Councillor Chris Harris

About 200 angry people from resident action groups all over Sydney marched yesterday from Hyde Park to Parliament House to chants of ‘Sartor out’.

The common theme amongst the groups was Minister for Planning Frank Sartor’s takeover of so many planning decisions and the injustices being wrought on communities as a result.

A variety of banners highlighted everything from plans for the Eveleigh Rail Yards to the manipulation of zonings by developers that have caused hardship to landowners through lack of proper compensation.

But Liberal speakers’ rhetoric about Labor deals with developers rang hollow when Greens MLC Sylvia Hale took the stand and pointed out that both Labor and Liberal were up to their necks in big business election money. Only the Greens offered any alternative to the culture of pandering to big business at the expense of communities.

Sylvia’s comments highlighted the importance of putting Green watchdogs in both houses of the NSW parliament in 2007.

The Greens have been researching the donations made to the NSW and Federal divisions of the main political parties (see www.democracy4sale.org) as a first step towards reforming the way our elections are funded and disclose the influence of large political donations on the policies and actions of government.

In line with this campaign, our local Greens group has endorsed a policy to disclose all donations over $200 made toward funding our campaign. A record of all such donations is being made available on this website.

I call on all other candidates running in the NSW seat of Sydney to do the same so everyone can know who funded their campaigns.

For more information and the record of donations made to the seat of Sydney campaign so far this year, please see the Donations Disclosure page.