Here’s my opinion piece from Monday's Sydney Morning Herald. 

Let’s be done with arbitrary distinctions about who is entitled to certain wages or conditions, healthcare, housing or access to services based on the colour of someone’s passport or the status of their visa.

All people are born free and equal in dignity and rights - and no laws or government policies should ever undermine this.

I know we are in the middle of a pandemic and things are really intense, but it’s also Fashion Revolution Week. So to try to break up the endless virus content, we have let Tommie Mag take over our instagram.

This pandemic is a fast moving situation, with new changes and announcements every day. To keep abreast of the latest details and announcements, and our work, connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

New grants have been announced to help arts organisations, businesses and organisations survive the COVID-19 shut down. The City of Sydney has grants of up to $20,000 to help creative industries and the NSW Government has announced grants for socially isolated seniors to remain connected.

This morning we woke to news that the NSW Arts Minister Don Harwin appears to have been spending time at his holiday home in Pearl Beach while artists, musos and all those working in the creative industries have been trying to come to terms with the reality of losing all of their income, cancelling all of their plans and in many cases facing the grim reality that they can’t pay their rent.

Since we have entered this new world order, the 24/7 political news cycle, the live pressers, the snappy posts, the edgy tweets, and the record breaking stats are being pushed out a pace more rapid than ever before.

The NSW Planning Minister has used powers under the COVID-19 Emergency Measures Act to extend the hours developers and construction companies are able to work - clearing the way for 7-days of work on construction sites for existing projects. 

These extended hours have come into force this week causing much concern to residents who will be severely impacted.

At a time when health advice is directing people to maintain social distancing, work from home and stay at home - it is understandable that many are worried about these extended construction hours.

There will no doubt be additional stress put on people living near construction sites who, under these changes, will have to tolerate unbroken days of construction impacts.

Many of our local communities are currently already impacted badly by WestConnex construction - and this will only exacerbate the problem.

Jamie Parker MP, NSW Greens spokesperson on Planning released this statement and continues to advocate for communities impacted by these changes. You can see him on a recent interview on Nine News here.

It is clear that the Government must:

• Stop all night work
• Provide effective noise and dust mitigation
• Install noise and vibration monitors in impacted homes
• Provide a strict noise timetable. 

[UPDATE 19 May 2020]

The Sydney Alliance are calling on the NSW Government to provide urgent financial support for those people in NSW not covered by JobKeeper and JobSeeker. I responded to their letter on behalf of the NSW Greens as the Greens Spokesperson for Multiculturalism and you can find our response here.

[UPDATE 15 April 2020]

We are pleased to support the #unityoverfear campaign - please take a minute to do the same. The anti-chinese and anti-asian narratives and actions are causing many people, including myself, real harm at this time. Racism is NEVER okay.

[UPDATE 31 MARCH, 2020]

Today I wrote to the NSW Premier on behalf of a large cohort of people who live in the electorate of Newtown, our city and NSW, who are currently facing extremely difficult circumstances and have become very vulnerable as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

You can download the full letter here.

Our office has been contacted by a significant number of non-citizens who do not have any resources to support themselves and are not able to access the measures put in place for citizens or those offered yesterday by the federal government to category 444 visa holders.

As the NSW Greens Multicultural spokesperson, I feel very strongly that to ensure a cohesive society where everyone is treated equally and is able to live free from discrimination and racism, we need to ensure that wherever possible all people are able to access basic needs, services and supports without regard to their citizenship status. This is particularly important during times of crisis, and even more so during this current pandemic.

Community consultation has never been the Coalition’s forte. We can’t let them now use COVID-19 as an excuse to ignore the community and ram through controversial mining projects.

Email the government now to demand a moratorium on new coal and gas projects: https://bit.ly/2ycMUKF

At a time of unprecedented drought and fire events throughout New South Wales, when our farmers, scientists and firies are calling for urgent action on climate change, the NSW Liberal National government is trying to introduce legislation to water down the environmental requirements for approving new coal and gas mines. 

Burning coal is the biggest contributor to human-made climate change. It makes fires, heatwaves and drought worse. But the Minerals Council wants to weaken laws that require the climate change impacts of new coal and gas mines in NSW to be assessed as part of the planning approval process.

Coal mined here in NSW has led to around 500 million tonnes of carbon emissions - greater than total emissions from the UK or France.

Sign this petition to keep our environmental laws strong to stop our coal making global climate change worse.  

Weakening the laws that require the full climate change impacts to be considered in the assessment of new coal mines is a dangerous backward step that will make climate change worse.

If NSW is genuine about its own goal of net zero emissions by 2050, this legislation should be abandoned.

Help us protect the laws that protect our environment.