The mayor of the state’s most populous municipality has died on a flight home from China after a study tour.
Tony Bleasdale, a Blacktown City councillor since 1996 and the mayor since 2019, was leading a delegation to the council’s sister cities in South Korea and China. He had been due home this morning.
Blacktown mayor Tony Bleasdale died on a flight home from China.Credit: Rhett Wyman
Blacktown City Council was yet to issue a statement on Friday morning, but other councillors confirmed his death. He was 77.
Bleasdale was awarded a medal of the Order of Australia in 2010 for his charity work and service to the municipality of Blacktown. It is Sydney’s most populous local government area, and is home to an estimated 426,000 people.
Federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said he was shocked and saddened by news of his friend’s death, and extended his sympathy to Bleasdale’s wife Nina, their children and grandchildren.
“Tony was a friend long before he was mayor. He and his family epitomise the values of care, hard work compassion and dedication to the community,” Bowen said.
A Labor veteran, Bleasdale was among the Sydney mayors who accompanied Premier Chris Minns in February to support the state government’s efforts to boost housing supply in well-located areas.
Just before the last election, he wrote an opinion piece for the Herald arguing western Sydney was being short-changed by the state’s failure to properly levy landowners and developers for the value created by land rezoning, and to use that money for community infrastructure.
“We have absorbed 100,000 new residents in the last decade or so and, because of this policy, haven’t been able to build a single pool or library or community centre for any of these families,” Bleasdale wrote at the time.
Source Agencies
