As voters in most NSW councils go to the polls on Saturday, Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore faces a fresh challenge in re-election bid

Voters across New South Wales will cast their ballots in council elections on Saturday – or at least those not living in recently amalgamated council areas will.

The contest in the City of Sydney promises to be interesting. The independent lord mayor, Clover Moore, is running for a fourth term after easily winning the past three elections but she faces new rules which will make her task significantly harder, thanks to a lot of additional business votes being cast.



Moore has been a presence in the inner city of Sydney for well over 30 years, first elected to South Sydney council in 1980. Moore served on the City of Sydney throughout the 1980s and managed to win a state seat as an independent in 1988 after the council was sacked.

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There is a long history of state governments of all political persuasions rewriting the council boundaries and the voting rules to determine who wins control of Town Hall. A Labor government in the 1940s amalgamated a number of small neighbouring councils into a larger City of Sydney which included a string of Labor-voting working class suburbs in areas like Alexandria, Redfern, Glebe and Newtown.

A Liberal government in the 1960s broke off those suburbs into a separate South Sydney council, allowing conservative business interests in the Sydney city centre to control the council. Another Labor government brought these suburbs together in the early 1980s, and then the Greiner Liberal government in 1989 broke Sydney and South Sydney apart.

The Carr Labor government thought it was on to a winner in 2004 when it merged the traditionally Labor-voting suburbs of South Sydney council with a much smaller CBD-based City of Sydney council, but their plans were undone when Moore announced she would return to local politics and run for lord mayor.

Moore easily won election in 2004, and went on to win second and third terms in 2008 and 2012. Not only did she win the lord mayoralty but candidates on her ticket won enough seats on the council to give her an absolute majority on the local council.

After 12 years as mayor, Moore remains very popular with residents of the city, but has drawn the enmity of the state government and some local business interests.

The city has acted as a rival source of influence to the state government, loudly advocating for improved public transport, improving cycleways and other local infrastructure, and regularly disagreeing with the Liberal state government.

The City of Sydney is not the most populous council in New South Wales, but is much more financially powerful than its neighbours thanks to rates revenue from the central business district. The council has been effective at using these financial resources to improve services and infrastructure for local residents, and has been a constant thorn in the side of Labor and Liberal state governments over the past 12 years.

Recent state legislation was aimed at shifting the balance away from residents and towards businesses. In most councils ratepaying businesses have a right to vote, but the vote is voluntary and most businesses don’t bother to enrol or vote.

The 2014 law which only applies to the City of Sydney, makes it compulsory for local businesses to enrol and vote and gives each business two votes.

Only 1,709 businesses enrolled to vote in the City of Sydney at the 2012 election. This year that number is just shy of 23,000, suggesting as many as 45,000 new business votes could be cast. This voting bloc will make a significant difference in a council where only 120,000 people voted in 2012.

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Liberal councillor Christine Forster, sister of Tony Abbott, will be hoping to capitalise on this business vote as she aims to replace Moore as lord mayor. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that all of these newly enfranchised voters would be voting against the sitting lord mayor – Moore will likely still pick up quite a few votes from friendly businesses.

While Moore is still the favourite to win the mayoralty, her team may struggle to win enough council seats to control the council. If the Clover Moore Team can only win a handful of seats, she may need to rely on Labor and Greens councillors on controversial issues.

If Moore was replaced by her Liberal rival Forster, it would likely see a shift in the focus of the council away from the residential “villages” Moore has championed and towards business, and would result in a council less willing to set out a different direction from the state Liberal government.