Hidden away beneath this week’s headlines of Royal Commissions and ICAC inquiries was a quiet win for the state’s retail workers and their families. It was a victory achieved when the NSW Government gave up its push for new laws that would have seen more Sydneysiders having to work on the Boxing Day public holiday.

This result was despite earlier Government assurances to business that there would be trading on Boxing Day in 2012 and the enabling legislation having already passed the Legislative Assembly.

So what changed the dynamic? It was ‘community organising’.

The strategy and people power marshalled by the Sydney Alliance and the Take the Time coalition was the decisive factor in getting the O’Farrell Government to back off.

Who and what are the Sydney Alliance? We are a broad and diverse coalition of more than 50 of the city’s largest religious organisations, unions, and community groups who started coming together in 2007 and launched in 2011. Our agenda is not driven by political interest. The Sydney Alliance is a non-party political organisation. Rather our agenda is discerned by consultation among partner organisations who acknowledge that our self-interest lies in our shared interest for the common good of Sydney.

The Take the Time Coalition – an initiative of the retailer workers’ union, the SDA, approached us earlier in the year to see if the issue of public holidays was one that was of interest to our members. It most definitely was. Last year when the Sydney Alliance listened to over 6500 of our members, work/family balance came up as a high priority.

Like many civil society organisations members of the Take the Time coalition were concerned that on their own, it would be hard to get a hearing from Government, let alone a positive result about the changes to the Boxing Day public holiday. We in the Alliance knew that many of our religious and community partners would be interested in the issue of public holidays too – and we thought that by working together, we could make a difference.

One key point of influence was the cross benchers in the NSW Legislative Council, particularly the Christian Democrat leader the Rev. Fred Nile. Rev. Nile had previously expressed concern about encroachments on family time. We also knew that Rev. Nile was once a shop assistant himself. Another shift in how we could influence the outcome came when responsibility for the public holiday legislation had passed to the Treasurer (and new Minister for Industrial Relations) Mike Baird. Mr Baird had a strong connection to issues around family time, and was very open to talking with religious organisations – as he had previously trained to be an Anglican Minister.

So, the Sydney Alliance helped the Take the Time coalition to organise a delegation of top religious and community leaders to meet with the Treasurer. It was a very interesting meeting. As community organisers, the Sydney Alliance tells stories and asks lots of questions. At that meeting the Treasurer shared his own stories of working in retail when he was young, and how hard it was for him to negotiate time off. In the meeting he expressed genuine concern for this issue.

Nevertheless, at the Sydney Alliance we know it is power that changes decisions, not just concern or sympathy. So, with one more sitting session of the NSW Parliament to go in 2012, we organised to have a Work/Life Balance Forum on the first day of the last session on Tuesday 13 November.

Our plan was to showcase the broad community support for keeping public holidays as they are, and to show our own power to influence key decision-makers. So we invited Rev. Nile along and asked him to publicly declare not only that he would vote against the Retail Trading Amendment, but also to champion our cause.

That Rev. Nile agreed to attend was powerful enough. We informed the Treasurer of this, and invited him to attend as well.

Having marshalled our forces on the result we wanted, the breakthrough came. At 10:40am, 20 minutes before our Work/Life Balance forum with Rev. Nile was due to start, the Treasurer called the Sydney Alliance and told us that he was going to pull the legislation from the Parliament.

Rev. Nile received a standing ovation when he addressed the 150-plus members of the Work/Life Balance forum. It’s fair to say there were a number of people in that room who would not have expected to find themselves in that situation.

In that room were Catholics, Anglicans, Uniting church members, and I might add a few atheists, Christian youth reps, retail workers, migrant resource centres – just to name a few. We were a motley diverse mob.

But this was no coincidence. We built powerful relationships based on clear thinking about what it would take to stop the passage of this legislation, and we won. Boxing Day was saved as a public holiday for local families.

But it doesn’t end there. Civil society is only flexing its newly-found muscles. At the Work/Balance Forum we saw over 100 people commit to getting more involved in working for family time. I’m sure we will need all those people and more because the strong lobby group – the Retailers Association – has already come out to push for 24 hour trading!

But with wins like this week’s, the lobbyists at the big end of town are now on notice. Civil society is coming back.

Dr Amanda Tattersall is the founding coalition director the Sydney Alliance. She will be speaking on a Sydney Ideas panel on Friday 16 November to launch the Social Justice Network at the University of Sydney. http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2012/why_social_justice_matters.shtml

Sydney alliance claimed its first successful negotiation with nine candidates, ranging from top liberal and labor councillors, all agree to create new drop off zones in front of all the major medical centres in Liverpool.

