March 18, 2015, By Jen Benepe
Fifteen Australians will be running for office under the rubric of the Australian Cyclists
The Australian Cyclists Party is vying for about 22 seats in elections March 28.
Party in local elections this month.
Among them is Phil Latz, 53 and the editor of Bicycling Trade Australia who told journalists, “By running for office, I get a chance to push for ongoing issues.”
Phil Latz is a publisher who will be running for one of the seats in the Upper House of the New South Wales legislature.
Currently there are 88 seats in the Assembly and 42 in the Legislative Council. With fifteen candidates in the mix for Legislative Council (Upper House), and six for the Legislative Assembly (Lower House) candidates, the party hopes to present its agenda in a meaningful way for change.
“Over 3.6 million people ride a bicycle regularly in Australia today. Despite this, government continues to fail to provide adequate facilities or to look after the safety of those who do ride or would ride a bicycle,” read a statement by the party on its website.
Omar Khalifa started the party two years ago and is running for one of the slots himself.
The Cyclists Party is one of twelve “minor” parties, among them the Green Party, and seven major parties currently in office, that are vying for representation in this round of voting.
The election is being held on March 28 for members of the 56th Parliament of New South Wales.
Chloe Mason, an urban planner, will be running for office in Sydney, the biggest city in Australia.Hoping to represent cycling and environmental issues,
Hoping to represent cycling and environmental issues, Omar Khalifa, an American who immigrated to Australia, started the party two years ago.
A long time cyclist, the 60-year-old Khalifa previously worked for Apple and Hewlett Packard, and now “spends his spare time raising fish, chickens, pigs and growing veggies” according to his official statement.
Reached by email, Khalifa said his party was “a long shot but possible for our Upper House aspirations,” noting that Australia has a preferencing system so voters can choose to order where votes go if their first choice doesn’t make it.
Parties can also advise on how this should be done, he said, and his party had received top preferences from the Greens and Labor parties, (the latter equivalent to the Democratic Party in the U.S.)
“Conservatives have been in charge and think cyclists are still a left wing issue, but we are out to make it a mainstream issue that every party embraces. To do that we need to show there are votes at stake for all parties, and in close elections we can make the difference,” said Khalifa.
positions for the parties and candidates directly. “This is working already,” he noted. Khalifa also thinks it is a positive sign that they have been able to coral cyclists from different ideological alignments in “an increasingly acrimonious and toxic political environment,” in Australia as in the USA, because people are looking for problem solvers.“We believe that cycling can serve to liberate and inspire. It is a positive and powerful force for improving the health and well-being of individuals, our communities and our nation,” read a mission statement of the party on its website.
One of the Hall of Shame entries on the party’s website.
Among other ACP candidates running for office, there is David Denton, the Australian finance director of Weight Watchers International who has commuted by bicycle for years and is involved in green field development.
Another candidate running in the Northern Suburbs is Ingrid Ralph who commutes and rides on the weekends.
Ingrid Ralph is “passionate about cycling and all its benefits, namely: less congestion, less stress, better health, less costs to tax payers, no carbon emissions, more community, its sociability, and reduced pressure on our health system so less costs.”
Chloe Mason, who is vying for the seat in Inner Sydney is an urban planner who has worked extensively in transport policy.
The party’s founder, Mr. Khalifa who was at one time Policy Director for the Business Council for Sustainable Development in Geneva, is running for a seat in the South Coast.
Calling themselves the first cycling party in Australia and in the world, the party was “formed to transform government policy towards cycling and all of its derived benefits in community health, education, planning, transport, regional development, economic vitality and environmental sustainability.”
The party has contested elections in Victoria, and New South Wales is their next frontier. The party plans to move on to other areas in Australia as well.
Also featured on the party’s website is a government “Hall of Shame.” Among the entries is a list of all the things the New South Wales government has not done, among them underspending the national average on cycling infrastructure, failure to address the growing number of cyclist deaths and serious injuries, and stoking of media hostility towards cyclists.”
New South Wales’ capital city is Sydney, which is also the nation’s most populous city, and in March 2014, its estimated population was 7.5 million,making it Australia’s most populous state. There are six other states in Australia, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, the Tasman Sea, and the Australian Capital Territory.
Australia could well be setting the stage for the rest of the world: Khalifa received an email from the Philippines asking how they could set up the a Cycling Party there.
Mr. Khalifa invites people to visit the party’s Facebook site, and in particular to visit their Hall of Shame.