To convince politicians, you have to think like politicians

Heh, do you mean Martin Luthur King Jr and the "peaceful" Montgomery bus protest? It just happens to be an absolute coincidence that we watched a doco on it today at school. King heavily studied the philosophy of Ghandi, about non-violent approaches and solving evil with love.
Im unsure if that could be related or not. It was more about segregation rather animal rights and I can't immediately think of how the method could be adopted to animal rights (at the top of my head at least) :|

When I used to write letters to companies (and at one stage I was typing about 20 per week), I realised that the focus needs to be on money and corporate gain. A selfish company sees no corporate gain in animal welfare if you say "omgz plz dont kill the pigs!", or even "please think about the standard of welfare". You need to make them feel inadequate without higher standards of animal welfare/animal rights.

For example: Recreational duck shooting is illegal in QLD, whilst in Victoria there are many a happy shooters trotting around with their guns. Its no use telling a politician to "think about the environment". He/She already thought about the environment and quickly decided to leave that issue aside. So instead emphasise that QLD is seen as a more compassionate state, while VIC is behind times. Tell them that VIC needs to be up to date, and to do that, they need to ban duck shooting.

Okay that might not have been a good example, but heres another one.
McDonalds
and their hideous support of intensive farming.
it would be useful to make note that Hungry Jacks in the UK has already begun its phase-out of factory farmed products, whilst introducing a lengthy range of both vegetarian and vegan products. They then recorded a profit of (something) percent and are seen as MODERN, and UP TO DATE.

Thats probably another thing: companies and their obsession with being modern and up to date. So perhaps a "strategy" would be to show that Australia has been left behind. Veg*anism and compassionism (i think thats a word) is the way of the future, and has a few little benefits along the way (i.e- animal rights )

That's a really good idea. I can see that happening... Australia has always been big on being 'forward and fair' and with some American states, the EU and the UK banning sow stalls, battery cages (and all other intensive farming thingos) you would think Australia would have to follow suit?

Maybe, if people are willing to talk to us while leafleting or tabling, and we inform them of other places like the UK and the EU banning intensive farming, it will click that 'this is really wrong.' It may help us lose the "too compassionate" tag... if being too compassionate is even possible.

"compassionim"
OHMYGOSH how could i be so silly haha thats not even a word
compassionism
compassion

-.-'

...everyone must think im realll dotty now

na lol, the idea makes up for it

maybe they'll call this idea of making compassion 'cool' compassionism

*Matt: Well the ultimate goal is to at some point to change my eating habits. I dont see why, in the mean time, i cant compaign to stop the production of meat because i currently eat meat :S Just quitely, dont think i ever said it was morally wrong to eat meat. Its the production of meat that causes all the problems, the consumption only harms that person and so it should be their choice. I respect your beleif that is morally wrong to eat meat but ive heard all the arguments for it and they are all subjective (just like all the arguments that its ok to eat meat), so nothing more can really be said here.

*Karen: I didn't meant to put down the site, im rather impressed with it actually. I just thought that would be a good idea and maybe i was a little overexcited lol
Also, i know of a very good lamens video that describes climate change and theres a part that shows how livestock are involved, i could link you up to see what you think?

*Biophiliac: I've heard that correlation before, but what do you mean by "directly correlates". As im sure everyone here knows, correlation does not mean causation. One could say theres a direct correlation between the decrease in pirates and the increase in global warming, but surely noone is going to suggest that it is the lack of pirates causing it? I dont mean to be technical, its just in my line of study ive done a bit with correlations and i know that they can be misleading, so just making sure.

I like Rochelle's idea as well; a comparitive analysis of states and their environmental polices, in conjunction with that of other countries, would be a compelling argument. If we could maybe enumerate the advantages gained from these countries' policies we could present something that cant be set aside or ignored, one that will gain public interest. Again, as Biophiliac said, its a matter of education. If we can get some more of the nastier stats (creulty-wise and environmental) to be common knowledge it will apply alot of pressure on the respective state government. Remember, all we need is one of these states to comply and the rest will eventually succumb as well.