Vote Climate

Vote Climate is a communication network of grassroots climate groups. Here are my responses to their survey.

I am not an endorsed candidate from a political party or a member of a political party.

My topic priorities are:

Maintaining the community’s voice in planning
Improving open space and streetscape amenity both for residents and commercial areas
Direct provision of local services including childcare, aged care, youth services, libraries, and the like
Economic development to provide community services and local employment
Electing a Mayor for a full term of council to ensure consistent residents’ voice for a full term of Council
Better tracking of strategy outcomes to ensure alignment across the laundry list of Council strategies and value for ratepayers’ money
Promoting urban greening that supports biodiversity

My achievements:

I am part of a group of 3 people running “Brunswick Communities for Nature” which grows, buys and distributes indigenous plants suitable for gardens, nature strips and any green open space. We have been operating for 10 years

My thoughts on Climate Change:

Merri-bek has a long history of community activism in this area and a raft of local strategies which include Climate Change responses.
Merri-bek’s strategies include a wide range of policy responses. Better tracking is needed to evaluate the success of these strategies.
I am involved in grass-roots greening initiative in a regular hands-on project.
Merri-bek has well-established Climate Change mitigation policies. These should be rigorously examined for their effectiveness.

Participatory and deliberative democracy

Citizen’s Assemblies may be an effective consultative mechanism but a wide range of community consultative techniques are called for which allow diverse communities to participate. This could be anything from simple surveys online or in person, to more highly intensive practices such as assemblies. Care should be taken in recognising that certain mechanisms suit certain constituency groups and not others.
Respectful debate does not mean no debate. It is important that we continue to observe democratic traditions in allowing both (all) sides to be heard in facilitated settings. Individuals, and political parties, may find complaints procedures, legal action, inflammatory public comment and other less respectful, but ultimately valid forms of political expression, suit their purposes. In the Internet Age, we lack traditional media to hold elected officials to the standards of the past. The best we can do is observe the laws, procedures and regulations that govern the conduct of elected officials.

I am a self-funded candidate. I am not soliciting not receiving any taxpayer or party political funding or funding from private interests (including friends and family).
I am in favour of real-time donation disclosures but recognise the cost to Councils and candidates of these measures.
I strongly oppose single-member wards for their deliberate purpose of reducing democratic diversity. This will have the obvious and immediate effect of locking-in political party candidates and reducing the representation of already under-represented groups.