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Activists challenge Marrickville council positions

Alex Bainbridge, Sydney

21 June 2008

The Socialist Alliance will contest the council elections on September 13 in the seat of Marrickville. At a meeting on June 17, the alliance pre-selected three long-term activists: Jill Hickson, Pip Hinman and Howard Byrnes.

“In the context of global petrol and oil price rises, the food crisis and climate change, the Socialist Alliance is keen to raise political and ecological alternatives to the business-as-usual agenda of the major parties”, Hickson told Green Left Weekly.

“Council elections provide an opportunity to talk about the real social and ecological changes that are urgently needed for the common good”, Byrnes continued. “We are going to highlight our opposition to the NSW government’s sell-off of the energy sector during this campaign.”

“We believe that the local development, ecological, transport and housing conundrums in Marrickville reflect something rotten in a system that puts profits before people’s needs”, added Hinman.

The Socialist Alliance intends to focus its campaign on how the community can take back control of local developments (such as the Enmore pool), help create affordable inner-city public housing, pose solutions to the noise and air pollution of the airport, and sketch out a plan to shift away from the current unsustainable reliance on cars.

The alliance will highlight the rottenness of the NSW Labor government joining forces with the Coalition to privatise public services, making deals with developers and, most recently, the plan to reduce council powers to help developers.

Hickson is a long-time activist and documentary film-maker. She helped found Actively Radical TV and has championed the cause of community TV for several decades.

Hinman, also a long-time activist, helped found the Sydney Stop the War Coalition and has been active in a range of rights movements. She has one child at a local school and works as a sub-editor on GLW.

Byrnes has worked in the building industry for 20 years and is a Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union delegate. He has four children.

For more information, or to help out in the election campaign, contact Alex on 0413 976 638.