Streets Alive Yarra launched our Election 2024 candidate scorecard with an article in the Herald Sun!
We’re proud of the guidance we published for the 2020 election; in hindsight we think our scores were correct. Now, for the 2024 election, we’re back with a updated version. Ian Royall from the Herald Sun came across it (with preliminary scores), and asked us to comment. This was our response:
Thank you for your interest in Streets Alive Yarra Inc.
We welcome interest in our work, and discussion on how councils can help build a more beautiful, liveable, and accessible city.
We are a non-profit, volunteer, community group, with values of freedom, equality, social justice, responsibility, and a world of beauty. Reflecting these values, people of all ages and abilities should be free to safely access any property in Yarra, irrespective of whether they choose to walk, roll on a wheelchair, cycle, use public transport or drive. It’s our responsibility as a community to invest in infrastructure to deliver that freedom. More broadly, our streets represent valuable public land that should be used to build a beautiful, liveable and accessible city, including providing space for trees, and places to rest, socialise, and form connections.
Streets Alive Yarra is also a campaign member for Streets People Love, https://streetspeoplelove.org, which is a campaign supporting and promoting the efforts of local government to create safe and pleasant streets for people to live, work, play and move in. Campaign members are community and advocacy groups representing residents around Victoria. To date, over 28 groups have joined the Streets People Love campaign.
Local governments elections are coming up soon, and we encourage every voter to meet the candidates in their ward, read their websites and flyers, and form their own view as to who best aligns with their values. However, we know it can be difficult to sort through all the campaign material, so one part of our work is to offer guidance on which candidates we believe will be most likely to vote for council polices and budgets to deliver streets that are better for women, children, seniors, people with disabilities, and people on low incomes, as well as being better for people driving and parking, and better for business.
At time of this communication, we’ve only published our preliminary assessments, which are subject to change. We’ve done our best to email all candidates, using the email addresses published on the VEC website, and we encourage candidates to share our survey with others that they may be in communication with. As it states on our website, we look at a broad range of available information, not just the survey, when assessing candidates. We’ll continue to update scores as candidates complete our survey, or publish more information on their websites or social media.
We make no apologies for giving different scores to different candidates – the whole point of the scorecard is to help voters to distinguish between them. If a candidate has signed the Streets People Love pledge, answered yes to the questions on the Streets People Love survey, answered yes to the more detailed questions on the Streets Alive Yarra survey, and has a strong voting record on active transport (or is a member of a party with a strong voting record), then they’ll receive a higher score.
This campaign isn’t about politics, it’s about whether a child can bike to school without being killed or seriously injured, it’s about whether a senior can age for longer in their own home, because they can walk or roll to local shops or services on wide, smooth footpaths.
If any candidate is unhappy with their score, we challenge them to publish their support for 30 km/h zones, modal filters, a cohesive network of protected bike lanes, street trees, wombat crossings, accessible tram stops, reforms to the pricing of parking, and the reallocation of street space for pocket parks.
We’re not associated with any political party, in contrast our vision is for all parties and independents to support best practice street designs. We’re comfortable with our methodology, and as it states on our website, we’re happy to hear from any candidate who feels that their policies have been misrepresented. Through the election period we of course will be complying with any advice and instructions from the Victorian Electoral Commission.
Thank you again for your interest in Streets Alive Yarra Inc.
The online version of the article is slightly longer, and includes this image (taken from our social media) of Streets Alive Yarra out meeting with the community at a public event:
As we stated in our response, and on our website, and on social media, if any candidate is unhappy with their score, we invite them to email us with evidence of their support for the policies and investment that we advocate for, and their track record in advocating for streets that we can safely live, work, play and move in. Readers can see what questions were on the Streets Alive Yarra survey on our Election 2024 page.
We thank Ian Royall and the Herald Sun for their interest in our work.
Published 24 September 2024. Authorised by J Lawrence PO Box 4223 Richmond East 3121.