people who are poor, the widows, the grandparents, the children.
And it just strikes me how everyone contributes in a small way. I really feel that we have that in the rural areas where people support each other through droughts and hard times, floods, people travel and support each other. But in the city, I feel we’re really lacking that community connection where people from different backgrounds can get together in a space.
You just need a little space to dance and a place to eat simple food. And it keeps me going back there because it is a very strong communal sense without having to cost a lot.
Colin:
So you must be Melbourne’s Shirley Valentine.
Kate:
I went when I was 24, I was a bit young, but I came back to Australia.
Colin:
And you’d like to bring that sort of community. You’re unlikely to get it, even in pubs, know. Well, Australians are not that sort of, hey, let’s all get together and have a good old dance thing. At last weekend, if you remember, they were protesting because they’d been shut out from a free punk concert, which is a long way from all getting together and dancing together.
Mik:
What’s in the horizon for like the coming years? What’s your big vision?
Kate:
Well, if, because the Bendigo Bank is funding us now, if this goes well in this pub at Inkermen, the Inkermen pub, if it goes well and we can get a format that can be repeated in other pubs, we can then get some funding statewide and spread it around to other pubs. Because if we can get a format that’s simple, it’s very simple because I go in and order food for 20 people, they reply on Facebook or ring me up.
We share the food. At the end of it, we go around with the card or cash and people donate what they want to and people who don’t have money, I know who they are, they don’t pay. So it’s not complex. It doesn’t cost money. It’s all done online. It’s not complex. So I just want to do it for another year till we just… you know, we get a format that’s working that everybody’s happy with and then we will see if we can replicate it. But we are expanding it, getting creative people together, vulnerable people, strong, emerging artists and crafts people and food people and using recycle, getting things from secondhand shops, changing them, repairing them, remaking them. And so I did that in Canberra.
And so using what is free and available for vulnerable people and for emerging artists. That’s the new one.
. . .
SONG (39:04)
‘In Our Street’
Verse 1:
In our little street, we gather what we can
We can’t change the whole world, but we can lend a hand
There are neighbours who are struggling, others standing strong
When we mix together, we connect, we belong
Pre-Chorus:
A table on a naturestrip, just bring your own chair
We’ve got plenty of drinks and food to share
Chorus:
Kindness, respect, understanding and trust
That’s all we can offer, and it’s often enough
We can’t turn the seasons, or storms that will come
But we can open our door when the day is done
In kindness, in respect, in understanding – and trust
Verse 2:
In a schoolyard conversation, or the local pub
Someone’s passing the plates, someone’s fetching the cups
We welcome you here for a meal at our table
Just come as you are — we only hold what we’re able
Pre-Chorus:
Small acts in small places, a friendly gesture, a smile
We stitch what we can, we adjust, we align
Chorus:
Kindness, respect, understanding and trust
It’s the quiet achievement when we do what we must
We can never change things beyond our control
But we can show one another that ‘we got your back’
In kindness, in respect, in understanding – and trust
Instrumental intermission (soft)
Bridge: (soft, intimate)
One meal shared, we are no longer strangers
New stories drift in, the energy uplifts us
With clarity, direction,
there’s a healing
and a new feeling of hope setting in
Final Chorus:
Kindness, respect, understanding and trust
Street by street, that’s how we rise up
We can’t fix the whole world, but here is where we can start
With a chair and a voice that confirms: “You are welcome!”
In kindness, in respect, in understanding – and trust.
In kindness, in respect, in understanding – and trust.
. . .
Spoken words:
Kate Shelton:
We can’t control what’s beyond us, but we can control our local, our family, our neighbours and our little community and that’s where we should reach out for kindness, respect, understanding and trust because that’s all we can do really.
. . .
Kate: (42:52)
You’re welcome to come along and attend. We do have a mix of people until next February.
Colin:
Yes, not till next February – in that case we’ll put it out to our listeners then Kate.
Kate:
Yes, yes, that’s a good idea.
Tony:
Before Mik brought up the idea of the conflict around immigrants and refugees that’s happening, think projects like yours make that less likely because there’s interaction between the two groups and people end up saying, well, like stereotypes get smashed, stereotypes that are built up by so much of our media that feed that sort of fear, you go a long way towards getting rid of that. Well done.
Kate:
Well, the stereotypes are amazing. The stereotypes that the media feeds about the South Sudanese, about Indians taking our jobs. There are issues within communities.
But there are also very good people doing a lot of work, very successful people, very intelligent people, very well-educated people. They’re amongst all of that. So the stereotypes does so much damage, so much damage. And that comes from the conservative press that we have, which seems to be getting worse and worse. So yes, it’s important that we, you know, I say turn off the TV and come out to dinner because you’re coming out to strangers, you’re coming out to meet strangers. And that is life-changing. To meet people from a completely different background and having a conversation with people, it makes you appreciate that we’re more similar than we are different and the stereotypes don’t exist.
We’ve had a lot to do with the South Sudanese because Landren Rogers did internships for training, any South Sudanese who was doing law ended up at Landren Rogers and they were very helpful for them. So Daniel Ajak, he came from South Australia to Melbourne to help the South Sudanese community. He’s employed a lot of South Sudanese and yes, they’re very active in dealing with these community problems that they’re facing now.
Mik:
Kate, in the bigger picture, in the bigger scheme of things, it seems to me society is so much going in another direction than what you are doing. What would be your advice to our listeners in terms of helping if they like that attitude that you have towards building community and being nice to each other and actually opening up conversations in between each other instead of going in rallies and being angry? What would be your message to our listeners?
