Byron Greens members could expect to be asked to take the future of the Richmond River further south into account when choosing a candidate for next year’s state election.
The river’s health was ‘the biggest issue facing Ballina,’ Greens Ballina Shire Councillor Kiri Dicker wrote to The Echo last week, one she would raise as part of a 2027 state election campaign for the local state electorate if she won a party preselection voting process.
‘In twelve years, the best we’ve managed on the Tuckean Swamp is clearing agricultural drains, despite knowing how damaging they are for river health,’ Cr Dicker wrote.
The latest woman to declare her intention to compete in The Greens’ preselection for Ballina said a fundamentally different approach to management of the river was needed.
‘We are watching it die in front of our eyes,’ she wrote, ‘all over NSW, water critical for the environment is controlled by the agricultural industry’.
The only non-Byron Greens candidate
Cr Dicker was the third Greens member to publicly vie for the chance to represent her party in the state seat of Ballina less than a month after long-serving Greens Ballina MP Tamara Smith announced her current and third term would be her last.
Cr Dicker said she wanted to ‘put a candidate from Ballina on the ballot,’ to make sure issues facing the shire were front and centre.
The state electorate of Ballina included much of the Ballina and Byron Shires and was no doubt one of the hottest seats for Greens in Australia, thanks to Ms Smith’s three consecutive state election wins, including winning the popular vote in her most recent.
Cr Dicker’s two competing Greens candidates to date were from the Byron Shire, with time still available for other members of the local party branches to join the contest.
The Ballina councillor was the least politically experienced of the three well-known Northern Rivers Greens’ members but was serving her second term in local government, having retained her seat in the 2024 elections.
‘I know how to grow the Greens vote in Ballina,’ says greenest Green
Championing her history as a Greens member in Ballina, Cr Dicker wrote of her 2021 success getting onto the local council against the belief of naysayers.
‘People said I couldn’t win,’ Cr Dicker told The Echo, ‘I did’.
‘At the time there hadn’t been a Greens Councillor on Ballina Council for five years,’ Cr Dicker wrote, ‘now there are three of us’.
Cr Dicker said a quarter of voters in the Ballina Shire voted 1 for a Greens councillor in the 2024 local government election.
‘We’re underrepresented in terms of membership but have a larger share of the population,’ she said, adding that she knew how to ‘grow the Greens vote in Ballina’.
‘That matters if we want to hold this seat long term,’ Cr Dicker said.
Dicker’s high-profile Greens competition
Popular writer and former comedian Mandy Nolan was the first high profile party member to confirm she would run in the preselection vote for a new Ballina representative in the NSW Legislative Assembly, also known as the lower house of parliament.
Ms Nolan said in early May she was interested in running, having already campaigned for The Greens twice as their federal candidate in the division of Richmond and improving the party’s election results.
Greens Byron Shire Mayor Sarah Ndiaye was also quick to announce her intention to run and was technically the most experienced candidate after serving in local government for nearly a decade, including as deputy mayor, before winning the mayoral election in 2024.
A Ballina born and raised renter with housing on her mind
Cr Dicker used the occasion of her announcement last week to reintroduce herself to the community as follows:
‘I’m a mum, a renter and a community development worker.
‘I’ve spent my career fighting for social justice for marginalised communities.
‘I wasn’t raised in a political family or involved in student politics.
‘When you spend enough time with people locked out of this country’s immense wealth, you do everything you can to change it.’
The Ballina councillor said she grew up in Lennox Head and still lived on the same street, went to Ballina High, got her degree from Southern Cross University and had her daughter at Lismore Base Hospital.
‘I’ve benefited from high quality regional public education and healthcare, and I want to make sure others can too,’ she wrote.
She said she was inspired by progressive local government movements in places like New York and Barcelona.
‘NSW Labor has pushed more costs onto local councils, stripped planning powers and gutted funding to regional communities,’ Cr Dicker wrote.
‘Their planning agenda has largely benefited property developers,’ she said.
‘We have failed to secure a single affordable dwelling in Ballina under a developer-led scheme.’
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