When Greens councillors Cath Blakey and Mithra Cox were first elected, there was no COVID-19 virus, no inflation, housing or cost-of-living crisis. In 2017, Black Summer was only a climate scientist’s nightmare; a shift to renewable energy was just a glimmer on the horizon. And Wollongong had fewer footpaths.

“I firmly believe that footpaths were neglected for many years because there weren’t enough councillors with a lived experience of walking kids to school every day!” Mithra told the Flame yesterday, after the two councillors announced they would step down ahead of the council election on 14 September.

Over the past seven years, not only has the world changed, but slowly and irrevocably – in the manner of all bureaucracy – so has our coastal city and so have the lives of these two trailblazers who, as women with young families, brought fresh voices to Wollongong City Council.

“Reflecting on what we've achieved on council over the last seven years, I'm incredibly proud,” Cath said. “I've been really heartened to get things like FOGO rolled out to 80,000 houses.”

In breaking the news yesterday, Mithra listed council declaring a climate emergency in 2019 among her achievements. “In all my life of activism and trying to make the world better – and especially on climate action – being on council is the single most effective thing I have done in my life to create change,” she said. 

Why it's time to go

With another four-year term looming, Mithra said she wanted to “give somebody else a turn”.

“Seven years is a pretty long time and I feel like it's going to be good for the council to have new energy and new ideas.”

As a councillor for Ward 1, covering the northern suburbs, Mithra is proud of contributing to the city's urban greening program, new footpaths and cycleways, cultural diversity and bringing in food trucks.

A Corrimal resident, she is looking forward to a chance to take a breath. “I work for a communications agency that specialises in climate change. It's a big workload, working full-time, and then working what is essentially a part-time job on council.”

Ward 2 councillor and Coniston resident Cath – who has a degree in Environmental Science and worked as a council waste educator and a Flame Tree Co-op volunteer – has no plans post politics yet. And while the Greens are set to announce their 2024 candidates tomorrow, the current councillors will continue as usual until September’s elections (“We’ve got a big budget meeting on Saturday,” Cath said).

In their two terms, a balance of power has helped push through changes. “There's been no one group that have dominated,” Cath said. “It’s more on councillors to look at the individual issues, there's less risk of just a party line getting pushed or adopted. So we've been able to get things happening by seeking consensus and collaboration, and sometimes that involves compromise.

“As a Greens councillor, I stepped in after George Takacs and Jill Merrin. Some of the achievements that we've been able to implement in my time on council are because of the policy work they did before.

“Council is a big, big operation. It's a $300-million budget… it's got billions of dollars worth of public infrastructure to maintain. Things don't necessarily change as quickly as you would always like them.”

Fresh voices for parents 

After the last elections in December 2022, Local Government NSW reported an 8.5% increase in the proportion of women elected since 2016/17, with women making up 39.5% of all councillors in NSW. The gap is narrowing but Cath and Mithra haven’t just boosted gender diversity, they’ve been the voice of a cohort seldom seen in political leadership roles – women with young families.

For both councillors, working in the level of government closest to the community has been rewarding, yet tiring. 

“The job is as big as the time and the energy that you are able to give it. But people's expectations are endless,” Mithra said. “During the pandemic when I was homeschooling, I absolutely had to scale back… It's been hard for me to find my energy back to where it was pre-pandemic.”

When Mithra took on her role, her youngest was two. Her two sons are now in senior primary and high school. Spending time with them is one reason she is looking forward to stepping down. “When it comes to Saturdays, I actually just want to be able to be a private person and go to my kids' soccer, play soccer myself, and not go to a three-hour-long meeting.”

Cath said, “Seven years ago, when I became a city councillor, I wasn't a parent. And now my daughter's just started primary school. So it's a big change in my family life.”

Cath hasn’t had a ‘day job’ as well as council work. Even so, with a low wage and no staff, it’s been a juggle to represent the community and make family time.

“A lot of people are shocked when they find out that Wollongong is one of the better-paid city council roles in the state, and it's only $34,000 a year,” Cath said. “And there's no maternity leave.

"Sometimes people think councillors are doing it for the money – and that's definitely not the case.

“I didn't do this to become a politician. I stood up as a city councillor because I wanted to see things change in our community.”

Challenges ahead

While actions to cut emissions are on Mithra’s list of achievements, many challenges await on the road to net zero.  

“Climate change will affect all of our lives – is already affecting our lives; the impact on my family from the Black Summer bushfires was extraordinary,” said Mithra, who remembers the horror of parents and siblings being evacuated; of staying up all night on January 4th, 2020, watching from afar as bushfire burned towards their family home. “It was a little timber cottage in the bush in Kangaroo Valley. It was about 5km away, at the last moment the wind changed.”

Like many public figures, Mithra has faced animosity over wind farms and the Illawarra’s Renewable Energy Zone, but she is determined to support the transition to renewables. 

“I work in climate change. It is the thing that keeps me up at night. It's a thing that gets me up in the morning and it is the thing that kind of drives my life. I feel incredibly relieved to see that the transition is starting to happen around us … but honestly, it breaks my heart to see people that are regarded as sensible campaigning against this on NIMBY issues, when really it is the challenge of our lifetime to solve this.”

Last year, at an October 9 meeting, councillors voted 11-1 in favour of the proposed REZ and Mithra said support for offshore wind has been “pretty much unanimous” among the Greens.

“There are people that absolutely contact me. They send me creepy private messages, they send me abusive emails, but they're not people that I've ever seen engaged on environmental issues in any other form. So I don't believe that that concern for the environment is genuine, because people who are concerned about marine life, about whales, are also engaged around trying to get rid of shark nets and replace them with SMART drumlines and stopping longliners, fishing trawling, and engaging around having marine sanctuaries, things like that. 

“I feel like it's a really different group of people who are pretending to use environmental issues to oppose the wind farms.”

Cath predicts housing affordability could be the biggest challenge for her successors. 

“I've had friends couch surfing with me that have come to the end of their lease and not been able to find somewhere. It's affecting all sorts of people, particularly women over 55, but also the younger generation.

“Despite the growing severity of the homelessness crisis and the affordability crisis and housing insecurity, there's been a real drag on really practical reforms that are needed, like ending no grounds eviction, like bringing in inclusionary affordable housing zoning, or like we're seeing at a federal level at the moment, there's debate about the great, big tax incentives that are given to property investors that far surpass what is invested in public housing.

“We need public investment and we need requirements across the board so that there's certainty … it's interesting that we've been able to get voluntary planning agreements with the Corrimal Cokeworks and Port Kembla former public school site when they've been rezoned from heavy industrial to residential. But they're five and seven and a half percent. It's actually going backwards because at the moment, there's about 8% housing in Wollongong that's public housing. Some of the neighbouring councils don't have any public housing at all.”

While acknowledging the time toll of council work, Mithra would “absolutely" recommend it to other women.

“We need more younger women on council … It has also become more flexible now, so you are able to join briefings online if you need to care for kids at home. But you absolutely need to draw boundaries, especially with people’s expectations about attending community meetings on evenings and weekends.”

“In ecology," Cath said, "succession is really important in terms of the resilience of the bush. I'm really excited that there'll be some new candidates with energy and commitment and drive, and I'll be supporting them.”

15 February update: On Thursday 15th, the Illawarra Greens announced their candidates for the local government elections. They are Jess Whittaker, candidate for Lord Mayor and Ward 1; Kit Docker (Ward 2); and Deidre Stuart (Ward 3). The elections will be held on September 14, 2024.