DAVE HOLMES interviews SUE BOLTON
You were elected to the Moreland City Council for Socialist Alliance in October 2012. Many of the themes and issues raised in your campaign struck a chord with a wide range of people. There was also a fair bit of accident and luck: you headed up a ballot with 24 names on it and the ALP ticket was split.
There were two main reasons why I was elected. One was that our campaign theme, “community need not developer greed”, struck a chord with residents who didn’t know either Socialist Alliance or me because many residents are directly effected by developer greed.
The second reason we got elected is that a lot of people know us from various campaigns: trade union campaigns and picket lines; from the climate movement where I helped organise the first climate emergency rally in 2004 along with other members of Socialist Alliance; from the campaign in support of refugees; and some sections of the Muslim and Middle-Eastern communities who know us because of our work in support of Palestine and in support of the uprising in Egypt against Mubarak in early 2011.
All these issues contributed to our election victory because it meant there were quite a lot of progressive-minded people who knew us. Being on the top of the ballot assisted but if those other two factors had not existed we would not have been elected.
Your election win generated a lot of enthusiasm from a wide range of people. Did that surprise you?
It didn’t surprise me that there was a lot of enthusiasm. What was interesting was the range of people who were so enthused about our election victory. There were quite a few anarchists who object to voting who were extremely enthusiastic about our win. And there were a lot of people who we hadn’t had contact with who were coming up to me at rallies to congratulate me. They saw our election as a validation of their left-wing views, that it is possible for left-wing, progressive views to get a hearing from a broad range of people.
I remember your acceptance speech at the Coburg Town Hall. It was very different from the others that were made. The others were generally bland; you raised some serious issues but in a non-confrontational way. What themes did you raise there?
I raised the themes of “community need not developer greed” and “people before profit” as the guiding principle of our approach to council issues and also our opposition to outsourcing and privatisation.
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