Vodcast

EP 01. Climate-conscious and energetic leader of tomorrow

Meha Patel: Hi everyone. My name is Meha and I am the Future Makers host for this podcast. On today’s episode I have with me, Bonnie.
So Bonnie, would you like to do a quick introduction of yourself?

Bonnie Harvey: Yeah. Hi Meha. Thanks for having me. My name is Bonnie Harvey. I am the youngest female counsellor ever elected to Northern Beaches Council. I’m a member of the Greens party and I’m a politics nerd.

Meha Patel: Great. I think because you are one of the youngest counsellors and basically how we met, we met through LGNSW at the annual conference. I was really inspired to see someone really fairly young as a counsellor. So I think a lot of us have the same question. Like, how did you, what was your educational and career background and how did you get to become a counsellor for Northern Beaches?

Bonnie Harvey: Yeah. So I think since I was very young, I’ve been very interested in social issues and politics, and that led me starting my degree at Sydney University, which is a double degree in Politics, International Relations and Socio Legal studies in the Advanced studies stream there. And yeah, I really held off on like joining a party and I sort of played around with the different parties and also volunteered with some independents and stuff and I just landed in the Greens and felt like that was the right space for me.
And they are the local groups around me are very encouraging of young people to get involved and throw their hat in the ring. And I said, well, why don’t I run as the candidate for the local government election? And they’re like, sure.
And then I got up and now I’m in and my good friend Ethan, who’s also a member of Northern Beaches Greens, he also got elected at the age 21. So he’s our youngest ever councillor. So the two of us are sort of like bit of a power duo.

Meha Patel: Yeah. Oh, that’s really inspiring to hear. I think again. Like, what is your sort of role and what are your main responsibilities as a counsellor?

Bonnie Harvey: Hmm, I think the answer to that question would really depend on what kind of counsellor you are. At the bare minimum, you’re going to briefings, going to meetings, reading all your business papers. But on top of that, if you’re like myself, you’re going to go to a lot of community events. You’re going to take a lot of phone calls, a lot of emails, and have a lot of correspondence with residents who have their own issues, or like ongoing campaigns and things that they want assistance with.
So for example, I’m helping some residents right now create a bit of a movement to protest against a bush clearing in my area, and it’s actually not a local government issue, it’s a state government issue, but my local Greens group and my local Greens councillors have support networks and mechanisms that we can use to help them with that. So it’s sort of like make of it what you will like if a resident called me and said, oh, I’m having this thing with this ongoing issue with flooding in my area, I could just pass it on to Council staff and say ‘You know, can you help this resident?’ But I like to call that resident. I like to get to know them.
Obviously you can’t do that with every single person, so I look for the connections that I think we’re going to be able to actually create something productive together.
Which very much probably depends on the tone with which the resident reaches out, so it’s such a wide range of responsibilities you can do as much as you like. No one’s gonna stop you. And I’m also very active on my social media and trying to stay in contact with the wider population and let them know what Council’s doing. So yeah, it can be very time consuming.

Meha Patel: No, of course. And I think because you have such varying responsibilities, just I mean for the campaign that you’re doing right now, can you sort of describe maybe what a typical day in a life looks like for you?

Bonnie Harvey: Oh, it’s so hard.
So something I’ve had to do early on was sit myself down and say this will take up all of your time if you let it, because I’m still trying to finish my university degree and I have my own tutoring business as well. So I had to pretty early on, say, OK, I will be working three days a week. Outside of that you will get my auto-reply, my auto-text back, yadda yadda. So for the days that I am working; it depends. Two days I go into the Council Chambers today is one of those days and I’ll just I’ll go to the gym in the morning. I will read through my emails at home. I’ll probably get 20 to 30 emails a day. So just always try and chip away at those and don’t let them build up, go into the Council chambers, maybe have a few meetings with staff, with residents.
Make some social media content, so like usually that’s a fun part of my day. I’m like, all right, I’m gonna be silly and make a TikTok now and let off some steam.
And then on Tuesdays, like today, we have a Council briefing, which goes from 6:00 to 8:30. So it’s a pretty full day for me when I am working.

Meha Patel: It seems like you really enjoy the role that you’re in. Is there something rewarding or enjoyable you like to work as a counsellor?

Bonnie Harvey: I’m honestly really enjoying, God,  I feel like such a nerd. Like, there’s such a wide array of datasets to be collected because councils do so many things like from roads to tree removal from you know, wildlife protections to graffiti task force; it’s like so many little areas of nuance and all of them are contentious in their own way, so I guess I’m just really enjoying the learning curve of being in such a fast organisation and being on the board of directors of that organisation and having to upskill and just become an expert on these things really quickly and then, you know, I go around with my friends and like, oh, did you know, Manly Town Hall, these renovation, they’re like Bonnie, no one cares about that. And I’m like, well, I do. It’s exciting!
So I think just like becoming really knowledgeable about the area and the history and all the ins and outs of all the various functions of our counsellors, really enjoyable to me alongside actually helping people, of course. But that’s my little like, selfish knowledge collection, nerdy thing.

Meha Patel: Oh, that’s really great to hear that you really, you know, enjoy the little histories and stuff. And I think that’s really important to really enjoy your work, that you do is there been, has there been any specific projects or initiatives that you’re really proud of for Northern Beaches Council?

