Vaucluse Electorate Candidates Forum 2023

On Thursday 16th March the Queen Street and West Woollahra Association, the Double Bay Residents’ Association and the Darling Point Society combined to hold a forum at the Double Bay Bowling Club so residents could meet the four candidates for our electorate (Vaucluse) in the NSW state election. The forum was attended by all four candidates: Karen Freyer (Independent), Dominic WY Kanak (Greens), Margaret Merten (Labor) and Kellie Sloane (Liberal). The Moderator for the evening was local barrister and former politician Peter King. The audience was close to 100 local residents and members from all three associations.

The candidates were each given 4 minutes at the start of the meeting to make their pitch for why they should be elected. They were then asked a series of questions sumitted by members on their policies and actions they would take on a wide range of topics, from returning planning decisions to councillors, to what level of increased population levels in the Eastern suburbs, if any, would be acceptable and what infrastructure improvements would be needed to cope with this, through to whether they supported the proposed cycleway along Oxford Street from Queen Street to the City, reducing the current 2 lanes each side for motorists to 1 lane and substantially increasing the trafic in residential streets in Woollahra and Paddington. The candidates were all very articulate and thoughtful with their responses and gave the audience much to think about in their choice of candidate on election day. Some of these responses are reported in this article in the Sydney Morning Herald https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/i-m-a-liberal-but-development-divides-party-in-sydney-s-east-20230317-p5ct4c.html.

A big thanks to all the candidates taking part for their time and to Peter King for his fair and impartial management of the event.  We look forward to holding future events with the Double Bay Residents’ Association and the Darling Point Society on topics of common interest.

Giles Edmonds, President, QSWWA