Greens announce council team

The Greens will field a full ticket for the City of Sydney Council election in September.

Featuring candidates from a diverse range of backgrounds and geographical spreads the party will campaign on a strong message of sustainability and social justice, says mayoral candidate and incumbent Greens councillor Chris Harris.

The ticket features members from the GLBT community, small business owners and students coming from suburbs as diverse as Glebe, Chippendale and Darlinghurst.

Harris, who leads the ticket, said it was the group’s desire to have a council that pushes a progressive agenda of environmental sustainablity and democratic processes elected when the city goes to the polls.

Harris is followed on the ticket by Irene Doutney, a former 78er. The remainder of the ticket, in order, features De Brierly of Newtown, Mathew Drake Brockman -” a Chippendale resident who took on Frank Sartor over the Carlton Brewery site -” student Samia Hossein, the Greens national delegate Tony Hickey, Caroline Alcorso, Dom Rowe and the Greens education officer James Diack.

The party is expected to hold its one seat on the council and is confident of picking up one more seat on the back of recent strong polling.

Harris said he was pleased with the diverse range of community perspectives the team represents.

I think we have done a good job to get a broad cross section of the community, he told Sydney Star Observer.

This is the time for the Greens. The world needs to look at sustainablity and social justice in a way that it has never needed to before. The old models of the powerful running the show have not served us with the environment.

We’ve got very strong environmental policies that we want to advance in the City of Sydney. We’ve already done some interesting things. The city’s decision to go to 100 percent green power was a Greens initiative.

We would like to drive the financing and construction of a 100 percent renewable energy power station. And in terms of social justice, we would like to see a big push for affordable housing.