b_auspol

Our Local Community

How to Vote: OLC recommends Vote 1 above the line for them only, though I note in North Rocks they’re slinging a 2 over to Georgina Valjak’s mob. Straightforward. Interesting that they are NOT preferencing Andrew Wilson, who has previously run on an OLC ticket.

Photo comments: OLC dressed everyone in bright Liberal blue, just to make sure everyone gets the message on which side of the spectrum their votes come from. The photo is taken at a generic bit of local parkland that I can’t identify on site – got a nice bit of scrub behind them.

Also, in what I find a STATEMENT, they’ve colourcoded their male candidates with orange detailing on all the flyers and the female candidates with pink. Why not just pick one colour, instead of running with THREE?

Daniele (Dan) Siviero

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Candidate-Dan-Siviero/100025334498135/

Dan Siviero is one of the two right wing candidates for this election. Our Local Community are basically local-flavoured centre right conservatives. Dan has a Finance/Law degree, but from what I understand has been working as a political staffer for Council.

Like many small local council political parties, OLC is positioning itself as Independents, despite running on combined tickets and across several councils. There’s a slogan of “Let’s Make Council Politics Free”, which presumably means “no Liberals or Labor or Greens” rather than “Don’t charge for politics!” Though with the latter slogan, maybe they’ll drop rates?

A lot of the promotional material for OLC is focused on Neighbourhoods. This is partly shown by them naming every single suburb in the ward on a map, and also by a local flyer for each suburb, with a “Demographic Snapshot” sourced directly from the ABS census data on the back, with a breakdown of the population, including birth country in Australia/overseas, declared religions, employment, travel to work, and cars per household. I’m particularly amused by how the data was clearly not even cleaned up, for the Declared Religions part is still in order of how big the populations are nationally, not locally. (This stands out quite starkly, given Hinduism is over 45% in my suburb and is listed 4^th out of 5 on the list) I’m not quite sure how reciting the statistics of my suburb shows knowledge of the local community in a way that leads me to put you on council, but at least it’s a flyer?

Policies! There are actually a couple here. The usual guff about better neighbourhoods and safer communities and “Neighbourhoods getting a fair go” – this I believe is in relation to the fact that Parramatta CBD is part of the council, and not spending ALL council money on events and festivals in the CBD itself, but rather sharing the love around the council. They would also like to “maintain existing recreational and local sporting facilities”, which is both a signal for park upgrades, which have been rolling out across the council, but also for “don’t sell off Parramatta Park”.

“Maintain our local heritage!” OLC (at least in the form of Michelle Garrard) were on the save Willow Grove position as far as the new Powerhouse museum goes.

Actually, selling off any council assets is frowned on, but they would also like to maintain pensioner rate-rebates.

As far as transport goes, the only policy I can find is increased parking and free parking in Parramatta CBD. Nothing about public transport. And look. No. We don’t need extra parking. Parramatta Westfield had free all day parking for half of last year due to the absolutely appalling foot traffic in the first 6 months of COVID, they’ve literally just removed a parking station to use the location as the new Metro stop, and the new light rail line will add quite a bit more easy access public transport for local residents. The parking garages in Parramatta are not full at present and are likely to stay that way for a while.

Dan does have a focus on footpath upgrades for better accessibility, lighting and safer crossings, and as someone who’s done a lot of very local exercise these past two years, yes, there are definitely some footpaths that need some love. And streets that only have them on one side of the road. And lighting gaps. These are all good things.

There is definitely a bit of a NIMBY messaging, with “community before inappropriate development” and “Council retaining planning powers”. Rosehill Ward has a mix of different density levels, with everything from heritage covenants through to high density. My read is this is “less towers” but I’d simply be happy with “better controls so fewer shoddy towers were built”.

There isn’t really a skerrick of a climate policy here, which at this point IS a climate policy (for no work towards reaching zero). The closest it gets is “improvement of our waterways”, which yes, Parramatta River needs love, the many creeks draining into and feeding the river need love and clean up, and as someone who still can’t believe Lake Parramatta is once again swimmable, the plans to make more of Parramatta River safely swimmable again blow my mind.

George Sleiman

George does not appear to be a candidate that OLC expect to get anywhere in this election (which is a fair call with 5 parties running for 3 seats).

I suspect he’s working for ADCO Constructions, from tracking down Facebook, but there really isn’t any information.

Angela May Siviero

Angela is Dan’s wife. Now, I know perfectly well candidates 2 and 3 on the ballot are usually there simply to make up the numbers, but running your partner at 3 really shows a lack of warm bodies to interest in running.

Honestly, I haven’t been able to dig up more than the fact they have 4 kids together.

If you need a laugh, this article about three generations of the Garrard family running in OLC tries to spin it as a calling, rather than Michelle Garrard’s kids being warm bodies to fill up tickets in various wards. 

Overall Opinion:

Look, I suspect OLC will be picking up a lot of the displaced Liberal vote. They’ve certainly gone all out with the corflutes. They will be down the bottom half of my ticket. There are better options out there. With more vision.

Also Paul Garrard has been busy showing his entire ass being racist during campaigning, which is not a great look, and it’s certainly not the first time he’s done this.

Finally, I do not believe that any of these three are actually residents in Rosehill Ward. All of their paperwork is marked with their enrolled address being Oatlands, which is in Dundas Ward.

I do actually count local residents higher than people from the next ward over! This is COUNCIL!