We had an amazing turn out to our Clean Our Air rally!
Thanks so much to everyone who turned up and called on the government to Protect our Health, Clean our Air, Filter the Stacks!!
Huge thanks to our fabulous line up of speakers. We were honoured to hear from:
- David Ettershank MP, who asked – “why are we having to fight this?” David urged the government to exercise a degree of caution to avoid endangering this already burdened community.
- GP and Associate Professor Vicki Kotsirilos – who gave a sobering talk about the causes and health impacts of air pollution and stressed that “Building the tunnel is a solution, but it’s not the only solution. It is irresponsible not to filter the stacks.”
- Mayor of the City of Maribyrnong Pradeep Tiwari – Maribyrnong City Councillor – who listed the disturbing health statistics we experience and reiterated that the City of Maribyrnong is advocating for the installation of filters during the construction phase.
- Mayor of Hobsons Bay City Council Daria Kellander who stressed that the health of our community shouldn’t be adversely impacted just because of our postcode, and also reiterated Hobsons Bay City Council’s stance on the need for pollution filters to be added to the west gate tunnel vents, to protect the health and wellbeing of Hobsons Bay residents.
We would also like to thank The Snuff Puppets, Cate Broadbent, The Sun Theatre and everyone who gave up their time on a Sunday morning.
The rally received widespread media, including incredible night time TV news coverage on every channel!
It was also got a great write up in Yahoo! news and the ABC online news. The issue was also covered on Mornings with Raf Epstein on ABC Radio Melbourne and Afternoons with Tony Moclair on 3AW.
In other exciting news, The Sun Theatre covered the campaign in a ‘Stories of the West’ Newsreel, to be shown before every movie for a month! It’s a brilliant little film about the rally and campaign for filtration on the West Gate Tunnel vent stacks. Massive thanks to Michael Smith – owner of the Sun and passionate westie – for all his support. We are also very grateful to film maker/editor Bert Murphy. You can watch it here on YouTube, but we encourage you to please support The Sun Theatre and go and see it on the big screen!