The big picture in the upper house
Image: Elizabeth Farrelly (left) with Quentin Dempster (right) at a campaign launch. Photo: Supplied.
Opinion by ELIZABETH FARRELLY
Anything could happen. Everywhere I go at the moment – from Dubbo to Darlinghurst, from Gunnedah to Glebe, from Annandale to Armidale – it feels like NSW politics is about to crack wide open.
Not in a coming-apart way. More like coming together. It’s as though communities across the state, tired to death of the same old rusted-on politics of self-interest, are yearning to talk about the big-picture. What is the connection between fracking the Liverpool Plains and buying a lettuce in Newtown? Between sweltering cities and obesity? Between Sydney’s rent crisis and gas royalties, or between koalas and the fifteen-minute neighbourhood?
These are conversations we seldom have. Federal politics is too abstract and state politics, as a rule, too tribal, self-interested and venal. But if covid and climate change teach us anything, it’s that we’re all in this together, unavoidably interdependent. So understanding the overall patterns and connections becomes critical to survival and wellbeing. This is why the upper house matters.
The lesser-known house
The NSW upper house is something most people consider only when actually in the polling booth, confronting that mile-long ballot paper. It never gets much press attention because it is regarded as little more than a rubberstamp. But that’s changing. The upper house can and does introduce legislation and is critical to the passage of any bills. Plus, because it represents the whole state, it enables us to have these big-picture, interconnected conversations.
That’s why, almost a year ago, we first considered running for the upper house. But how do you run an election campaign across an area twenty-five times bigger than Belgium? Especially without a party machine?
We were at the foot of an unclimbed Everest. No independent had ever been elected to the NSW upper house. It’s easy to see why. Traditional lower house campaigns still rely heavily on door-knocking and letterboxing, while upper house campaign rely heavily on those in the lower house, supported by cashed-up party machines. We weren’t looking at the lower house and you clearly can’t doorknock the whole state. What to do?
Give up – that was one option. But I was reluctant to walk away so easily.
I called Justin Field, the only current upper house Independent. Smart and likeable, he’d been elected as a Green and had switched to Independent status mid-term. Would he stand again? Justin’s response was immediate and unequivocal. No way. Without a party, he explained, you don’t even get your name above the line and must persuade your voters to select an anonymous box. But establishing a new party is huge and onerous – and in any case, because parties must be registered for a full year before election day, it was already too late.
Again, we considered walking away. Calling it all too hard, having a life. Instead, I googled ‘registered parties NSW’ and found, to my surprise, a party in need of a new home.
The story so far
The Open Party had been Keep Sydney Open but, having achieved its aim, was available for rehoming. I knew some of the people, just vaguely, and gave them a call.
Fast forward to now. The Open Party is now revived and rebranded. Keeping many of its supporters, we have added many new ones and renamed it Elizabeth Farrelly Independents – which sounds contradictory but is necessary to be named above the line. We’ve also registered a full ticket of sixteen fabulous and independently-minded upper house candidates, including a Gunnedah farmer, a Braidwood community arts producer, an Armidale teacher-organiser-activist and a company director and rights advocate in the Upper Hunter.
We have held some wonderful events: a launch in Millers Point, an art auction at Simon Chan’s Art Atrium in Botany and a fundraiser at the home of actor-director Rachel Ward. We’ve held policy launches – Planning for Public Health in Parramatta, focussed on the huge issue of urban heat and Water: Floods, Droughts and Heatwaves at Michael Mobbs’ Sustainable House in Chippendale.
Throughout, we have deliberately expanded the conversation to connect city and country communities, drawing the critical links between economics and environment, between healthy ecosystems and healthy food.
Biodynamic farmer and expert in the renewables Bruce Robertson spoke at our fundraiser and our Water Policy launch featured Liverpool Plains farmer Rosemary Nankevill, brilliantly recounting her experiences with mining company aggression, climate change and water depletion. Speaking at our planning policy launch, meanwhile, were two Doctors Against Climate Change – Western Sydney GP Dr Kim Loo and child psychiatrist Dr Cybele Dey on the health dangers of urban heat – and Dr Jennifer Wilder from GUST (Grow Urban Shade Trees), describing her brilliant program of guerrilla tree-planting.
Cities, like forests, are ecosystems. It’ all linked: complicated but also really simple. Even without climate concerns, for economic and health reasons alone, we have to end our addiction to fossil fuels The soaring prices of petrol and gas – deliberately sustained by international cartels – inflate every commodity, especially food. This in turn drives interest rates, which send thousands into mortgage stress. Add farmland fracking, depleting and polluting the groundwater, and a few 50degree days to evaporate what remains, and that’s how a Newtown lettuce can end up costing $15.
