City of Yarra elections – Socialist Party campaign launch
On Saturday 11 October 2008 I attended the election campaign launch of the Socialist Party for the City of Yarra local government elections to be held on 29 November 2008. During November I will be featuring regular posts about the election, the major policy issues and what potential councillors plan to do if elected.
Of the parties and individuals who have nominated to contest the City of Yarra elections, the Socialist Party candidates have the clearest policies specifically aimed at improving life in Yarra and a campaign to inform the local community about those policies. Their candidates are Denise Dudley (Melba Ward), Anthony Main (Nichols) and Steve Jolly (Langridge Ward, above).
You can watch the Socialist Party campaign videoand a video of the launch explaining their policies further:
By nature I’m not a joiner or an ideologue. I like pragmatic solutions to genuine social problems and I detest the fact that local government is infested with lazy hacks busy playing party politics at the expense of local ratepayers. I attended the Social Party election campaign launch because they are the only candidates actually talking to the electorate in Fitzroy.
Apart from the Socialist Party’s policy statements, there’s not a lot of other useful information available to help ratepayers decide who to support. For example, despite having official candidates and also sneakily providing unofficial support for supposedly ‘independent’ candidates, the ALP has only the most generic and useless information online about Yarra, and I despise them for their complacency.
There are three other sources of information you could examine. The first is the blog of independent candidate for the Richmond area Ian Quick. He promises to put the needs of residents ahead of those of businesses and property developers (he is also associated with Save our Suburbs).
The second is the Public Transport Users Group. In 2004 they published a scorecard of the policies of Yarra Council election candidates in relation to public transport. They are yet to do so for 2008.
Third, the Greens. Their complicity with the ALP on council has been a problem. They have extensive policies but many are part of the general Greens platform and not enough of them are Yarra specific.
The policy launch was well attended with many younger and middle aged working and professional people in attendance as well as a group representing the Fitzroy Chinese Residents Association. A translator was provided to assist them (below).
If you care about how your Yarra rates are spent, and are concerned about local issues, from hard rubbish collection to the proposed road tunnel linking the Eastern Freeway to Melbourne’s west, then you need to vote in the local government elections. You should consider carefully what is important to you about Fitzroy and what the candidates have to say.
Whoever you vote for, I strongly urge you to evict all of the current councillors (with the exception of Steve Jolly). These complacent idiots wasted more than $9000 celebrating themselves rather than delivering a public celebration for the 150th anniversary of the founding of Fitzroy. They also voted to waste $6000 in a grant to the Businesses on Smith St (BOSS) traders association for them to build a website.
Anyone with knowledge about the internet or even some common sense should know that you don’t need $6000 to build a website. I run Fitzroyalty on about $100 a year. While speaking with Yarra Campaign Against the Tunnel (YCAT) secretary Freda Watkins at this event, she said YCAT run their excellent site also on about $100 a year. You don’t need lots of money; you need knowledge, skill and initiative. You can get these things without spending thousands of dollars.
Hold the current councillors accountable for wasting your money when you vote at the local government elections on 29 November 2008. Kick out the useless councillors and vote for someone who can explain their values and policies and how they plan to be held accountable by the electorate.
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Other posts you may find relevant and interesting
- City of Yarra elections – honesty and accountability, 13 November 2008
- City of Yarra elections – saving Condell park, 18 November 2008
- City of Yarra elections – preliminary results, 1 December 2008
- corrupt new Yarra council votes itself a 25% payrise, 9 December 2008
- City of Yarra elections – hard rubbish collection, 5 November 2008