Moore wins historic fourth term

BY LUCAS BAIRD

Clover Moore won a historic fourth term as the Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney at the council elections on Saturday, 10 September.

Ms Moore won the mayorship comfortably with a swing of approximately eight per cent towards her, despite controversial business voting reforms, which were expected to favour her opponent, Liberal candidate Christine Forster.

Ms Moore will become the longest serving Lord Mayor in Sydney’s history if she sees out the next four years of her term, which will take her to a 16 year tenure. This would beat the previous best of 12 years set by Frank Sartor, who served from 1991 to 2003.

Speaking on Saturday night, Ms Moore thanked her supporters and said that this was a “victory for democracy”.

“This is a real victory for democracy. It’s a victory for good government,” she said to her supporters.

“It’s about the continuation of independent, progressive, community-led government for the city.”

“I have been re-elected Mayor and I will have my majority and perhaps even more than that.”

Ms Moore was congratulated by her opponents and supporters on Saturday night.

State MP for Sydney, Independent Alex Greenwich, said that his word of the night of was “clovered”. Which he defined as “when a gerrymander backfires”, referring to the voting reforms that gave businesses two votes instead of one.

Ms Forster also congratulated Ms Moore on her victory, but said that she would continue to hold the Lord Mayor to account for her decisions in council.

Ms Forster said that she was proud of the effort her campaign had put in and was grateful of her team.

“I will continue listening to the people of Sydney and fighting for the policies and change of style my team and I campaigned for,” Ms Forster said.

Ms Forster came second in the race for mayor with 17 per cent of the vote, she was followed by Labor’s Linda Scott (10.68 per cent) and Angela Vithoulkas from the Sydney Matters team (7.75 per cent).

As of the time of writing, the City of Sydney council looks as though made up of at least five members of Clover Moore’s team and one each from the Liberal and Labor parties. The last two seats are currently undecided.