Winning for the community

It has been a massive year in Australian politics more broadly. In the last 12 months, we've seen Tony Abbott ousted as Prime Minister and Malcolm Turnbull installed and re-elected, but on the barest of majorities. The Liberals are now barely holding onto government and Malcolm Turnbull's agenda continues to be dictated by the hard-right conservatives of his party. 

Here's an overview of what else we've achieved this year:

With the Melbourne community, we:

• Fought for and saved the country's only not-for-profit community pharmacy, cohealth, based in Collingwood. For decades, cohealth has provided cheap medicine to low income earners and people living in public housing. But Tony Abbott put it all at risk when he cut the pharmacy's funding in his last budget. The community came together and ran a huge campaign over many months. Residents took action and we took their message to Parliament and the Minister. And we won! The government has confirmed that the cohealth pharmacy will be able to continue to keep affordable medicine for people in Melbourne — congratulations to everyone involved!

• Worked to put pressure on Government for action on public housing by holding a rally and delivering a report on the state of public housing in Melbourne.

• Supported local campaigns in neighbourhoods across Melbourne for a school in Docklands and ending aircraft noise in East Melbourne. 

• Hosted an Iftar during Ramadan with the Melbourne Muslim community, as well as events on social innovation, transport, western distributor toll road, multiculturalism, liveability and issues affecting the Muslim community.

• Launched a plan to keep Melbourne liveable and worked with Ellen Sandell and Councillors on the Liveable Melbourne web site.

• Surveyed all the childcare centres in the electorate and continued our campaign for better access to childcare in Melbourne.

• Delivered $300,000 in grants to support community projects across Melbourne, including funding for:

  • A new training space for Good Cycles, a not-for-profit bike shop that provides training, employment and ongoing support to people who might otherwise struggle to find genuine work opportunities.

  • A new workshop and training space for SisterWorks, a social enterprise that supports women who are seeking asylum or have refugee and migrant backgrounds to become economically independent.

  • Koori Women's Hub, a joint project with Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service Victoria which will establish a hub for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women and victims and survivors of family violence. The first of its kind in inner Melbourne.  

  • Ascot Vale's new men's shed, a supportive social environment for men living at the Ascot Vale public housing estate, as well as training and learning opportunities for low income earners.

  • And many more!

Our constituent liaison team has now advocated on behalf of over 2,660 Melbourne constituents on issues including housing, immigration, disability and with Centrelink, often when they have nowhere else to turn. This year, our team helped over 550 new cases. We also welcomed new voters to the electorate of Melbourne – we sent 15,232 introductory letters and surveys this year.

We're now closer than ever to winning our campaign to replace Hazelwood, Australia's dirtiest power station, with clean energy and we joined with our Greens colleagues to call on Labor and the Liberals to close the camps on Nauru and Manus Island and bring them here. And with community members and organisations and the help of crossbench Senators, we successfully killed off Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey's cuts to Paid Parental Leave.

In Parliament in the past year, I proudly joined as a co-sponsor on a cross-party bill for marriage equality, introduced a bill to help end the 7-Eleven-style rampant worker exploitation and fought to renew our energy system to cut pollution by closing coal-fired power stations and investing in clean energy. 

In local and national media, we fought against an unfair rise to the GST during the 'national tax reform debate' and pushed the debate to include addressing ending unfair tax breaks and tackle global warming, spoke up about the importance of immunising children for the community's health and published pieces in local community papers calling for a better way for refugees and people seeking asylum.

I am proud to be able to continue to represent the wonderful Melbourne community. I will work hard to advance Greens values and stand up for what matters over the coming years.