There are many divides in politics, many points of interest and views that bring us closer to some people and pit us against others. The conventional wisdom says that when it comes to local politics, perhaps there is no divide greater than that between dog lovers and just about everybody else.

The first time I ran as a candidate for Marrickville council in Sydney’s inner west, I was advised by an experienced colleague that dogs were the third rail of local politics: to take a position on dogs was political death.

I laughed off the advice, thinking it was a touch jaded. At risk of touching the rail, I’ll put on the record that I’m a dog owner and lover.

Dogs are the best and my dog Lucy is the best of the best. As any dog owner knows, a dog is basically what is left if you take a human and throw away all the bad bits. The French have a saying that sums it up: tout sauf les mots (everything but words).

It didn’t take long to discover that my colleague was right and that dogs really are a flashpoint for local councillors. Even as a state member of parliament, my inbox fills with messages, complete with attached pictures of dog-poo and videos of recalcitrant, un-leashed pooches.

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The fact is that the debate about dogs is actually code for a bigger conversation about how we use – and share – our open spaces.

In our cities, green space is at a premium. Marrickville has less green space than almost every other local government area in NSW and every afternoon, every lunch break, every weekend, there is a silent battle played out on park benches, sporting fields and baby-swings.

As our population grows and density increases, the pressure on our open spaces intensifies. Every square metre of grass is used and residents with wildly varying uses crash into each other – sometimes literally.

A few years ago, when I was the mayor of Marrickville, I was approached by two women – Maggie and Merilynn – who along with some of their neighbours walked the few blocks to Weekley Park in Stanmore each morning and night to let their dogs run around. There were no dog parks in their neighbourhood and they weren’t hurting anybody as the park was generally quiet when they were there.

They did this for several years until one day, somebody called the council, who dutifully sent the rangers around. Warnings were issued. The crackdown continued with rangers practicing sneaky dog stakeouts. Some owners were fined and the Weekley park dog group dwindled.

The two women thought this was unfair – where else were their dogs supposed to go? Their once lovely neighbourly ritual had become an unnecessarily covert and unpleasant affair. And most of all they missed their local friends, both two and four legged.

So Maggie and Merilynn did something about it.

They knocked on doors, stood on street corners and collected hundreds of signatures to support their idea. Then they came to me with a simple proposal to make part of Weekley Park a timed off-leash area.

There was robust community debate and I decided to grab the rail with both hands and throw my support behind their plan. The council supported a trial, and after consultation with residents, formalised the off-leash area at Weekley Park.

It took a little push but council then trialled more parks. After 12 months and a 90% positive response rate, Marrickville council went from having just three formal dog exercise areas to over 10 off-leash parks. It’s now trialling another three.

During the debate, one resident told me she didn’t have a dog, but was glad people were using the park as she walked home in the dark and felt safer knowing people were around.

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Another resident told me she was surprised when her teenage son – one of the grunting, eye-rolling variety – actually said hello to someone they passed on the street, someone he met at the dog-park.

Dogs are infinitely social and share their space. Humans aren’t always as good. Sometimes we need some gentle encouragement to get along and co-exist, particularly as we increasingly live on top of each other. Even though we might not like to admit it, there’s a little of that grunting, eye-rolling teenager in all of us.

That’s why our public and green spaces are so important – they are places for us to join together, share, and engage with one another.

The debate on dog parks taught me that in many ways, our public spaces are where we stop being individual residents and start being a community. It also showed me you sometimes have to challenge conventional political wisdom to bring people together.

We need more parks, better sporting facilities and active transport corridors to help us get out of our cars and walking or cycling to work. And we need a lot more space for dogs, too.

When the NSW parliament returns, I’ll be making a case for our parks and open spaces, but I’ll also be moving a motion to loosen the restrictions on dogs travelling on trains, light rail and buses. That’ll encourage more people to use public transport and to discover all our wonderful open spaces across the city.

And it’ll make city life all the more friendly, because, you know, dogs are just the best and they don’t actually divide us at all. Dogs bring us together.