City of Sydney votes to retire ‘racist’ mayoral chains
The City of Sydney’s mayoral and deputy mayoral chains, which bear the city’s original coat of arms, will be consigned to history after councillors agreed they are out of touch.
Central Sydney
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The City of Sydney will retire the chains worn by its Lord Mayor and Deputy Lord Mayor at ceremonial occasions, after outgoing Linda Scott declared they carried a racist inscription.
Cr Linda Scott, whose tenure as Deputy Lord Mayor ended at tonight’s council meeting, put forward a motion to retire her chains saying she felt “uncomfortable” wearing them.
The chains, which bear the council’s original coat of arms degisned in 1857, depict a meeting between a colonial and an Aboriginal with an inscription that reads ‘I take but I surrender’.
On Monday night Lord Mayor Clover Moore tabled an urgent motion to have her own chains retired, as they carry a similar motto and symbol.
“I don’t think we can consider this without considering retiring the Lord Mayor Chains as well,” she said.
Cr Moore moved that both sets be consigned to history, and the chief executive obtain a quote on design options for new or simplified chains “that better reflect the current values of the city”, at the most reasonable cost.
Councillors unanimously voted to support the move.
However, the old coat of arms will not be removed from its promiment positions around Town Hall - including on three points of its facade, on several windows and statues inside and on historic seals and artefacts.
In a thinly veiled dig at Cr Moore, former deputy mayor Kerryn Phelps told the meeting that Cr Scott’s realisation showed the need to “maintain vigilance”.
“The Lord Mayor has been wearing these chains for the last 15 years … and didn’t notice,” she said.
But Cr Jess Scully hit back saying that Cr Phelps must have missed the issue herself during her own tenure: “It’s not a box that comes out very often.”
Cr Scott said she had never seen the chains until she was asked to represent the Lord Mayor at an event with the Mayor of Portsmouth earlier this year.
She said that the motto invoked a set of values that “I just cannot stand by”.
“My take was that at my first reading (was) that it was racist. I understand that others won’t take that view,” she said.
“I feel very uncomfortable that in 2019 in a progressive city like Sydney these would be the chains that the Deputy Lord Mayor would have to represent that city.
“We shouldn’t take away from the history of the city, but we as a council can make a decision to move on.”
The old chains will be preserved as an “artefact” of the city’s history, Cr Moore said, to be maintained by the city curator.