Helen Conway launches campaign, touted as most credentialled candidate state-wide for NSW lower house

By Grahame Lynch

Teal independent candidate Helen Conway has launched her campaign for the seat of North Shore at the March 25 election with an endorsement from eminent anti-corruption lawyer Geoffrey Watson that she is the most credentialled person to run for state parliament.

Some 150 people, mostly supporters, assembled at Mosman Bowling Club on 5 February.

Watson introduced Conway, stating that if she is elected to Parliament, “she will have the finest CV, the finest background, of any person in that building.”

As North Sydney Sun has previously reported, Conway has an extensive background, dating back to a decade as chief counsel for Caltex, then head of the Workplace Gender Equality Agency and most recently, as a chair or director of a number of organisations including the YWCA, Catholic Schools NSW and Endeavour Energy.

Conway told the crowd: “The common question I get asked when I go out and about talking to people is, Why are you doing this?”

“It’s a question I ask myself every day, quite seriously. And the answer is pretty simple. The two-party system does not represent the concerns, and importantly, the aspirations of the North Shore community. Frankly, I just couldn’t sit on the sidelines any longer and watch the lack of integrity in New South Wales politics.”

“A stronger cross bench will make a big difference, in my view,” she added. “It will improve the quality of government legislation, it will drive policy reform, and most importantly, it will hold the government of the day to account, where policy positions really are informed by the people I've spoken to in the community.”

Conway said climate change, environment, integrity, planning and cost of living were the five big issues she was running on.

CLIMATE CHANGE EMPHASIS: “Climate change comes up again and again and again when I go and doorknock and talk to people,” she told the audience. “I saw a well-known Murdoch journalist say this was all ridiculous, that net zero was just some sort of fantasy.”

“That’s why I’ve never subscribed to the Murdoch media until this campaign, when my husband said, “You’ve got to know what everybody’s saying.” So unfortunately, The Australian does arrive at our doorstep every morning,” she joked.

Related to this is the quality of the natural environment. “We really must stop logging our forests, and we’ve got to ban the clearing of high conservation value bushland,” she told the assembled audience.

On integrity, Conway said: “We must stop the pork barrelling. We can legislate standards in relation to the administration of grants, and that’s what I’d seek to do. It’s really simple. We have to establish transparent processes for appointment to government positions and to statutory offices.”

Turning to the North Shore itself, she said: “Development is a reality in an urbanised environment like Sydney, but the issue is that the current planning system is broken. It’s top down, and it’s inaccessible to communities. So it’s really important that we reinstate the position of communities in the planning process.”

“We need to return some powers to local councils, and we need to ensure that a business case and a comprehensive cost/benefit analysis is produced for every major project, and that that is made public to the community.”

“The community’s talked to me about a lot of local issues, as well. For example, traffic congestion, poor public transport in Mosman, Cremorne and Neutral Bay.”

“We’ve got bad train noise in Waverton and Wollstonecraft, and excessive noise from Luna Park.”

“There’s the proposed cycle way in Milson’s Point, a very contentious issue. There’s the fate of Berry’s Bay, and there are serious shortcomings in planning processes right across the electorate,” she said.

Although Conway does not directly self-identify as a “teal”, she is backed by the same groups who backed federal MP Kylea Tink—namely North Sydney’s Independent and Climate 200.

Indeed, the label could also prove useful to her in terms of market differentiation against two other independent candidates, Victoria Walker and Simon Menzies, who are intending to run.