Randwick-Botany Greens

The Randwick-Botany Greens is a local political organisation based in the local government areas of Randwick and Botany Bay in New South Wales. It is a member group of the Greens New South Wales.

The group was the local group of Kerry Nettle, a Federal Senator from NSW at the time of her election to office in 2001. More recently the group has succeeded in the election of three councillors to Randwick City Council.

Federal Election 2007 - Contesting the seat of Kingsford-Smith

The Randwick-Botany Greens ran a strong grass-roots campaign to contest the Federal seat of Kingsford-Smith in the 2007 Federal election. Candidate Sue Mahony achieved a robust result of 10.4% against high profile inclubent Member of Parliament, the ALP's Peter Garrett. That was a 2.5% swing towards the Greens against the ALP's rock-star candidate, despite his professing strong 'green' credentials.

City of Randwick local government elections

The Randwick-Botany Greens had two candidates elected to the City of Randiwck Council for the first time in 1995 with the election of Murray Matson in the council's East Ward electorate and Kel Dummet in South Ward.

Matson was re-elected in the 2001 elections along with fellow Green member Judy Greenwood in North Ward.

The 2004 elections saw the Greens increae their representation on council to three councillors with Murray Matson re-elected in East Ward, Margaret Woodsmith elected in North Ward and Bradley Hughes elected in West Ward.

The upcoming council elections in September 2008 see the Greens are putting forward all three sitting councillors for re-election along with candidates in the remaining two wards.

Randwick City Council Mayorship controversy 2004-2008

The result of the 2004 Randwick City Council elections saw no political party holding an absolute majority in the chamber with 7 Australian Labor Party councillors, 5 Liberal Party of Australia councillors and 3 councillors from the Randwick-Botany Greens.

The Green councillors sought to implement an inclusive power sharing agreement which would see all parties take on the mayorship in rotation over the four mayoral terms available until the next election. [http://homepages.tig.com.au/~matson/public_html/randwickmayor13-4-04latestnews.html]

The proposal was refused by the Labor councillors but supported by the Liberal councillors, who with the Greens councillors elected Murray Matson as Mayor in 2004. This made Matson the first ever Green mayor in metropolitan Sydney. During his short tenure Matson initiated environmental and financial reforms in the council including the replacement of the council's general manager and the initiation of long term city plans, aimed at protecting the city's natural environment and financial security.

In 2005 the Greens councillors honoured their agreement by voting for Liberal councillor Ted Seng who subsequently took office as Mayor. In 2006 true to their stated aims of inclusive and representative power sharing the Greens councillors voted for Labor councillor Paul Tracey, despite Labor's continued rejection of the agreement. 2007 saw the election of Liberal councillor Bruce Notley-Smith to the Mayorship to complete the terms of the Greens original proposal.

The agreement was openly criticised by the local Labor councillors and touted by them as an alliance between the Liberal councillors and the Greens, despite the fact that the terms of the agreement elected a Labor mayor for one mayoral term out of the four available.

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