Running for Bega Valley Shire Council.

NSW Local Government Elections 2021 are finally over with the results hopefully being worked out by Christmas. I ran as a Greens candidate for Bega Valley Shire Council. The Greens are the only political party that has targets that reflect what science says is necessary instead of what is politically expedient. It has been six months of campaigning with the last three feeling like a full time job.

The Vivian of three years ago would not have dreamed of running for Council, she felt sick with nerves sitting in front of Mike Kelly's office doing a climate strike. So what persuaded me to run?

The first thing was watching four councillors deny climate change while we pushed through the Bega Valley Shire Council Climate Emergency Declaration. They didn't understand the science and their arguments were illogical. It wasn't hard to think "I can do better than that". Secondly how can they possibly lead our area through the increasing climate change fuelled disasters if they don't understand the problem and keep thinking it is an aberration that will return to "normal". The safe climate I grew up with is gone forever and the sooner we realise that the sooner we can start protecting ourselves for the future.

With the resignation of two progressive councillors that balance of power for the last six months has been to the climate change denying conservatives. Sadly they believe they are representing farmers and business interests while we have experienced years of drought, two months of bushfires that burnt two thirds of our shire, floods, and the COVID pandemic.

During Black Summer we got a taste of the future when we had two months of out of control bushfires, heatwaves, hazardous smoke, constant evacuations, cut roads, and loss of people and houses as we suffered the cascading failures of electricity, communications, road access and water systems. We must build infrastructure and housing capable of handing the challenges ahead of us. We must build community systems to protect people during disasters. We need community education and consultation on climate change so we can understand what our priorities in spending our limited budget should be. we cannot do this with people in leadership positions who do not understand the problem.

When contemplating whether to run or not I decided that success would be making sure that the climate emergency was part of the conversation and connecting and networking with more people in the valley. During this campaign we kept the climate emergency and housing affordability at the forefront, forcing Labor and the other left wing candidates to follow our lead. When people tried to focus on economics we pointed out that businesses couldn't flourish unless workers had homes and we had a safe climate. I met and spoke with many people and continually pushed the need for climate action and resilience. So the campaign was a success. I didn't get in but our lead candidate has and with a 4% swing to the Greens. We ran a very good social media campaign and had a steep learning curve in the process. New skills have been producing professional looking posts and videos and promoting them to a wide audience.

I'm proud of my team mates and the campaign we ran. We gave people a choice of progressive candidates and shifted the Overton Window.



Being a political candidate is scary but the alternative of a leaderless "business as normal" walk  into a worsening climate is scarier.

If you have a climate candidate in the Federal election get out there and support them. If you don't-be that candidate!