Greens State MLC Cate Faehrmann will speak at the award winning documentary, Envoy: Shark Cull, with guest speakers Laura Wells and Dr Rob Brander.

Greens Candidate for Wollongong lord mayor Jess Whittaker said the people of the Illawarra were horrified earlier this year when drone footage showed a bottlenose dolphin fatally entangled in a shark net off Thirroul beach.

“The NSW Labor government is responsible for this silent slaughter of marine life in shark nets because they have refused to take action since winning government and replace this old and cruel technology with evidence-based, environmentally sensitive strategies of shark management,” she said.

“I’ve been concerned about shark nets for a while now, because this approach to management forces us to fight against the environment,” Ms Whittaker said.

“We can’t afford to keep relying on old ways of managing sharks when we know it is harmful and these have been shown to cause a great amount of suffering to native animals.”

Story by Mick Roberts in The Bulli & Clifton Times, 19 June 2024.

Wollongong's Greens candidates for the upcoming council election are once again pitching a plan to install a "night mayor", to help boost after-dark activities across the city.

While the job - which the Greens have hoped to create for the past eight years - might have a snazzy, slightly spooky name name, a night mayor is simply a permanent part time position at the council, the party's candidate for Lord Mayor Jess Whittaker said.

The new employee would responsible for prioritising the night-time economy and streamlining clunky venue approval processes, that the Greens said has left many venues delayed or unable to open at all, resulting in a struggling, empty night scene. It would also work with music venues, bars, 24-hour gyms and late-night grocery stores, and help cluster night-time businesses together to create small night-time precincts within the likes of Port Kembla or Thirroul.

"The thing we're hearing from businesses is that it can be a clunky process dealing with council DAs, so a way we can make it easier would be to have someone to support new businesses and young businesses and make it a good experience for them," she said.

Ms Whittaker said the state's first 24-Hour Economy Commissioner Michael Rodrigues, who has been working in with businesses in Sydney, demonstrated how effective having someone overseeing night time activities could be. She said the job would suit a bar or venue owner, or someone from the music or events scene, who knows the dynamics of the industry and can give the council inside knowledge about the local nightlife scene.

The Greens have been pitching the "night mayor" vision at elections since 2017, when then mayoral candidate Mithra Cox said it was based on a similar idea in Amsterdam.

Ms Whittaker said it still had a lot of merit eight years on, especially in tough economic times. "Our nighttime economy has taken a beating from COVID and a lack of adequate help for venue owners, promoters and others to get through the council's red tape and clunky channels," she said.

State Greens MP Cate Faehrmann said Wollongong was a thriving, diverse city that deserved music and the night-time economy to be a priority. "All too often owners of restaurants, cafes and bars who want to provide diverse night-time options for the community find themselves struggling with a confusing and over-the-top regulatory environment and a lack of planning," she said.

"This isn't great for business and it's not great for the community with a lack of lively, safe spaces on offer for people who want to go out late with their family and friends."

Story by Kate McIlwain in the Illawarra Mercury, 22 May 2024.

"We need a night-time mayor to help businesses make it through tough times. That's what we're going through now and we need a vibrant, diverse, creative night-time industry and that's what they champion." - Cate Faehrmann, Greens Music and Night-Time Economy Spokesperson.

"We want to be able to go to a bar or restaurant in your local village, it doesn't necessarily have to be in the CBD. We want these small bars to be in our villages and towns and operating really successfully with the full support of Wollongong Council." - Jess Whittaker, Wollongong City Council Greens Lord Mayor Candidate.

"Labor does have the biggest block on Council and I think it's also on them that this hasn't already happened, because it should have happened." - Jess Whittaker.

Olivia Blunden reporting for WIN News, 22 May 2024.

Approving development applications to expand homelessness services should be sped up to cater for their growing need, Greens candidates for Wollongong City Council said.

Ward 2 candidate Kit Docker, who is a volunteer at the Wollongong Homeless Hub, said recent figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showed Wollongong city had seen a sharp increase in people accessing homelessness services in NSW.

"It's disappointing that in the midst of the housing and cost of living crises, frontline services are having to wait up several months or more for their development applications to be approved," Mr Docker said.

"Applications that are crucial to their ability to meet the growing demand for services. I am urging the council to treat this crisis with the urgency it deserves and prioritise DAs for those services on the frontline of this crisis."

Greens candidate for Lord Mayor Jess Whittaker said a DA for the homeless hub has been "held up in council for months and months."

"If it's something that there's a need for the community, it's recognising that need maybe above other things that are in the list and addressing that by liaising with the homeless services working out what they need and how we need to make it happen so that they have those services available to the community," Ms Whittaker said.

"Just working in partnership with them instead of them being put into the same process as everyone else. They are just such an important service and they're providing so many facilities and food and services to people in our community who are doing it tougher than anyone else.

Last week, the city was rocked by the alleged murder of homeless man Raymond McCormack at the Wollongong train station car park. Ms Whittaker said the Greens call to streamline applications from homelessness services wasn't prompted by that case. "We've been talking about this for a while," she said. "Kit volunteers with the homeless hub and has a really good relationship with them and has been talking to them about this for some time. "It wasn't because of Ray's unfortunate death that we came up with this policy. "We just thought that we had it ready to go and it's a really great time to talk about the need in the community and how desperate the need for services for people who are sleeping rough."

Story by Glen Humphries in the Illawarra Mercury, 19 May 2024.

"While everybody supported the motion, people definitely had criticisms of it and nuances of it," Cr Cox said.

"And I was certainly in that category; I'm absolutely going to support it because it's better than nothing, but it's kind of chicken feed as well. And I think there is more that we could do and we could do better.

