Deidre Stuart, candidate for Ward 3

I’m proud to be the Greens candidate for Ward 3 in the Wollongong City Council elections in September.

I am a candidate because I want to bring citizens together to work on ways to improve our villages, and bring more meaning, joy and connection into our lives.

As a Greens councillor I would endeavour to bring Greens core principles of ecological sustainability, grassroots participatory democracy, social justice and peace and non-violence, to Wollongong City Council decision-making.

Our community faces some urgent problems, including climate change, a lack of affordable housing and a cost of living crisis. 

As a city, we need to urgently transition from using fossil-fuel energy and fossil-fuel energy technologies to generating renewable energy and using renewable energy technologies.

Wollongong also has a role to play in transitioning Australia’s economy from a linear materials flow to a circular materials flow economy.

There are opportunities that come with these transitions towards sustainability. Our city could benefit from the shift to new energy systems, and could also contribute new materials, manufacturing and refurbishing industries over the coming decades. Wollongong has been an incredible mining and industrial city for many years. But we cannot keep mining coal and shipping it to other nations, and contributing to climate destruction that threatens us all.

Now is the time for us all to work together and design, plan and implement systems, processes and services that benefit both humans and our wonderful natural environment. 

We need to invest in people and support reskilling to support our transition.

Wollongong has already signed the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy. Across the world 12,500 cities in total have signed, so Wollongong is not alone. Rather, we can learn and contribute alongside other cities who also want to be part of the solution to our climate and wider environmental crisis.

We also need to adapt to our changing climate and to develop support systems that will be useful to our citizens under challenging weather conditions. We need to ensure that our most disadvantaged citizens are not further disadvantaged.

These are significant challenges that we need to face as a city. Yet, even with these great challenges on the horizon, we also need to celebrate this wonderful city, Wollongong / Woolyungah and our people. And remember that we can solve these challenges and be creative and productive, together.

I look forward to talking to you and listening to your ideas. Contact me if you have any questions and I look forward to talking and listening to our community over the next months.

A little bit about Deidre

I came to live in Wollongong/ Woolyungah in 2011 with my partner and two children.

I work part-time and casually at Western Sydney University, providing mathematics/statistics support to students or doing research project work. By training, I’m a scientist, but I am now also a part-time TAFE visual-arts student, and I’m thoroughly loving trying to make art.

As someone who moved with young children several times before arriving here, I understand the difference that footpaths, libraries, parks, and good public transport can make to city living.

Life has been difficult and uncertain over recent times with COVID, extreme weather events, lack of affordable housing and rising living costs. It seems like many of us feel exhausted, as if we have lost time, health or work, and maybe worse, family or friends, through the COVID pandemic.

Over the past few years, extreme weather events (Black Summer 2019/2020 bushfires, numerous floods, heatwaves) have battered Australia. Now with inflation, many Wollongong citizens are struggling with housing affordability and the cost of living crisis.

Right now I believe we can continue to work to limit the heating of our city from climate change, and at the same time we can develop resilience and our ability to keep our villages safer, shadier, and easier to access.

I look forward to hearing from you and talking with you over the next seven months. 

If you want to chat with Deidre, send an email.