Understanding Power and Being The Underdog - Paul Oosting is Concerned With What's Right

Today's friend of the pod is Paul Oosting - someone I was thrilled to chat with and learn from based on his career to date as a successful social and environmental change activist and advocator. I want to learn more about how change can be designed and organised and made possible and I know few who have a record like he does.Paul's professional career started out in the volatile world of Tasmanian forestry politics and community dynamics where he worked as a leading figure during the 2000s as part of successful campaign to halt the destruction of huge swathes of ancient Tasmanian forest through the logging activities of Gunns. Anyone who has a memory of nature conservancy and the preservation of wild places likely remembers not just the significance of this campaign individually, but the novel and innovative campaigning strategies and tactics Paul and The Wilderness Society developed by working through the value chain of Gunns' financiers where they succeeded in changing the lending decisions by ANZ in a time before ESG and responsible investment was at all a recognisable way of making decisions. This catalysed a new form of campaign activism here in Australia and beyond which has placed greater focus on the lending and investment decisions of large banks and other financial institutions.The second part of Paul's career that we spend time chatting about is the decade he spent at GetUp, including seven years as its CEO. Again, Paul found himself designing and implementing successful social and environmental change campaigns, growing GetUps membership beyond one million members and in many ways forging the path to the more diverse political system we now see in Australia after a record number of independents won office in 2022. In this chat we talk about not only the powerful and broad church Paul and GetUp built by binding regular Australians who shared similar values and desires for action on climate change, the humane treatment of refugees and the very reasonable ask for the effective scrutiny and accountability of our political system and its actors, but the enormity of fronting GetUp though this period when there were sustained attacks by conservative politicians and captured media interests - or is it the other way around that the politicians are captured by these media interests?Either way, Paul has been on the literal frontlines of significant, successful and society-altering movements in Australia for two decades and I was thrilled to spend some time getting to know him but also how his way of thinking and acting in the world could help me and you understand how to make change possible. I came away invigorated from this conversation and how my own daily practices can be altered using what he shared with me, and I hope you are too by listening.Today's show is delivered with Gilay Estate. Add Finding Nature to your booking reservation for a free dinner and breakfast for each night you stay. Today's show is also delivered with Souling. Head to Souling.au and add FindingNature to the checkout code for 10% off. Send me a messageThanks for listening. Follow Finding Nature on Instagram