Your City of Sydney Greens Team
Councillor Sylvie Ellsmore
Hi, I’m Sylvie. I’m a Greens Councillor and former Deputy Mayor. I was first elected to the City of Sydney Council in 2021.
I’m passionate about making our city more affordable, livable and inclusive. With the housing crisis driving so much inequality in our city, I am deeply committed to strengthening the Council’s work to protect and expand public, affordable and community housing.
I’m the founding Co-Chair of the Housing for All Advisory Panel, the Deputy Chair of the Community Services and Facilities Committee and a member of Council’s Multicultural Advisory Panel.
Before joining the City of Sydney Council I was a native title lawyer and community organiser. I have managed not for profit organisations and worked as a senior policy advisor for the NSW Government, NSW Aboriginal Land Council and the Sydney Policy Lab (University of Sydney).
I previously represented Newtown as a Local Councillor on Marrickville Council (2012-2016), where I founding that Council’s Affordable Housing Advisory Committee, chaired the Cycling Committee and helped deliver the award-winning Marrickville library development.
I am passionate about communities working together to raise their voices for change. I have worked with residents to form the Redfern, Eveleigh, Darlington, Waterloo Watch (REDWatch) residents’ action group, and I am a volunteer karate teacher at Jin Sei Ryu Karate Do (Darlington).
Over the last term on Council, I helped stop the sell-off of public housing, passed planning rules to protect homes from being demolished and replaced with luxury apartments, and secured funding for a housing cooperative for trans women, an Australian first.
Working alongside community and local activists I was instrumental in banning gas from new developments, in repealing the undemocratic ‘two council votes for businesses’ law, making council venue hire free for community groups, and more.
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You can get in touch at our joint Greens Councillor office, at Sydney Town Hall, via email at [email protected] or by phone on 0439 300 150.
Councillor Matthew Thompson
Hi, I’m Matthew. I was elected to the City of Sydney Council in 2024. As part of your Greens team on Council, I am helping lead our work on environmental sustainability, inequality, protest rights and more.
Now, more than ever, we need representatives that are connected to community and understand the impacts of poverty and housing insecurity – it’s time we have a say in how our city is built, it’s time we are heard.
I’m a former community services worker and a queer activist. My clearest memories of when I first moved to Glebe are the cold nights where I had to decide whether to pay my rent or put food on the table. Where I juggled multiple jobs trying, and often failing, to keep the lights on at home. And while those experiences for me are now in the past, for far too many in our city they are an ongoing reality.
That’s why I ran for Council, as part of an expanded Greens team. Because The Greens have a plan to build a Sydney for all of us.
Imagine a Sydney where everyone has an affordable, accessible house to call home.
Where the services and things you need to live your life are cheap and plentiful. Where the streets are vibrant and bustling, lined with trees, designed for people, not cars. Where public green space is expanded and our precious environment is protected.
That’s the Sydney The Greens will build. That’s the Sydney that by working together, is possible.
Already this term on Council we have led the delivery of major housing reforms including: increasing the levies that private developers pay towards affordable housing, protecting older affordable apartments from being lost to luxury development, and council’s first housing grants for Aboriginal-controlled affordable housing.
We’ve pushed Council to increase protection for biodiversity and reclaim more of our streets for greening and nature.
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You can get in contact me at our joint Greens Councillor office, at Sydney Town Hall, via email at [email protected].