Labor preferences Clover

BY KRISTEN TSIAMIS

Linda Scott, Labor’s candidate for Lord Mayor, has confirmed her party’s preferences will go to Clover Moore and the Greens. According to Cr Scott, this decision was made based on “ the shared values we are concerned about.”

Cr Scott stated that “if Lord Mayor Clover Moore were truly progressive, she would preference Labor to help protect against a conservative Council. City Hub has learned that both Labor and the Greens are prefencing Clover Moore for Lord Mayor and are swapping preferences for the Council ticket.

For Linda Scott, ths Saturday’s upcoming election will boil down to one key issue for Cr Scott: housing affordability.

Cr Scott said that Saturday’s election “is a referendum on affordable housing… the Lord Mayor says it’s the responsibility of the State and Federal governments, but Labor disagree.”

The first part of ensuring housing affordability in the City is “working with owners of vacant space in the city to assess whether there is potential there fore the development of affordable housing.”

It’s not just privately owned property that Cr Scott said she is committed into looking into, but also council owned vacant property. Despite the fact that there is a complex process involved with allowing people to be utilising city owned commercial space, Cr Scott didn’t rule this out as a method of assisting with battling homelessness in the City.

Cr Scott conceded that making these vacant spaces a part of the plan to combat housing affordability “isn’t going to be profitable at every single site, but we are putting it as a priority – there is a housing affordability crisis and more people than ever sleeping rough.”

Reviewing the City’s “development control plans for boarding houses, which are currently charging commercial rent and creating incentives for people to work in affordable housing” is key to making a practical first step in rolling back these numbers.

City showers and public toilets would be made more accessible to the homeless, and Cr Scott said that the development of another Common Ground Facility like the one in Camperdown would be the ideal way of combatting homelessness and helping those in need. When Cr Scott was elected in 2012, she said that had there been one more Common Ground Facility, there would have been enough “space for every single person sleeping rough in the city”. This is a target that Cr Scott says Labor is committed to reaching.

Perhaps the biggest commitment that Cr Scott has said she’s committed to is changing the City’s planning controls. This would allow people to put solar panels on their own homes, something that she said the Lord Mayor and her council has disallowed for aesthetic purposes in some areas of the City.

Cr Scott said that she believes she is working in the best interests of both residential and business voters, and that she is very proud to have been selected as a candidate who won 80% of the primary vote of hundreds of local Labor offices.