"And so, that's what the debate is for, I think is to say 'yes, you know, this is a reasonable start, but having $1 million for affordable housing - what that will buy us? How many houses, like one house or two apartments?

"It's really not going to make a huge difference but that's not a reason not to support it."

Cr Cox said the council did pass some motions no-one needed to debate in a block at the start of the meeting.

But she added that it was important to debate some motions; for instance, if someone in the public gallery had come to the meeting for a specific motion, that was always debated.

"Overall, even if all the councillors are agreeing with something, it is a better look to actually have debate about it anyway, rather than just pass everything," Cr Cox said.

"I think it's a good culture that we do generally pass things unanimously and it's not because people are not engaged.

"But of course, there's a difference of political opinion on the council and absolutely, they should have a space to be expressed."

Story by Glen Humphries in the Illawarra Mercury, 9 May 2024.

Responding to the "loudest voices" wasn't the best way to deliver road safety improvements, Wollongong Councillor Mithra Cox said.

Cr Cox supported the motion, adding that when she first came on the council she wanted a pedestrian crossing on Murray Road so she could take her son to pre-school - he was now almost in high school and the crossing is still not there. She felt there had to be a better approach than just responding to individual requests for crossings and the like.

"It's about having a strategic view of what's better for everybody," Cr Cox said.

"I find it frustrating that instead of achieving this through coming at it from a strategic lens of having a policy in place for the places that have preschools and shops and hairdressers all in one spot that we then have to come and say, 'okay, we want it on this road'.

"I find it's not the right process and not the right way of going about it. And you end up just advocating for the loudest voices rather than having the best outcome for the community."

Cr Cox said there should be a pedestrian focus for Murray Road, rather than catering to cars. "The only people that go up that road are the people that live at the end of it that are getting out to Memorial Drive or to Pioneer Road," she said.

"It's more important that people are able to cross the road, go to the shops in a safe way, that all of those kids are able to get to preschool and school."

Story by Glen Humphries in the Illawarra Mercury, 7 May 2024.

Cr Mithra Cox disagreed with [other councillors' beliefs about levies], stating the levy won't have an effect on what people were willing to pay for an apartment. She added that property investment had been a contributing factor in the current housing crisis.

about"Housing has become, instead of being primarily a place for people to live, an investment for people and a way for people to make money off the capital gains," Cr Cox said.

Story by Glen Humphries in the Illawarra Mercury, 6 May 2024.

Extending the Gong Shuttle south to suburbs like Figtree and Unanderra would address the "shocking" public transport availability in those suburbs, Greens Lord Mayor candidate Jess Whittaker said.

With the funding arrangement between Transport for NSW, Wollongong City Council and the University of Wollongong coming up for renegotiation, Ms Whittaker and Ward 2 candidate Kit Docker felt it was the right time to look at extending its reach. Ms Whittaker said her mother-in-law lives near Figtree and Mr Docker lives in the suburb and she claimed the existing public transport network in the area wasn't good. "I know that it's pretty shocking and it is very car dependent," Ms Whittaker said.

"If you want to come to Figtree you could get on your bike, if you have one, you could pay for a bus or you could drive your car.

"There is no train station and that's another driver of this policy announcement because Figtree isn't lucky enough to have a train station. The closest train stations would be in Unanderra and Coniston."

"I remember in the last council election what was talked about in Ward Three was I think it was more a shuttle between Dapto and Port Kembla, but it hasn't happened yet.

"So you need people in council with a passion to make these things happen. And as Greens, we're always advocating for more active transport, more public transport."

With the renegotiating of the funding split for the shuttle coming up, Mr Docker said it should be the responsibility of the state government. "They're the ones that have got the deep pockets," he said. "We've seen announcements from local Labor politicians - almost $400 million for the Mt Ousley interchange, $20 million for the Bulli bypass.

"Clearly they've got the means and the funding to fund this and we think that we shouldn't be stretching council, we shouldn't be stretching the university to pay for this service."

He also noted that, when the previous Liberal government had looked to axe the Gong Shuttle local Labor MPs Ryan Park and Paul Scully fought to keep it. "They were very critical of the Liberal government's attempts to reduce funding and they spoke a really big game when it came to the free Gong Shuttle," Mr Docker said.
"Now they're in government, they have the power to fund this and, and provide not just the existing route but Figtree and Unanderra with certainty around funding.

"So this is their opportunity to step up and follow through on their words from before."

Story by Glen Humphries in the Illawarra Mercury, 2 May 2024.

Greens councillor Mithra Cox criticised the Transport for NSW decision along similar lines, saying it meant residents who lived a few hundred metres away from the university would be forced to drive there.

"When Transport for NSW do things like this it really reduces trust for this council, for our community and for engaging with their processes," Cr Cox said.

"We've been engaging with them over a number of years on the integrated transport strategy which has all sorts of platitudes about increasing active transport, increasing permeability of the city, integrating our transport strategy to theirs and when things like this happen it really makes us question why bother engaging.

"It's just empty words written on a piece of paper that mean nothing. Shock, horror, they did exactly what we all expected and they removed all of the things that were written in this strategy at the last moment.

"When they engage with us they need to do that in good faith and they need to stick to the things that they said they were going to do."

Story by Glen Humphries in the Illawarra Mercury, 9 April 2024.

Greens candidate for Wollongong City Council Deidre Stuart questioned whether a full range of views were represented.

Ms Stuart noted members of the environmental movement were not present.

“There’s some great people across our society who have good ideas about how people can be upskilled.”

Ms Stuart said there needed to be similar engagement with the environmental consequences of mining, given the estimated multimillion-dollar bill to rehabilitate the Wongawilli and Russell Vale mines, if a buyer is not found.

“Let’s start with cleaning up all the mess,” she said.

Story by Connor Pearce in the Illawarra Mercury, 27 March 2024.