AS THE Holyrood campaign moves into its final weeks I’m seeing the appetite for a radical and ambitious vision for Scotland.

This week’s Church of Scotland hustings was a blast from the past, being held in the Assembly Hall at the top of the Royal Mile, which was Parliament’s temporary home while Holyrood was being built. The format began with speeches and discussion from people with direct experience of poverty and inequality in Scotland. As candidates we were expected to listen first, and then respond. It left us in no doubt about the high expectations the audience were setting for the new session of Parliament, especially the need for bold and progressive tax policies.

My colleague Maggie Chapman continued that theme on Tuesday’s TV debate on taxation, clearly setting out the Green proposals to cut income tax for everyone with an income below the average full-time salary, and ensure that wealthier people pay their fair share.

Maggie and I both sat on the Smith Commission after the Indyref, so I share her determination to ensure that the powers Scotland won in that far-from-ideal process are actually put to good use in combating inequality. Perhaps the only real surprise though, was that all opposition parties from left to right are now fully opposed to the idea of slashing Air Passenger Duty (APD). I’m bound to point out of course that it was the Greens who were persistent in the last Parliament in forcing the Scottish Government to drop their claim that this policy would somehow reduce Scotland’s climate change emissions.

Instead of promoting an aviation tax cut, which we know would increase those emissions, I joined our South of Scotland lead candidate Sarah Beattie-Smith to talk up the importance of bus services. Both urban and rural Scotland have seen service cuts and price increases as a result of the deregulated, free-market approach to bus provision. Greens believe that public transport is a public service, and should be run in the public interest. Huge numbers of people rely on bus services every day of their lives, and giving them a better deal would be of far more benefit than an APD cut that would mostly go to wealthy “frequent flyers”.

As well as greener transport policies, we also need to end our over-reliance on fossil fuel extraction, which is now widely recognised as an overvalued industry – an economic bubble that we can’t afford to be this exposed to. It was great to meet with the People and Planet campaigners at Edinburgh University, who are campaigning for the institution’s management to commit to fossil fuel divestment.

Student leadership has been hugely important in putting this issue onto the agenda at universities around the world, and although Glasgow has given a commitment and Edinburgh has made some tentative first steps, it is important that they are followed through.

Replacing those 20th century industries will take huge investment in new jobs and skills of course, so to highlight our policies for ensuring that young people can access jobs, training and education I’ve been visiting youth projects this week too, with my fellow Glasgow candidate Zara Kitson, and with Kirsten Robb and John Wilson as we launched our Central Scotland campaign. That’s one of the regions where we’ve seen a big increase in our activism levels, as our longstanding members are being joined by post-referendum “surge” members.

We were also delighted to welcome our colleague Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales (and yes, once again we had to remind some people that there’s no such thing as the UK Green Party) to support our campaign and help launch Ross Greer’s bid to become Holyrood’s youngest MSP and the first Green MSP in the West of Scotland region.

I always enjoy seeing the confusion among anti-independence politicians in Scotland when they learn that many people campaigning for radical change south of the border see Scottish independence as offering a mutual benefit by challenging the way political power is exercised throughout these islands.

Even better, we had the pleasure of welcoming Natalie in a week when the latest opinion polls showed that the Greens are on track to make big gains in May, with more and more people seeing the need to elect a bolder Parliament that will build pressure for the policies that will help build a better Scotland.

Of course the SNP look set to be the biggest party by a safe margin, but who will be in there bringing pressure to bear? Labour, who condemn everything the SNP ever do? The Tories, who want the cuts to bite harder? Or Greens, who’ll make the case for a bold, progressive agenda, investment in the future, and confidence in Scotland’s ability to define our own future?