Greens wins on City of Sydney Council: gas-ban in new homes, protecting affordable apartments from demolition, reclaiming laneways as green space + much more! 

This was a big month for your Greens Team in the City of Sydney. We banned gas in new homes, protected older, more affordable apartments from demolition, secured support to reclaim laneways as green space, extended free hire of Council venues for community groups, and much more. 

Read on to find out what we won this week in our biggest Council meeting yet! 

City implements Greens-led gas ban in new homes 

On Monday, after years of Greens and community pressure, the Council voted to ban gas in new homes built after the end of the year.  

This will save lives: we know that gas stoves increase the risk of asthma in kids by 30%. It will also be great for keeping more money in the pockets of families, with analysis showing households stand to save $626 per year on energy bills. 

We kicked off this process in 2023, so it’s great to see these new rules finalised, despite immense pressure from the Murdoch press, developers and the gas industry. 

The gas ban for new residential developments is a first step towards ensuring all future homes in the City of Sydney will be powered by clean energy not fossil fuels. Listen to Sylvie’s interview on ABC Radio Sydney. The interview begins at the 1hr and 38-minute mark.   

We have also endorsed an even wider package of ‘electrification’ reforms for hotels, commercial buildings and restaurants to start in 2027. These plans will be out on exhibition soon, so the Council can hear from you.  

If adopted, this will be the boldest plan to supercharge the energy transition from any Council. Watch this space to have your say.  

Greens rules to protect older, more affordable apartments come online 

This month new rules to protect more affordable, inner-city apartments finally came online. Check out this video of us explaining the changes in Potts Point. 

The Greens successfully moved this change last term, to give Council the power to refuse developments which were demolishing smaller, more affordable apartments to build larger, ultra-luxury dwellings instead.  

We won these changes despite strong opposition from developers and long delays from the NSW Government. 

We have already lost hundreds of homes this way - especially in the east of the city, where developers can make the most profit. In a housing crisis it is obscene to be removing homes. Thankfully, Council now has much stronger powers to protect this important density and housing supply.   

Reclaiming laneways as green space for people and nature 

Cities should be for people and nature, not cars.  

This is why the Greens have worked hard to secure support for Council to explore underutilised laneways and alleyways that could be converted into public green space. 

The City of Sydney has a goal of achieving a tree canopy cover of 27% by 2050. But if we want to increase this target, we’re going to need to find more public space for greening, and deep soil planting too – that means finding new places to get rid of the concrete.  

Paris has already done this, reclaiming 500 streets from cars and planting trees in their stead. Montreal isn’t far behind. We want to make sure we don’t fall behind. 

If you’ve got an alleyway or laneway near your house you think is perfect for some urban greening, or could be reclaimed as public space, send us an email to let us know.  

Securing a wage increase for early childhood educators 

We know essential workers, like early childhood educators, are being quickly priced out of the inner-city, with many forced to rough it in their cars overnight just to make it back to work on time. That’s unacceptable. 

That’s why we successfully moved a motion asking the Council to investigate applying for a Federal Government grant that would increase the wages of our early childhood educators by 15% for two years.  

Protecting public spaces for rough sleepers and community services 

Last month one of the services which has provided weekly meals for Sydney’s rough sleepers, over the past 15 years in Martin Place, was moved on with just a couple of days notice.  

Public places belong to everyone, and services which support the growing number of rough sleepers  shouldn’t be moved on when we have major events in the city. We can do better. 

That’s why the Greens successfully pushed for the Council to review our protocols for managing public spaces, to ensure we continue to support people experiencing homelessness to access the services they need.   

Funding for homelessness services 

We also had to fight – and won! – to secure ongoing earmarked grant funding for homelessness services in the city at this month’s meeting.  

The City of Sydney has a dedicated, 24-hour team supporting people sleeping rough to access services, and find supported accommodation. Over the years this team has helped hundreds of people find homes. The Council also gives $1.4 million per year in earmarked grants for Aboriginal and community-run services which provide direct specialist homelessness support.  

Our community knows that inequality and the lack of accessible housing are two of the largest issues facing this city and want Council to do more.  This is why we were surprised by plans to remove all references to homelessness funding in this year’s draft budget – instead rolling the funding into one new major, more competitive grant that would also be available to for-profit tourism festivals.  

The Greens were able to reverse this change and protect the homelessness funding. Long term though, we remain concerned about where Councils $20M+ grant schemes are headed, including cuts to other not-for-profit community grants.  

More on this soon.  

Extension of venue hire for community groups and artists & community sports  

As we’re written about before, back in 2022 we supported a push to win a 100% fee waiver for community groups and artists, when booking Council owned spaces.  

This change has already made an enormous difference to local groups and artists, and this budget we were able to secure the waiver for another ten years.  

Want to access the free hire? Those interested in taking advantage of this fantastic opportunity can do so here. 

Lately, with the rising cost of living, we’ve also been hearing from an increasing number of community sport groups that hire fees for Council fields may be too high. We want people to use our sporting fields – and cost shouldn’t be a barrier!  

Council provides a discount for not-for-profit hire now, and can even drop and waive the fees further for hardship reasons. This budget we successfully pushed Council to investigate how this is working, and who might need it that may be missing out. Please get in touch if you want to know more, or if cost has become a barrier for you to access a Council sports field.  

Rolling out designated parking zones for share-bikes 

The growth of share bike use, across the city, is a great boost in the push to get more people out of cars and into modes of active transport. Up until recently, however, these e-bike share operators have allowed users to dump their bikes wherever they want. 

This is a problem. As the NSW State Government fails to act on this matter, and as bike share continues to grow in popularity, it has been left to local councils to do what we can.  

Over the past year, the city has established a number of designated on-street and off-street parking areas. A good start, but we need to do more. 

Which is why, this month at Council, we successfully moved for the Council to investigate an expansion of these designated parking zones – with a focus on suburbs currently under-serviced like Alexandria, Camperdown, Darlington, Erskineville, Glebe, Newtown, Redfern and Waterloo.  

We believe there is a lot more Council can do to manage and support share bike use in the city. Expect more to come in future Council meetings! 

Working towards pesticide free parks and gardens 

Finally, Council has been working towards reducing our pesticide usage, recognising the impacts they have on our native wildlife, ecosystems and even human health – and we’ve done pretty well, with a 93% reduction in glyphosate use over eight years. 

Looking overseas, 50 UK Councils have fully eliminated pesticide usage, and closer to home in Melbourne there are exciting, community-led projects, such as the Heartscapes Pollinator Corridor, that have eliminated pesticides through planting dense, sturdy and diverse species that tolerate dry conditions and attract important insect and bird species.  

So, we were pleased this week as Council supported our move to undertake a trial of pesticide-free green spaces to guide us towards eliminating these toxic chemicals in the city. 

Warm regards, 

Sylvie & Matthew 

Sylvie Ellsmore Councillor for City of Sydney

Matthew Thompson Councillor for City of Sydney

PS: This is the first of our community newsletters where we keep you up-to-date on our work on Council. You can also follow us on social media! You can find Sylvie on Instagram and Facebook, and Matthew on Instagram and TikTok! 

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