Thank you to all our Solar Citizens community leaders and volunteers!

To stop the sun tax, we need your help to signup as many Solar Citizens as possible via our 'Don't Tax the Sun' petition. This can be done by collecting petition signups either online or offline. We're aiming to get 25,000 signatures by the end of November, in time to take the sun tax petition to Parliament in Canberra on Monday December 2nd!

We've created the resources and activities checklist below to help leaders and volunteers take part in our ‘Don’t Tax the Sun’ campaign. Also check out our Leaderboard and Resources pages.

Checklist

Here is a checklist with suggestions for how you could do more to grow the petition and help stop the sun tax. Feel free to come up with your own ideas! All of the resources you'll need to complete the activities below are available here.

Collecting petition signatures offline

We've created this petition form for you to print and use to collect petition sign-ups offline, such as at a community event.

Once you have collected petition sign-ups fill out this excel spreadsheet and email it to [email protected], and we can upload the petition supporters to the national petition. We will give you, your local group or your company credit on our Leaderboards (see below). 

In an online petition a sign-up is only counted if it is identifiable by a unique email address. Thus, we are collecting email addresses rather than signatures.

How to get on our Leaderboards

As if helping to head off this threat to the roll-out of solar power in Australia is not enough of a reward - we are offering fun, solar-themed prizes to those individuals, solar companies and community groups who get the most sign-ups and finish at the top of our Leaderboards on November 30.

We have 3 different Leaderboards:

Solar Citizens
Solar Companies
Local groups

If you are representing a solar company or local community group you will need to set up a Recruiter ID and make sure all of your petition sign-ups are attributed to that ID. If you want to get on our Leaderboards - follow these simple steps here!

Check out the checklist above for ideas on how you can take the lead!

Tips on getting petition signups

The rule of threes - People often need to see something three times before they really take notice. Thus, try using different mediums to spread the word, such as email, Facebook and SMS.

Make it personal - People are more willing to trust those they know. They are also more likely to take action if the communication is personal. Thus, face-to-face is better than phone, phone is better than email, and friends are better than strangers.

Elevator pitch - Make sure you have prepared a short and compelling description for why people should signup. Perhaps something like this:

"Solar is threatening the business model of the big power companies, so they're pushing for there to be an extra tax on solar owners who are connected to the grid. It is totally unfair to penalise solar like this. Don't let them tax the sun. Sign and share this petition: solarcitizens.org.au/suntax"

Keen to start a group?

Starting up a local group in your community to run Solar Citizens campaigns is one of the best ways to protect and increase solar in Australia. Get in touch with us at [email protected] if you would like to start a group.

We will be running trainings and planning sessions in February and March 2014 to help you get informed, make plans and startup a local group to protect and increase solar, so stay tuned!