Thirty Years of Creative Resistance - Friends of the Earth Australia

it was decided that two meetings a year
were needed. The mid year meeting is
used largely for skill sharing and campaign
strategies, while the January meeting
acts as an AGM. While a committee of
management is appointed at the AGM,
the Federation is essentially self-managed
through the national meetings, with
decision-making done by delegates who
are sent by their local group.
In 2001, in another development of
national structure, FoEA established
the National Campaigns Reference
Group (NCRG), which is composed of
representatives from local groups. The
NCRG is responsible for providing advice
and support to the NLOs on broad political
direction and campaign priorities, to
facilitate capacity building of the member
groups of FoEA, to add value to the work
done by FoE International in an Australian
context and to administer a small grants
and loans program for FoEA.
One hallmark of FoE has been its
emphasis on flat decision-making with the
extensive use of non-hierarchical decision
making structures. The ‘membership’
of FoEA is the local groups and while
originally the organisation had worked on a
‘one group, one vote’ basis, with a simple
majority carrying any particular decision,
this changed in the 1980s to a consensusbased
model.
FoEA’s national meetings use a ‘double
consensus’ decision making model with a
provision for voting. Voting is seen as an
option of last resort and it has been more
than a decade since a decision has had
to go to a vote. FoE places considerable
emphasis on internal democracy and skillsharing.
Between the meetings, decisions
are made via ballot. Where decisions are
not unanimous and differences cannot be
mediated by the NLOs, issues are referred
to the next national meeting.
FoE Melbourne has traditionally been the
most ideologically committed of the local
groups to the principles of collectives and
consensus: “FoE began in Australia … at
the same time as ‘new’ ideas relating to
...................................................................................................................................................................................................
ways of organising were being introduced
from the west coast on the USA in
particular. These ideas helped shape
the new FoE. Collectivity had existed in
various forms for centuries, but received
new prominence in the sixties as the
New Left and the feminists undertook
reappraisals of the way organisations
operate as part of their fundamental
questioning of all aspects of society. FoE
is one of the relatively few organisations
that … attempts to continually examine the
way it operates in order to improve access
to as many people as possible, especially
those who are not white, wealthy and
male.” From Chain Reaction.
Since the mid 1990s, the FoE Network
developed substantial policy documents
and guidelines for national office bearers
and campaigns. These are outlined in
the FoE Australia handbook. The FoE
constitution is seen as being the overriding
policy document for the network.
Local groups are expected to have their
own constitution and to defer to the
national constitution as an over-riding
document. An international mission
statement is also used as a guiding
document.
Many FoE groups have formed and
dispersed over the years since the early
seventies. Often the smaller groups have
relied on a small core group to keep
going and when these fell below ‘critical
mass’ the groups have folded. However,
a number of groups including Adelaide/
Nouveau, Sydney, and Fitzroy/ Melbourne
have been in existence for well over 20
years. Most groups rely on memberships,
donations and fundraising or benefits
for their core funding. Some also
receive grants from various government
departments or income from private
foundations for long or short term projects
and campaign initiatives. Individuals
join FoEA by becoming a member of a
local FoE group and FoEA has a long
standing commitment to having members
rather than just supporters (people who
contribute funds to the organisation, with
no other avenue to influence the direction
of the organisation). Individuals can have
FoE 30 Years 129