20 Mar 2023

Phil Bradley – Greens for Parramatta

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What is your name, political party and electorate?

I’m the City of Parramatta Greens Councillor Phil Bradley and I’m the Greens candidate for the State Electoral District of Epping.

Tell us about your background both personally and professionally

I was elected in 2017 as the first Greens Councillor ever on the City of Parramatta Council and re-elected in 2021. I have also run for Local Government once in the City of Ryde, as well as being the Greens candidate for Parramatta in three previous NSW State and four Federal elections. I have lived with my spouse Annie Nielsen in the Parramatta area for 28 years and have two daughters, and share with Annie’s daughter and son, seven grandchildren. We have also been interim kinship carers for four children under 8 years old.

I have demonstrated my ability to not just talk, but to act on my beliefs as a civil engineer, TAFE teacher and senior officer of the Teachers Federation. I have won a National Volunteer Award for voluntary leadership roles in the Parramatta Climate Action Network, the Parramatta Female Factory Action Group and as President of Reconciliation for Western Sydney. I also volunteer with Parramatta Bushcare and the Better Planning Network.

I play tennis, like bushwalking, theatre, experimental and hard rock music.

What are some things you love about your electorate?

I love the Epping electorate’s vibrancy, its remarkable Aboriginal, colonial, multicultural and built heritage, but I also like its fabulous green spaces including its bushland tranquility like at Lake Parramatta and Hunt’s Creek Carlingford, with their coolness and species diversity.

What do you believe are the 3 main issues affecting your electorate and why?

  1. Poorly planned overdevelopment without the community infrastructure, green spaces and services needed to maintain liveability standards for the population growth expected to double in 20 years.  Better planning must also address increasing extreme heat and its negative heat stress health impacts, including by increasing tree canopy cover, and urgently completing the Parramatta Aquatic Centre and Epping Swimming Centre (with affordable cheap entry costs)
  2. Cost of living pressures that would be addressed by Greens policies to:
  • provide much more genuinely affordable housing;
  • make public transport and education free;
  • reduce childcare costs;
  • provide more cheap clean renewable energy; andcreate more quality, secure, safe and better paid jobs, especially in the public sector for nurses, teachers, emergency services, child and aged care workers.

3. Inadequate state public services funding including for transport, education, health and youth services, which should be funded by increasing the public value of obscene unearned windfall developer profits from rezoning for higher density development, introducing an empty dwelling levy for unused investment properties and increasing taxes for owners of properties of value more than $20 million and/or eight or more properties.

What are the 3 key things you plan to achieve if elected?

  1. Better Planning, Heritage, Culture and Arts: opposing unsustainable development and supporting better planning, with priority on genuine community consultation to deliver on feedback; and promoting Parramatta’s outstanding Aboriginal, multicultural, natural and built heritage.
  2. Creating a Jobs-Rich, Clean Energy Future: thousands more secure, well paid jobs by addressing extreme heat; supporting solar energy, more trees, water parks, green spaces, energy efficiency and early intervention against heat stress health risks.
  3. More Quality Public Services Not Privatisation: genuinely affordable housing; free, quality public transport and education including preschool, school and TAFE; increased staff at Westmead an Ryde hospitals; more trains, electric buses and cycleways, reducing noise impacts of the M2 motorway and the future 24 x 7 Western Sydney Airport flight paths; and improved community services.

What about your long-term vision for the area?

  • My long-term vision for the Epping electorate is for it to be highly liveable, equitable and sustainable area of full employment – a digitally smart, 100% renewable energy area free of air and noise pollution.
  • For this to happen, I think there needs to be much better genuine community consultation and empowerment in the planning process and more generally in government decision making.
  • The Greens and I know for this we must have more governance transparency and much stronger anti-corruption measures, including the banning of inappropriate influential political donations such as by developers and the property industry which are still allowed to continue at the Federal Party level.
  • It is reported on the website Democracy for Sale based on Australian Electoral Commission data, that developers and the property industry donated about $1 million to the Labor Party and $3 million to the Liberal/National Party Coalition, and the Fossil Fuel Industry about $1 million to each of them. To achieve The Greens‘ vision of social equality and economic justice, such donations can corrupt our political systems and would be stopped in my vision of a better future for Epping electorate.

Phone: 0425 265 170