It worked because it was run, led and directed by local parishioners, unionists and community organisation leaders.

The issue was surfaced in a listening campaign run in March 2012 where locals kept recounting horror stories of getting fined for taking elderly loved ones to the doctors.

The assembly of over 250 people crammed into st xaviers school hall in lurnea to urge the councillors of all stripes to do the right thing by the residents. That pressure was maximised by the fact the council elections are less than two weeks away.

Labor, independent and liberal candidates agreed to bring this matter to the council at the first meeting after the election. That meeting is usually for formalities, but this time they will also work to resolve this issue.

This win is the first in a broader strategy of going deep to make change. The alliance has listened to what is going on for people in the suburbs, and now certainly and firmly, this massive coalition of 52 organisations with over 500000 members is bring about positive community change.

Tuesday night will see a similar assembly in st Mary’s arguing for ether lighting around the station. These events are all part of an escalating campaign to showcase the power of diverse relationships and organised citizens at the city assembly at the end of October.

On 15 September a new kind of coalition is launching in Sydney. Its called the Sydney Alliance and while it may be new to the general public, it is very familiar to the 36 member organisations that are involved. Together – we have been building this coalition since 2007. It was then that I returned from the United States and Canada where I had not only learnt about how to build coalitions differently (as written about in Power in Coalition) but had seen community organising in action in places like Seattle (Sound Alliance) and London (Citizens UK).

I approached Unions NSW with the idea of setting up a broad based coalition that didn’t start with specific issues, but rather with the ambitious desire to reconnect and bring together a united community voice. We would rebuild relationships between and within all the major community-based organisations – churches, unions, temples, schools, community organisations, mosques – and together we would train community leaders, find out what people cared about then move to action to fix those issues and improve the lives of people living in Sydney.

We began organising, and by November 2007 we had 13 organisations and $130 000 of committed funds. A year later we had 22 organisations and $1 million. And today we have 36 organisations, having trained 1300 community leaders and listened to 6500 people.

We launch with an agenda for the common good based on what we heard across the city. We heard that people are frustrated getting around (so we are working on transport), that people aren’t getting along (so we are working on social inclusion) and people are falling through the cracks (so we are working on community care and health).

The coalition is exciting as it puts into practice many of the lessons documented in Power in Coalition.

While we have lots of partner organisations, we still take “less is more” seriously – asking those partners to do a lot for their involvement. They make financial commitments and people commitments in order to be involved, and organisations are selected based on their strategic contribution to building a broad based people’s organisation that can stand for the whole of Sydney.

Individuals have been vital. Not only the positional leaders, but champions inside of those organisations, as well as thousands of trained leaders who run core teams, working groups, regional groups and our issues work.

We work on mutual self-interest – but it is organisation’s interest in reviving their own organisations that is the core reason for new organisations to join. While unions and churches might not have a lot in common – many share the need to involve more young people and invigorate their volunteer base.

Planning has been critical. Indeed we have been planning our launch for four years! It has been timetabled to coincide with a new government in NSW. We didn’t want to be a part of an election but launch in a period where we can truly be about providing people with a way to have their say beyond just voting.

Scale is vital – we are organised across the city as well in 10 regional areas of Sydney – Parramatta, Penrith, Gymea, Bankstown, Marrickville – just to name a few. We bring together people locally as well as coordinate people and organisations across the city.

The founding assembly is just the start. But it is a testament to the book that these ideas are not just words on a page, but that the lessons can be applied in practice.

Since writing “Power in Coalition” Tattersall helped to found a broad based coalition called the Sydney Alliance. This coalition builds on the findings in the book as well as the practices of community organising, with the aim of building a citizens organisation capable of taking public action for the common good.

The Sydney Alliance involves a diverse array of organisations, including the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, Hindu Council of Australia nine unions including Unions NSW, Western Sydney Community Forum, Arab Council Australia, the Uniting Church, the Jewish Board of Deputies, Bhavan Australia (see all the organisations at www.sydneyalliance.org.au).

The Alliance was founded in 2007 with funding from Unions NSW, with Tattersall working with another organiser, Jennifer Acklin, approaching organisations about the idea. With the union movement’s Your Rights at Work campaign in the background, sufficent interest was garnered from 13 organisations to being the Alliance.

By 2010, 26 organisations had shared $1 million to help build a strong coalition for the common good in Sydney. Over 1000 people from these organisations had participated in a 2 day alliance building training program, and the coalition had established sustainable governance structures.

During 2010, the Alliance will hold listening campaigns in its organisations to identify issues / concerns / hopes that may be commonly felt by the members of its different organisations, and in September 2011 the Alliance will launch into the public arena with an Assembly and an agenda for the common good.