Janelle Saffin MP

KNITTING Nannas from the Northern Rivers can now finally ‘come in from the cold’ after seven years of fortnightly knit-in protests outside my predecessor Thomas George’s electorate office.

The Nannas are the original group or loop established to protest Metgasco’s activities, bear witness to the fossil fuel industry and to educate the wider community on the impacts of climate change and the need to transition to renewables.

The movement has grown to 36 loops around Australia and I have always admired the Nannas’ positive and good humoured advocacy.

Local communities on the Northern Rivers overwhelmingly rejected exploration and mining for coal seam gas and unconventional gas, and the Knitting Nannas have been out in front on these issues from the start.

Nannas Judi Summers, of Eltham, and Dominique Jacobs, of Gloucester, recently were among 800 people who undertook former US vice president Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project leadership training in Brisbane.

Ms Summers, along with Nannas Clare Twomey and Georgina Ramsay, showed me a 20-minute presentation on the Climate Reality Project’s goal of encouraging individuals to take steps to reducing their carbon footprint and advocate for climate action.

I am a work in progress footprint wise, but I have committed to doing more in this regard and to working collaboratively with Knitting Nannas Northern Rivers here in the electorate and in Macquarie Street.

Spokesnanna Judi Summers said the Nannas had met with all State election candidates to present a Knagging list to gauge their position on our key issues, and when Ms Saffin provided positive responses on all the issues they knew she would be open to regular meetings.

“Our past experience was that we averaged about four meetings over the seven years and MPs then declined to keep meeting, which is why we did the knit-ins,” Ms Summers said

“We are now considering a change of focus back to education and public awareness.”