Bonnie Harvey: There’s something that I am very excited about, which seems to be coinciding with my term of Council in a really fortunate way, because I campaigned on a few key sort of issues and areas when I was running for election and one of them was affirming the role of arts in our economy because I myself have dabbled in the arts, I’m a musician and I understand.
The power of performance and entertainment to bring people together, but also to get people to spend money and reinvest in their local areas.
And I think that’s often overlooked, particularly because Manly is such an entertainment hub where people, not entertainment hub, sorry, a nightlife hub where people are travelling pretty far and you know from across the world to come to Manly and visit it. So I was really passionate about sort of expanding what that experience looks like for our tourists and for our residents. And we’ve recently had a motion come through council where we could decide to apply for funding for a grant to do acoustic testing in Manly. So testing volumes, you know, volume controls of different venues and things like that in hopes to potentially establish a special entertainment precinct trial. Now to my knowledge, there’s only one other special entertainment precinct in Sydney and that is Newtown. So you have special allowances for businesses in terms of opening hours, and even I think it’s like liquor regulation prices and things like that. So it can be more profitable if they supply live music. So it’s a really exciting thing depending on if we get the grant for the acoustic testing. But I think we will.
If that can come through and we can do a trial of that, it fits really well with my vision of what I wanted to explore for Manly and I actually put up an amendment at that meeting to say let’s create a working group of local entertainers, businesses, industry-relevant people and you know, key residents who’ve been really involved with saying we need to, you know, reinvigorate, reinvigorate Manly.
And let’s make it so that if this happens, it’s done holistically in an entertainment centric way instead of just exacerbating a pre-existing culture of nightlife and gambling. Drinking and gambling to be honest.

Meha Patel: Oh, that’s great to hear.
How would you sort of describe maybe the workplace culture at Northern Beaches?

Bonnie Harvey: Hmm, I would say it’s very positive. We have a very different composition in our Council than what we’ve had previously. We have primarily Independents, Greens. Well, yeah, all Independents and Greens, actually. So we’ve found it to be very for the most part, very cooperative, very positive. I found the Northern Beaches independence team to be very welcoming, particularly to myself and Ethan, as young people saying, it’s fantastic to actually have young councillors.
Quite a few of them actually mentioned it in an hour inauguration speeches. They said it’s so great to have young people here, so I truly have felt welcomed, and supported as a young person in the workplace without being sort of patronised or infantilised, which has been really nice. And yeah, the staff are just amazing. We have some very, key office ladies who I often call up and have long conversations with about ‘If I wanted to do this, how would I do that?’ and they really take care of me and they really just want to help us do our best jobs as the directors, and get the most out of the role for the community.

Meha Patel: You mentioned, you feel really supported especially being a young counsellor within your team. What advice would you give someone considering a career in as a counsellor, especially a young counsellor and local government?

Bonnie Harvey: I would say while I feel very supported by staff, I am very lucky to have the support of other counsellors who aren’t necessarily from within the Greens. I have heard first-hand that that’s not the experience for other people on different councils. I would just say, this is my sort of word of warning, not the most exciting advice, but I would say especially if you’re going in as a lone political actor like we have Greens and other councillors who sit as the only Green on that Council – it’s significantly more work and more emotional labour to be sitting in that Council chamber by yourself. I would have a very, very different experience if I was the only Green on this Council, but fortunately I have three others and one other young person. So I think really look at what your support networks are in terms of a political party and independent team around you, and yeah, recognise that there is such a there is such a breadth of knowledge that if you don’t have that team, you’re going to have to be all over it all by yourself to do the job effectively. Beyond that, though, I reckon just go for it.

Meha Patel: No, absolutely. I think it’s really inspiring to have young councillors such as yourself within Council and I think the last question is, is that, you know, you mentioned you’re working on so many different exciting projects like the music project. So what role do you think young leaders can play in shaping the role of local government?

Bonnie Harvey: Let me think. I mean, there’s so many things that young people have to contribute. We were just raised in a completely different way. You know, we have we are digitally literate. We have been sort of awake to the horrors and the joys of the world since day one in our bedrooms. You know, when we’re 13. So I think we have very different perspective on social issues, which is really valuable.
But I would say, what really excites me about being a young politician and what I hope to bring to the table and what I hope other young people, young people who want to get involved in politics brings the tables we need to reclaim this space, and we need to make it exciting and accessible. Because I understand so many people my age really don’t engage or know what’s happening ’cause it just seems like all these older people who they can’t relate to, talking about things that they don’t understand and that is very dangerous for our democracy. And yeah, so I hope that if people see me and feel my energy and feel my passion, they might not have any idea what I’m talking about, but maybe they’ll be intrigued to learn a bit more and have a conversation with me and get involved because at the end of the day, you know, your vote is one of the most valuable things that you have, so you want to make sure that you’re engaging and using that wisely.

Meha Patel: No, absolutely, absolutely. I think that brings us to the end of this vodcast. So thank you so much for joining us on our first episode for this vodcast.
And yeah, we hope to see you back very, very soon.

Bonnie Harvey: Thank you, Meha. Bye.

Meha Patel: Bye.