@intro2 = In the March 27 NSW local government elections Byron Shire elected the state's first Greens mayor. Tom Flanagan interviewed mayor-elect Jan Barham for Green Left Weekly on April 17.
How long have you been on council and how did you get involved in politics?
I've been on council for one term (since 1999). For the last year I've been deputy mayor. Prior to that I worked with [NSW Green MP] Ian Cohen from 1995-99. I joined the Greens in 1992. I was one of the founding members of the Tweed-Byron Greens.
I've worked in Byron with the Environment Centre and Beacon, the environment organisation. With the Byron Environment Centre I was involved in the north-east forests campaign. My role was mostly staying in the office while others went off to blockades.
What were the key issues that led people to vote for the Greens this time, and how much of a change was it from the previous vote?
We'd done well in a by-election in 2001 — both positions elected went to the Greens, which meant we then had four Greens on council. After the recent election we again have four Greens and three progressive independents out of 10 councillors.
I think the big thing for Byron Shire election this time was about community — about how swamped we feel by 1.7 million visitors each year, about how much we've become a focus for every big developer that wants to make a buck. They think they can just come and impose their Gold Coast, Noosa or urban-style development on us so they can draw on the attraction that Byron is, that we've all worked for a long time to try and protect so that it wouldn't be like that.
Over the last couple of years, with increasing house prices, a lot of people have moved out — they can no longer afford to live here. And that's something we're trying to rectify with an affordable housing policy.
Support for the Greens is coming from the community because we're addressing those social issues. The environment is part of it — people are starting to understand that green is about all those things and that's been the real shift. We've had a Green on council since 1995. Working in local government gives you a great opportunity to dispel the myths.
The day-by-day council work on roads, rates and rubbish means people realise that you're actually there working for the whole community. They can't brand you as tree-hugging greenies or radicals, because you're there solidly on all issues. And I think, state-wide, that's been of value. We've seen Green representation in local government double. I think now the major parties are fearing that as we've taken local government on as a real grassroots commitment, and people are getting used to working with us, they're worried how that's going to translate to state and federal elections.
Who do you see as the people who voted for the Greens?
They cover a wide range. I've run for the last state and federal elections as well, and I think it's been a crucial time for the Greens on a national level. With the refugee issue, with the [Iraq] war, there's been the real shift for us. Rather than just being perceived as environment focussed, people have seen that we've got a social justice platform.
And you think those issues were significant in the Byron council election?
I think that's how we've built connections with the community. They've realised that we're there on those issues. And in standing at each of those elections, I've made a lot of connections with a lot of more conservative people. I've personally been surprised with National Party voters, women particularly, who have compassion and concern for the rights of others. And the war and the refugee issue really brought a lot of those people out. Their natural allegiance to the National Party or the Coalition was stretched on those compassion issues and they came across to the Greens.
Local government is so interesting. People can make a different voting decision because it's about their street or their suburb, it's a much closer thing and they want that real connection. Whereas, they think about state and federal politics differently. But we'll find out soon enough.
Who would you see as people who would define themselves as your opposition in Byron politics?
What we probably call the new right — the upmarket pro-development types, not your old Queensland white-shoe brigade wanting to suburbanise the north coast. It's more the upmarket version who want to sell flats for a million dollars. No commitment to the area, they're seeing it as a cash cow.
Becton has moved onto the old Club Med site and they're proposing something three times the size of the Club Med proposal. They're a big urban developer from Melbourne.
And Gerry Harvey — who has bought a site just south of Byron where the community opposed a development proposal back in '98. The then developer took it to the Land and Environment Court and got approval. It's very much the developers' court — councils find it very difficult to oppose a huge court case brought on by a well-funded developer who can hire top legals.
What do you see as your mission as mayor in Byron; what will you see as success?
Probably the biggest issues are about building the community's confidence in the council. We've had a pretty difficult past with huge debts that occurred when our council chambers were built over in Mullumbimby. There's a lot of history of mistrust of the organisation and of the elected representatives. Now we're at the point where we've gone through eight years of resolving this $6 million debt, and it's time to deliver to the community on some basic services, and to work as a team. We've been called dysfunctional before — many times.
We've now got past that point of being adversarial, and I believe we've got a good team of people who are going to work very well together. We need to maintain that team functioning and work with the community. It's going to be a challenge to keep that going because Byron is an articulate, informed, engaged community which is often very hard to please.
There's no problem getting community involvement. But getting consensus, or getting a position that people will support, is always a difficult thing in Byron. There are lots of experts and things can become very contentious, very easily. That's been our history, so trying to resolve some of that and a bit of smooth sailing would be a huge achievement — so that's what I'll try for.
Do you think Byron can provide a model for other Greens-led councils in the future, or is Byron a special case?
There are a lot of other councils around the country that find themselves under the same sort of pressure. We're a bit ahead of the pack because we've had this pressure on us for quite some time. But the whole NSW coastal strip is under huge pressure and a lot of the things we've been doing here are coming to fruition. I think we will be able to implement some model or case study work that will benefit other councils.
We've had quite a profile for a long time. We've been a bit of a beacon for a lot of communities which otherwise might give up but we keep jumping up and opposing the state government or opposing the developers and I think it gives other communities hope.
We've got a very diverse alternate community going back to the Terania Creek forest protests and the Nimbin Aquarius festival. Now it's like the rest of the world is catching up and realising that there was a lot of good sense in those radical ideas — like alternative energy and alternative waste management and land-use management. That's been done on the north coast going way back. I think the region has always been leading the way a bit and will continue to do that.
Do you see this as a radical breakthrough or a convergence of circumstances that has given an unusual result?
It's a product of a lot of hard work and time put in. People have tried and tested us and we've now earned their trust. That's a broader thing that's happening, where Greens were once radicals and now we're seen as people with broad community and social and environmental concerns, and I think people are warming to us on that level. I think it's a maturation of not only the Greens but also the community in understanding that as the big parties go more and more towards the corporates that it's independents and smaller parties that are actually looking after the communities and the people that really matter on the ground, especially at local government level.
So the implication is that as the Greens as get more power and the major parties keep moving towards corporate interests, at some point there's going to be a head-on clash between the Greens and corporate interests. What do you think the outcome of that might be?
I'm always hopeful that people power will break through. I do see some corporates moving more towards wanting to be responsible managers. I just hope that the more that we have a voice and a presence and people join us, that that makes a stronger impression on them, so that we do get a genuine shift rather than just the rhetoric.
It's like everyone's green or they're doing eco-this or eco-that, and they've stolen a lot of the language. In part, that's why I'm back to using words like "quality" and things that have got solid meaning again because they do it every time — they steal the language and they make it virtually meaningless by using it as marketing terms.
You need to have a strong local community to be able to oppose the corporate push. Hopefully that's something that will be happening worldwide against corporate globalisation.
From Green Left Weekly, April 29, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.