Systems analyst, software developer and St Albans resident Tony Smith has a long history of backing public transport, celebrating diversity and protecting nature. He speaks to Charlene Macaulay:
What’s your connection to the local community?
My late mother, Joan Carstairs, bought where she could afford in 1973 as soon as [Prime Minister Gough] Whitlam forced the banks to deal with women without husbands. In retirement, she became a driving force behind the St Albans Historical Society and I provided technical support for some of their publishing projects.
Having come back in 1999 from a couple of years working in Sydney with a revived appreciation of public transport, I started using Keilor Plains station at the end of my mother’s street. [I was] horrified by the lack of co-ordination in planning for the Taylors Road grade separation and rapidly got involved in transport planning issues, which provided further basis for my all-consuming involvement in the recent campaign to improve public transport and kill the East West Link.
What do you like about Brimbank?
Brimbank is at the centre of Melbourne’s suburban growth, with its role changing to being a service corridor for the western and north-western growth areas, in particular.
We are also central to Melbourne’s industrial heritage. Similarly, we have urban environmental remnants that can be revived and treasured with educational opportunities: volcanic plains grasslands and the much-abused Stony Creek. The Maribyrnong has been a life-long magnet.
More than almost anywhere else on earth, nobody in Brimbank makes anything of the colour of your skin. We celebrate diversity.
If you could change one thing about Brimbank, what would it be and why?
We need to find a new generation, unencumbered by history, who can form an elected council that can build strongly on what the administrators have achieved.
What’s your favourite Brimbank eatery or place to get coffee?
The concession on the elevated concourse at Sunshine station, which makes train service interruptions much less painful.
How do you spend your downtime?
If I’m not asleep, it’s not downtime! But I do have interests beyond Brimbank and the Moonee Ponds Creek: in particular, the practical application of academic research via Kororoit Institute, which we named to reflect interest in regional growth planning.
