The Greens plan for our community
The Inner West is an amazing place to live: vibrant and full of diversity. We’re lucky to live in a welcoming community where people care for one another and stand up for what matters.
But disappointingly, our Council isn’t getting the basics right. The Greens have a plan for a council that listens to the community and works to protect what is special about our local area.
Our plan starts with a vision to make our community a leader in climate action. It includes a plan to stop overdevelopment, care for people and invest in our parks and greenspace.
Make Council a national leader on climate action
We need genuine leadership on climate including harnessing renewable energy, creating a well-connected bike and pedestrian network, investing in electric vehicles and local charging facilities, and community solar panels. The Greens will achieve net zero carbon emissions on , help residents and businesses to make the switch to solar by waiving the development application fee for rooftop solar installations, install solar on all council buildings and heat public pools with renewable energy, transition council vehicle fleet to 100% electric power and build 100 on-street EV charging points, address urban heat by increasing the tree canopy, trialing cool pavements and identifying new ways to reduce urban temperatures.
Action on affordable housing
The Greens love the character of our area. We want to find creative solutions to help deliver increased density and diversity, preserve our historic housing stock, retain embodied energy and make it financially possible for regular homeowners to do so. We will introduce a developer levy to make sure multi-unit development profits are shared with the community, expand the Council affordable housing trust, and build more Council owned public and social housing.
Stop over-development and defend heritage
The state Labor government wants a development free- for- all in the inner west. We need community-led planning to ensure development that is well-located, well-designed and well-built, that respects heritage and is delivered with additional community infrastructure.
Create beautiful streets, parks, playgrounds and green spaces
Council isn’t getting the basics right. We need to invest in our main streets to make them lively, clean and welcoming; expand and upgrade parks and playgrounds, including shade over play equipment, bubblers and clean, working toilets; restore degraded wildlife habitats; and reverse the Council’s anti-tree policy that has significantly reduced tree canopy cover. The Greens will expand and rewild open spaces, grow native habitat, and naturalise our waterways.
Revitalise our high streets
The Greens will develop strategic plans to invest in revitalising our high streets by better supporting local business, beautifying main streets and introducing a levy on empty commercial properties.
Reduce traffic congestion
The Greens will tackle traffic congestion by investing in cycleways and public transport, not more roads and tollways. The Greens will complete the Greenway shared footpath, cycleway and nature corridor from Iron Cove to the Cooks River.
Support arts, entertainment & live music
We will support people in the creative industries from musicians to visual artists, writers to set designers, with studio/work spaces, grants and exhibition spaces to make the Inner West the arts centreer of Sydney.
Care for people through quality services and reducing living costs
We will provide $1 entry for Council pools for all pensioner and concession card holders as well as expand council run playgroups and childcare. We will freeze fees for childcare, aquatic and recreation centres for two years.
An open, democratic and responsive council with integrity
The Labor majority on Council has failed to implement the democratic decision by an overwhelming majority of residents to de-merge the inner west mega-council. Instead it has abolished local resident committees, slashed public council meetings, reduced the rights of councillors and residents to speak and made it harder to access council services. Our plan will ensure an open Council with more community involvement, disclosure by councillors of who is lobbying them and a ban on accepting corporate donations. The Greens will ban the misuse of Council advertising to promote election candidates during Council election periods.
The Greens will stop the outsourcing of Council services and make them easier to access and will continue to support the implementation of the democratic decision of the residents while holding the state Labor government to its pre-election promise to fund any costs of a de-merger.
Ethical and Socially Responsible Investment and Procurement
The Greens will ensure that Council’s procurement policy is consistent with our commitment to sustainability, ethics, human rights and international law and will support local businesses to take a similar approach in their own procurement policies.
Gambling Harm Reduction
The Greens will implement a gambling harm reduction policy that aims to phase out poker machines on council owned property, in the interim encourage the operators to display and actively promote harm minimisation support services and phase out gambling advertising on council-owned property.