Secretary; Candidate Coordinator
Australian Cyclists Party
The challenges of 21st century city living, including traffic congestion, obesity, pollution, noise and loss of public space, can all be effectively addressed (and even, in some cases, dramatically reversed) by increased bicycle usage for transport as well as recreation, and research shows that a significant majority of people who don’t currently ride bicycles say they WOULD do so if only it were safer. Cities on every continent are coming to the same conclusion, and jurisdictions as diverse as New York, London, Bogota and Guangzhou are urgently implementing large scale safe cycling infrastructure projects and community awareness campaigns to accelerate the growth of bicycle mode share for short to medium trips.Here in Australia, our governments have been slower to realise the increasing necessity to provide more cycling friendly environments that would save lives, improve health outcomes and make our public spaces more amenable places to live, all at far lower costs than any of the alternatives. In many places, populist politicians and media personalities play on the motoring and pedestrian public’s fear and frustration by actively campaigning against the very measures which would address these issues. THIS MUST CHANGE, as a matter of life and death, let alone good public policy! The urgency of the problem is recognised globally, and it MUST be given higher priority in our own traffic-choked and increasingly toxic urban sprawls.Whilst I have been concentrating my efforts in the advocacy arena, I took the opportunity to exert more pressure on our local, state and federal politicians with the NSW state elections in March 2015, by standing as the candidate of the Australian Cyclists Party for the NSW Legislative Assembly (“Lower House”) seat of Newcastle. Given the relative youth of the party and the lack of resources, the campaign was remarkably successful. In 2016, I was elected Secretary of the ACP, and Candidate Coordinator for the 2016 Federal Election.