Despite her achievements, many voters feel it is time for Sydney’s longest-serving leader to move on – but they’re not sure whether there is a better candidate.
Looking through the archives at some of the early coverage of Clover Moore’s tenure as lord mayor of Sydney, you notice how much the city has changed since she took over in 2004.
And she has put the council on track to reach net zero emissions by 2035, ahead of schedule, with minimum energy ratings for new buildings set to achieve net zero energy use from 2026.Then there are the things that haven’t gone so well. Sydney’s struggles with nightlife, freedom and fun are well known. One story from 2004 casually begins by mentioning “the heart of Sydney’s 24-hour party scene at Taylor Square”. It is difficult to imagine anyone writing that now.
That’s not to say she has been free from controversy. She is mocked for her obsession with cycleways, loathed by conservative media – most notablyBut Moore kept winning a majority on the city council for her “independent team”. It is by far the state’s richest council, controlling $15 billion in assets and collecting $850 million in operational income each year, with 21.2 per cent coming from rates paid by CBD businesses and 11.4 per cent from residents.
Recently, as the housing crisis has worsened, Moore even praised an old enemy, billionaire Meriton founder Harry Triguboff, for his, calling it a win for design excellence. And she slammed other councillors for opposing Meriton’s plan: “We are not going to address the housing crisis if we reject every planning proposal that comes across our desk.”
In Sydney, it’s a massively different story. The population of the CBD, including Haymarket, The Rocks and Millers Point, rose from 22,760 in 2011 to 27,407 in 2016 and ticked up just slightly to 27,939 in 2021 . If you exclude Haymarket and Millers Point, the CBD population fell to just 16,667 in 2021.
The truth is residential development is not banned in the Sydney CBD: it is allowed under the SP5 Metropolitan Centre zoning. But it is rare. Some of that is policy-related, some is economic. At an election forum held this week by Business Sydney – which wants to double the population of Sydney’s CBD – Moore said 3200 homes had been built in the city centre in the past five years, and almost 5000 were “in the pipeline”. The CBD’s population was forecast to grow by 60 per cent in 20 years, she added, and “this high growth rate is comparable to urban renewal areas”.
Clover Moore with architect and landscape designer Jan Gehl who drew up the plans for turning George Street in Sydney’s CBD into a car-free boulevard.Moore defends the council’s current settings, including a 1 to 3 per cent floor space or equivalent monetary contribution for all developments in the city. This helped build or plan 3323 affordable homes so far, she says, and will yield another 2000 by 2036, or 166 a year.
A couple of blocks away, the so-called YCK precinct is blossoming into a buzzing nightlife destination with a network of small bars, including rooftops and basements, new restaurants, laneways and the Machine Hall, a cool space for gigs and events. And the south end of the city, around Thai Town, always has life in it.Oxford Street is close to Clover Moore’s heart.
In June, Moore addressed an meeting of underwhelmed Oxford Street business owners. Seemingly oblivious to the anger in the room, she began by recounting initiatives her council had taken for the area, including the rainbow crossing, pride flags and vests affixed with pride logos for nightclub security guards, aimed at enhancing safety.She then valiantly defended the coming cycleway, insisting it would be good for businesses, despite murmurs and protests from the audience.
“What Clover has done is set the city up for change, and that has now plateaued,” he says. “This is the perfect time for someone to come in and utilise everything she has worked hard to do.”Martignago also runs the Potts Point Partnership and interacts with the council constantly. In his experience, council managers are stuck in their old ways and holding back the city.
“Clover took it to Town Hall House,” he recalls. “They turned around and said the gradient is too different, so you would need an accessibility option, either a lift or a ramp, and it would cost too much money. They had no interest in doing it. “We have a council who is apathetic until they are militant,” Martignago says. “The role of a lord mayor and a council is to shape the city. They have all the data, they have the control, they liaise with the state. They are the people who can effect and make change, but they don’t care.”The punishment appeared out of proportion to the crime, and Moore – once made aware of the issue – swiftly intervened.
Clover Moore on the Bourke Street cycleway in Redfern, which opened in 2011, pictured ahead of the 2021 election campaign.The lord mayor’s long-standing support for bike paths is also back under the microscope, with the Oxford Street West cycleway and its planned extension through Paddington irking business owners and conservative columnists., but it is not new. Moore has been opening bike lanes since 2009 , with her first two-way separated cycleway opening in 2011.
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