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 With Clover Moore’s re-election comes an expectation from voters that she and her team will lift their game. Especially among her GLBT constituents. Sam Butler reports.
It’s difficult to view Clover Moore and her team’s emphatic victories at the weekend’s City of Sydney Council elections as anything other than both a vindication of independent politics and a comprehensive rejection of the major parties, particularly the catatonic NSW Labor Party.
In an astonishing win, Moore garnered almost four times the primary vote for Lord Mayor as that of her closest opponent, Labor’s Dr Meredith Burgmann. Having suffered a six per cent swing, Labor will now lose one of its council spots as well as any hope of taking away Moore’s absolute Council majority.
Of course, with this win comes an expectation from voters, particularly GLBTI voters, that Moore and her councillors will lift their game in certain areas. The violence and homophobia that are now sadly regular fixtures on the west end of Oxford Street have escalated on Moore’s watch, and there is justifiable concern that her ‘homophobia-free zone’ campaign, on its own and without appropriate back-up, is little more than a PR stunt that will do nothing to curb the problem of drunken homophobic bogans.
Similarly, Moore appears to have made several uncharacteristic missteps in her involvement with the Imperial Hotel redevelopment. Her recent dismissal of Shadd Danisi, owner of the Imperial and several other queer venues, as a ‘ranter (solely motivated) to make lots of money’ clearly upset a lot of voters, including rusted-on Moore supporters, who see an otherwise-strong GLBTI community ally jeopardising the continued functioning of an iconic, landmark, historic and culturally-significant venue – particularly during a time when, due to the growing problems on Oxford Street, the need for safe queer venues in alternative locations is perhaps more important now than ever before.
Hopefully, however, such concerns will be heard and acted upon by the returning Lord Mayor. Time will tell.
While vanquished opponents sulk that they didn’t have the same level of campaign funding as Moore, the voting figures speak for themselves. Having now faced re-election as both State member for Sydney and Lord Mayor, four years since critics insisted she would not be able to perform both jobs equally effectively, she has now increased her primary vote at both elections.
So either City of Sydney residents have either foolishly fallen for Moore’s alleged ‘all spin, no substance’ approach, as her political opponents essentially imply, or more likely, residents see a hard-working, independent member eschewing the major political parties to offer effective advocacy and representation at two levels of government.
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How Clover Moore reconquered Town Hall
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