For Mr Parker, his success was an important step in marking out the future of the people in his electorate and working towards social justice and environmental sustainability. “It was an opportunity for the people in the electorate to express their values and have it reflected in a party and represented in parliament,” he said.
Mr Parker is proud of the work he has done in the past year and the successes he has achieved. “I’m feeling like we’re making great progress in improving maintenance issues in my electorate.
“Whether it’s helping a resident of social housing get their gutters cleaned, or their kitchen replaced, to working to ensure that the light-rail will be built, it’s being able to deliver and be successful, not just for the people, but for the environment of my local community.”
He said the main challenges were the stances of the major parties in parliament. “The Labor Party is still a very conservative and right-wing organisation, and when it comes to issues such as law and order, Labor will side with the Liberals.”
“It’s only people like myself and [Lord Mayor] Clover Moore that are focussing on protecting civil liberties, rather than the more draconian law and order approach of both Labor and Liberal.”
Mr Parker said that public transport, development and public housing were the key issues he had been focussing on in his electorate. “The former government dropped the ball when it came to investing and delivering public transport infrastructure,” he said. “That’s a must, and in my community that means building the light-rail and improving the bus and ferry system.”
Mr Parker is particularly critical of the Labor Government which he accused of being in the “pockets of developers”.
“We need to make sure that the reviews and the changes that this Government is making are for the benefit of the community and the environment, rather than the developers. I felt like I have made very strong progress in that area. In particular, the fact that the Government supported the call by the Greens and other community groups to abolish the infamous Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act, which took power away from local government and let the minister alone determine whether or not an application should be approved or refused.”
Mr Parker said he was committed to fixing the 300 million dollar backlog of public housing maintenance left by Labor. “[It] is something which is an absolute disgrace, which I’m working on, with my local tenants groups and local residents to try to end that massive shortfall in maintenance expenditure. It’s leaving people in disgraceful conditions and our most important assets have been demolished by neglect.”
Mr Parker said in the last year he learnt that the key to political success was building relationships with people in parliament. “I genuinely think that the approach taken by the adversarial party system doesn’t work. What needs to happen is you need to put forward well-researched well-argued positions and that’s how you can get things delivered for your local community, rather than scoring political points.”
On his plans for the future, Mr Parker said he wanted to continue to be a great representative of his local community. “I want to express the values of my community and the Greens and social justice, environmental sustainability – the grassroots democracy aspect – and I want to be able to champion the causes that are close to my heart and that of my community and if I can do that, it will be a great success.”