Kate:
Well, I think the first thing that people can do is in their own street. We can’t control the politicians, we can’t control everything in the environment, we can control our little area. So in our little street or in our school community or in our local pub, we can invite people. We are aware of people around us who are struggling, who are vulnerable, who are strong. So it’s mixing those together. In our street, we can have a little street gathering.
In our school we can have a little social gathering. If we’re comfortable in a pub we can invite people who don’t drink alcohol, maybe some people is against their religion, but we can invite them to the pub to feel that friendliness and it’s not expensive. So my belief is we can’t control what’s beyond us, but we can control our local, our family, our neighbours and our little community and that’s where we should reach out for kindness, respect, understanding and trust because that’s all we can do really.
Colin:
It’s important to remember that the pub in in hostelry pub comes from public. It was a public house. It was simply a house that was open to the public. It wasn’t a place where you would get drunk. That’s evolved from it. But I’m a historian and I can tell you that the first council in Geelong area was held in a pub because we didn’t have a town hall then.
Our hospital evolved from a meeting that was held in a public house. They had a public house meeting that was called by a minister, a church minister, who said, we need a hospital, come along to the meeting. And then they raised money and then contacted, got all the names together and contacted the state government and said, “Give us an area because we want a hospital. If you come on board, we don’t want money from you, just give us the space to build one.” And that’s what they did. But it was a pub that started it. So more power to your elbow, okay?! Keep going!
Kate:
Thank you, thank you.
. . .
Jingle (48:24)
The Pulse is now fully independent. No corporate strings, no outside agendas, just pure community-powered radio. This is your sale, your stories, your station. From local artists to global beats, we’re shaping the future together. So tune in, speak up and be part of the movement. A new era has begun.
Colin:
Speaking really about building communities and multicultural and First Nations. It’s not our normal remit of sustainable living, but it is very much so about The Pulse, because The Pulse radio station has always been a platform for both First Nations people and for the different ethnic minorities that make up a really multicultural country that we live in. We’ve got two big things. Number one, in Australia we have the world’s oldest living culture that’s still going. And we should be so proud of it and we should be supporting it and we should be pushing it through our radio station and we do. What we now got to do is get more people involved.
Mik:
The Pulse has changed lives in Geelong, especially within the multicultural community. As a Dane who came to Geelong 13 years ago, I certainly felt that The Pulse was my entry into Geelong very much. I got to know so many people so quickly after we started The Sustainable Hour and had this weekly program where we were talking, in this case, about sustainability, but also it was about meeting each other.
Just like we’ve been talking about in The Sustainable Hour today, it’s about meeting people at all different levels and coming from all different corners of society. And what The Pulse does in a way is it amplifies that cultural interconnection in a great way. It’s not just about local news, it’s also about local connections.
Tony:
Yep. The good thing about community radio like The Pulse is that it restores democracy. That marginalised groups that often don’t get a voice are given that space by a station like The Pulse. And yeah, I guess that’s that’s one of the reasons why that we take part in The Sustainable Hour – take part in in weekly for years – have been part of that is to give the environmental perspective on something. And we openly encourage debate around that. And these things can’t happen without fundraising like this. So if you like the work we’re doing and the work that The Pulse is doing generally, yeah, kick in a bit and make sure it continues because without platforms like The Pulse, democracy is far worse for it because mainstream media doesn’t go down this path. So we need community radio, a strong community radio voice in as many communities as possible. The policy is going well, has been for a long time, so let’s continue it.
Mik:
And as a minimum, I would say you can do what Tony and Colin and I have done, which is that we are subscribers to The Pulse. You can also, of course, if you really like what Tony is saying there, you know, building democracy and understanding the importance of having a local community radio like The Pulse in our Geelong region, you can donate. You can go to www.947thepulse.com. You click on the ‘Get involved’ tab and you can channel your dollars to launch the next wave here at this independent community radio station, The Pulse.
Jingle:
From the laneways of Geelong to the world beyond, the pulse is amplifying voices that matter. Now fully independent, we’re breaking barriers and building bridges. Your stories. Your sound. Your station. Join us in crafting a sonic landscape that reflects who we are and where we’re going. A new era has begun.
Colin:
We traditionally finish, well we’re out of time now, we traditionally finish with… good! We traditionally end with a ‘Be…’. ‘Be the difference’, we always used to say, but then over the last couple of months now we’ve been looking for alternatives to be the difference, we’ve had be aware, be involved. How would you finish our program with a Be…?
Kate:
I would say be respectful of differences. Be respectful.
. . .
SONG (53:30)
‘Starting From Today’
Verse 1:
Looking at your face right now
As you scroll through the headlines
I see the worry in your eyes
About the world we leave behind
And I know you’re wondering
If anyone will make it right
But baby, let me tell you something
That keeps me up at night
There’s still time to change the way
Things are going day by day
And when you feel like giving up
Remember what I say
Chorus:
I can be that difference
I can be that change
I can be that difference
Starting from today
Verse 2:
Dad, I’ve seen the videos
Of how things used to be
Clear skies and clean waters
It’s hard to believe
But I’m not just sitting here
Waiting for a miracle
Got my friends beside me now
We’re making it possible
Every small step counts, they say
Little changes pave the way
When it seems too much to bear
Listen close, I swear
Chorus:
I can be that difference
I can be that change
I can be that difference
Starting from today
Bridge:
We rise together
Hand in hand we’ll find a way
We rise together
Every choice we make today
Shapes tomorrow’s way
Chorus:
I can be that difference
I can be that change
I can be that difference
Starting from today
Outro:
We rise together
Starting from today
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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