On a sunny Sunday in September, Clover Moore stood triumphant in Hyde Park flanked by a new group of councillors including high profile doctor Kerryn Phelps, and batted away questions about how long she would remain in the job.
"I've just been resoundingly elected with a 10 per cent swing for my fourth term," the City of Sydney Lord Mayor told reporters, after a victory achieved in spite of electoral changes designed to disadvantage her. "Of course" she would remain in the position.
But nine months later, and after a tumultuous week in which the working relationship between Phelps and Moore imploded in very public fashion, Moore acknowledges the need to plan for the day when she is no longer mayor.
"If I don't plan for it, will it continue to happen?," Moore says of her progressive agenda, the popularity of which has seen her dominate inner city council politics for almost 14 years. "I'm very aware of that."
In better days: Town crier Graham Keating, Jess Miller, Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore and Professor Kerryn Phelps on the steps of Town Hall at the proclamation of the 2016 council.Credit: Louise Kennerley
"I'm very aware of succession in terms of team. And that's what I said to all of the candidates. I focused on it all the time."
The manner Moore and Phelps' fell out – which came to a head with Phelps' resignation from Moore's team at Monday's council meeting, but which had been brewing for months – has drawn attention to the working method, and the sustainability, of what has been a remarkably successful political run.
One issue is Moore's future. Phelps says that when she joined Moore's ticket, she was under the impression she would one day be endorsed as a mayoral candidate in her own right. Moore did nothing to dissuade her from that view, Phelps says, while Moore says the topic was never explicitly discussed prior to September's election.
"If she'd turned out to be brilliant, and if she'd done the work, I would have considered it," says Moore of the idea of Phelps succeeding her.
Lord Mayor Clover Mayor with Kerryn Phelps, prior to the September 2016 council electionsCredit: James Brickwood
Moore, however, says that might just as well apply to any of the other candidates she assembled. As well as Phelps, Moore added architect Philip Thalis, curator and event coordinator Jess Scully, and sustainability consultant Jess Miller, to the Sydney lawyer Robert Kok as her aligned independents on council.
"By getting a really good team of people, we would see how they work, and how they perform, there may be someone who, if I plan not to run again – and I don't know what I am going to do – they're there to succeed, and I would promote them," Moore says.
The mayor says it is too early to say if any of her co-councillors in particular will win her endorsement.
But the model for doing so has been set. That was by Alex Greenwich, the former convenor of Australian Marriage Equality, who volunteered in Moore's electorate office, learnt about community issues, stood on her ticket for council in 2012, and was thus in position to win Moore's endorsement for the seat of Sydney after the O'Farrell government changed the law to push her from parliament later that year.
"He's my miracle, actually, Alex," says Moore of Greenwich, the now entrenched Member for Sydney.
Another issue spotlighted by Phelps' break with Moore is the manner in which Moore and those around her operate. Even some who admire her work have fallen foul of the fiercely parochial political machinery that surrounds the lord mayor.
"She's unbelievably competent in being able to lead an organisation," says John McInerney, a former deputy lord mayor to Moore who once fell out with her, but who nevertheless described her as "pretty outstanding."
"And it depends I think almost entirely on inspiring a small group of people. And they almost become acolytes of her and what she wants to do," says McInerney. He names chief of staff James Zanotto, political advisor Larry Galbraith, and City of Sydney chief executive Monica Barone as the three key people around Moore.
"It's really quite a superb piece of work in total. But like anything that's very good … it has its implications on people who are not prepared, as it were, to go along with the Clover Moore position."
It was no coincidence, therefore, that Phelps' break was triggered by a dispute over the Lord Mayor's Office. Phelps' frustrations with that office were behind her asking for information about its size. A lack of answers drove her to leave the Moore team, Phelps says.
(For the record, the office costs $3.6 million, the bulk of which is spent on salaries for a chief of staff, a deputy, six policy advisors, three media staff, six admin staff, and 4.5 protocol positions. The office says its size has remained constant since 2010.)
"I asked questions; I was surprised at the resistance I encountered," says Phelps, who says she has never received an adequate explanation for how staffing levels were determined.
For the moment, Moore's agenda – the bike lanes, the opposition to WestConnex, a new affordable housing policy – is likely safe. The mayor retains the casting vote in a 10-person council, and Phelps says on most issues of substance she is in agreement with Moore.
And if nothing else, Moore, 71, will have plenty of her own motivation to keep going.
"The fear of the alternative is what keeps her in there," says McInerney.
"She's got a great fear that the property interests that used to run the council, and/or the political parties, would just resume their old positions in control."