The lesson Mike Baird needs to learn

THE NSW Premier is the latest state leader to help cement Clover Moore’s position — and the result will have plenty of repercussions for Sydney.

The NSW government just can’t get rid of Clover Moore. Picture: Adam Taylor

OPINION

Although they will deny it furiously, for decades the major parties have been ducking and diving trying every means possible to dislodge Independent Lord Mayor Clover Moore from Sydney Town Hall.

The reason? Because they just can’t seem to persuade the people of the City of Sydney to actually vote her out at the ballot box.

With Ms Moore on Saturday increasing her majority on the City of Sydney council, Premier Mike Baird is just the latest NSW leader to learn the hard way that you can’t legislate her out of existence.

Every time they tinker — be it changing a boundary here or introducing a whole new voting system there — Clover comes back stronger than ever.

What’s even more extraordinary about Ms Moore’s latest win is that she achieved it despite one of the most controversial changes to voting laws Australia has ever seen.

The Coalition, the Shooters and Fishers and Christian Democrat Fred Nile came together in an unholy alliance in 2014 to ram raid through a new law that made voting by businesses compulsory and gave them two votes while residents only got one.

Uniquely, it applied only in the City of Sydney.

Immediately critics called it a “gerrymander” and a bare faced attempt by Clover’s critics to dislodge the politician who has led town hall for 12 years.

The Liberals coveted Sydney for themselves, so the theory went, and enforcing businesses to vote would weaken Ms Moore — whose powerbase lay in the city fringe neighbourhoods.

Nonsense, said supporters of the reforms. Sydney’s CBD is Australia’s financial hub, firms pay rates, and they deserved a bigger say.

Mike Baird’s meddling appears to have cemented Ms Moore’s mayoral victory. Picture: Adam Ward

But even the Liberal candidate for Lord Mayor, Christine Forster, wasn’t convinced, telling news.com.au in the run up to the election that, “I didn’t support the two to one vote, people find it counterintuitive but those are the rules.”

Ms Moore said her Liberal rival couldn’t “pick and choose” which policies she liked. “Her party (supported the voting changes) and Christine has to stand by them. She’s their representative in the city.”

Giving business double the vote of locals just doesn’t pass the small pub test. And even if the Government did feel they could justify it, they should know that it looked like a stitch-up and would drive support to Clover.

They should know this because of bitter experience. This is not the first time Macquarie Street, where the NSW Parliament sits, has tried to mess with George Street, where Sydney council sits.

So frequently has it happened, new legislation changing the democratic goalposts in the City of Sydney have simply become known as the “Get Clover” laws.

It began back in 2004. Then Ms Moore came to office after a backlash against the Labor Government who created the current City of Sydney by forcibly merging together two former councils.

It was widely seen as an attempt to take over Sydney Town Hall by bringing in traditional Labor voters from the inner city suburbs.

It didn’t work and Labor voters went for Moore instead, who was also the local MP.

In 2012, the O’Farrell Coalition Government passed a law barring MPs from being mayors as well.

This forced Ms Moore to choose between the two.

When she opted to remain as Lord Mayor, the Liberals confidently expected to snatch the seat of Sydney. Yer, but no.

Moore acolyte and fellow Independent Alex Greenwich was elected MP for Sydney as local residents let the Government know exactly what they thought of forcing Clover out.

Last night, yet again, an attempt to derail the Moore bandwagon failed miserably as voters gave the bird to the Baird Government.

The message is clear. The more the Government tries to meddle in Sydney’s local democracy, the more the electorate will send even more votes Clover’s way.

This is a shame because Ms Moore’s record deserves to be critiqued. To her credit, the city population has grown and the city’s finances are in tip top condition.

But there are failings. Oxford Street — the LGBTI heart of the city — is literally fading away and crumbling to dust as the council fails to maintain the buildings it owns on the once grand thoroughfare.

Questions have been raised about plans for huge multi-million dollar pieces of public art, including a giant blue milk crate, and the relationship between the town hall and the state government is said to be “toxic”, which cannot be good for the city.

None of this really got an airing during the campaign. The furore around the voting law caused such consternation it obscured discussion of just about any other issue.

While Liberal Premier Mike Baird may have posed for pictures with his candidate for Lord Mayor, Ms Forster, it was his decision to push through the voting reforms that sucked her campaign of oxygen.

Former head of the Australian Medical Association Dr Kerryn Phelps — who is almost certain to become a Sydney councillor — put it succinctly to news.com.au on Saturday night.

“They’re starting to look like slow learners,” she said of the Government. “They really need to get the message and let the people make their own decisions about who they want running the city and not try and interfere in a way that seeks to manipulate the will of the people.”

The Government needs to understand that while they may not like Clover, it’s not their decision about whether she stays or goes. That is in the purview of the people of Sydney.

And the more they try to game the result, the more it only cements Ms Moore’s position as the plucky David against Macquarie Street’s goliath.

Perhaps, just to see what happens, they should leave the City of Sydney be. Who know what might happen then?