Early Community Involvement
A long time ago, around Y2K, I was pursuing a PhD at the University of New South Wales while also throwing myself into a wide range of community and outdoor activities. I was involved in the bushwalking club, the Pigweed food cooperative, the Tiggers Place cooperative childcare centre, the permaculture garden, and the hang gliding club.
I organised events and spent much of my spare time rock climbing, canyoning, and bushwalking. I was also a bush regenerator at Gordon’s Bay, before bush regeneration became a council-supported activity. The group’s leader, David Bennett, encouraged me to stand for the Eastern Beaches and Botany Bay Catchment Management Committee, and I was duly elected. Note: I kickstarted the remediation of the HCB from the Botany ground water, but that is another story.
Discovering the Greens
At the time, I was pleased to discover that there were Greens candidates to vote for at elections, and I had already met the irrepressible Murray Matson. The Greens were not yet widely established in the Randwick area, although two Greens councillors had previously been elected to Randwick Council.
An Unexpected Candidacy
When the local group was looking for candidates for the election, my name came up. Murray convinced me there was no chance I would be elected, which was reassuring: I had just started my first academic job and was a single mother of two children.
With the limited resources we had in those days, I helped organise pamphlet drops and a public meeting. John Kaye donated to the Randwick Greens, which allowed us to print simple black-and-white A5 leaflets. We also reused corflutes from previous elections, in the days before the Greens succumbed to the “cult of personality”.
On election day, I was only available to help for half the day because I had to drive to Canberra for my brother’s wedding.
Learning on the Job
So imagine my shock when Murray called the following day to tell me I had been elected. I believe it was the highest vote for a Greens candidate in NSW at the time. Of course, I wasn’t exactly delighted, but I entered the steep learning curve and did my time.
My boss has since forgiven me, but at the time she stamped her foot in anger when I finally found the courage to tell her. She knew what was involved because another colleague of ours had been an independent councillor for Randwick for some time — the same colleague I had deposed.
Like other councillors, I learned from Murray, gave what time I could, and always felt it was not enough. By the 2004 election, however, I had found another candidate to take over the ward.
Returning to Local Politics
I always felt I had short-changed the Greens. One term is really needed to learn the role, and another to start getting things done. Many years later, once my children were grown and I had a stable 35-hour-per-week public service job, I put my hand up for Parramatta, where I now live.
Many things have changed, but the basic politics have not changed much. This time around, I am far more experienced and much savvier. Now I just need to find someone to replace me in two years…