Councillor Bonnie Harvey is the youngest woman ever to be elected to the Northern Beaches council. She was just 22-years old when she was appointed as the Greens Councillor for Manly Ward in 2024.
At the same time as representing her community, Councillor Harvey works, studies Politics/International Relations and Socio-legal Studies at the University of Sydney (Dalyell Scholar Stream) and has a bevy of hobbies and personal advocacy projects – all full-time commitments.
Councillor Harvey spoke to AFTRS FM about how “hectic” her schedule is and how finding a work-life balance can be tricky, “I just don’t have that dog in me to work 80-90 hour weeks, I am simply not a person that can survive that.”
Councillor Harvey said that a job such as Council had the potential to take up all her time and in trying to do it all, she’d learned that “doing my job properly and to the best of my ability is really about me protecting my time and energy, because if I can’t show up 100% as myself, then I’m not doing my due diligence for the residents that elected me.”
Councillor Harvey told AFTRS FM that she got active in politics when she became aware of people in positions of power not working towards solving issues that she cared about.
Soon after this realisation, she joined her local Greens party (Manly), was promptly asked to be a paper candidate (not expected to win in her local electorate) and she ended up winning.
Councillor Harvey credits the late-great Freshwater Senior Campus (or as it’s more affectionately known, “Freshie”) for starting her on her advocacy journey – joining the Students take Action group, becoming a school leader and launching the “Feeling Fresh” mental health program that worked to support peers experiencing mental health issues, “that was a time on the Northern Beaches when we had a lot of youth suicide, so advocacy for youth mental health was a big thing for me.”
Although Councillor Harvey is an empowered voice and fully qualified as a community leader, she says she’s still putting all the pieces together, “I wish there was a book on ‘how to be a young politician’, no-ones written that book yet, maybe I should give it a crack once I figure it all out.”
Her advice for other young people wanting to get active in local politics? “Just go for it! You don’t understand how valuable and necessary your insight is. I think you’d be surprised by how well people respond to a young person on a polling booth saying ‘yeah it’s me, I’m actually the candidate’.”
To hear what Councillor Bonnie Harvey thinks about social media as a tool for advocacy and more, listen to the full story on the fourth episode of AFTRS FM: Have you heard we’re going political.
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