Is Clover Moore losing control?

BY ALEX EUGENE

Town Hall insiders are abuzz following the last City of Sydney Council meeting. Last month Lord Mayor Clover Moore was unable to find another Councillor to second her motion to amend an affordable housing proposal. With no one on the Clover Moore Independent Team willing to back their leader in a public meeting, the Lord Mayor suffered an unprecedented loss.

But the Mayor’s embarrassing bungle is nowhere to be found in the meeting minutes. The omission could be a serious breach of Council’s code of meeting practice, which states all records must be “consistent, orderly and efficient.”

Unlike other local councils, including the neighbouring Inner West Council, the City of Sydney does not live stream its meetings and no audio records of the meetings are available for public scrutiny. The Lord Mayor Clover Moore has repeatedly resisted calls to podcast City of Sydney Council meetings.

In an eerie turn of events that are shaping up to be history repeating, the Council seems to be experiencing inner turmoil with divisive opinions causing disagreements between the Lord Mayor and her cohorts.

Clover Moore has a dark history of losing the support of her team, with past councillors being dropped at a moment’s notice, and former Deputy Lord Mayors stepping aside due to escalating tensions. No fewer than four of Clover Moore’s past Deputy Lord Mayors have been demoted over the years following policy disputes with the Lord Mayor.

The current dispute revolves around the Lord Mayor’s attempt to remove the words “action plan” from a motion tabled by a member of the Clover Moore Independent Team, Philip Thalis. Removing those words would effectively allow Council to do nothing substantive to tackle the City’s existing affordable housing crisis.

Councillor Thalis tabled his motion after an identical motion tabled by ALP Councillor Linda Scott was quashed. The council has a running history of shunning motions raised by “party outsiders” then raising them again themselves seemingly to take credit for them.

A spokesperson for City of Sydney denied there had been dissent on the motion, claiming it was “unanimously endorsed by Council”.

“Councillor Philip Thalis put forward an alternative motion regarding housing affordability that was unanimously endorsed by Council, as follows:
Once the Central District Plan is finalised, the City of Sydney will finalise a comprehensive housing strategy,” they said.

Bizzarely, the version supplied by the spokesperson omitted the phrase “and action plan” from the text, as though the Mayor’s motion had been adopted by Council.

In the draft minutes obtained by City Hub, the clause reads:
“once the Central District Plan is finalised, the City of Sydney will finalise a
comprehensive housing strategy and action plan.” Council’s minutes do not record the Lord Mayor’s failed attempt to remove the words action plan from the adopted motion.

One source told City Hub they were told by the Clover Moore Party Team that developing an action plan was “overreach” and “fiction”, and affordability is caused by the “pressures of globalisation”.

“Sydney has a capacity to develop an action plan but the Clover Moore Party Councillors argue that ‘strategy’ was sufficient to deal with housing affordability. In my view, the Clover Moore Party is confused and has a lack of will as well as direction on the issue of affordable housing,” said the source.

They said that Sydney should be leading the way on resolving the affordable housing crisis.

Another source criticised the council’s apathy, saying “[We want to] see action, not another study, not another piece of research. There’s plenty of that out there. What exactly are the targets, and moving forward the actions of council to influence affordable housing?”

“Since the city seems to be saying consistently that affordable housing is an issue, what are we doing to address it?” they said.

“Most of the councillors are consistently asking that question, we just aren’t seeing any real results from our action follow ups. It’s true that it’s not just a local government issue, but there are things that we can do to influence it,” they said.

“The thing is, are we just going to keep thinking about it? Is that all we are going to do? Spending a lot of money on reports?”

Meanwhile, Clover Moore is said to be seriously ill after being hospitalised in May for at least six days. She was recently discharged from St Vincent’s Hospital.

One insider claims that Moore’s right hand councillor, Deputy Lord Mayor Kerryn Phelps has “never been so active” since the incident.

Councillor Phelps has seemingly gone into overdrive on social media, posting about everything from marriage equality to America’s Got Talent since the Mayor took ill. However there were no posts about condolences to her superior, amid the Donald Trump memes and happy snaps about her radio appearances.

A source said the draft minutes with the allegedly inaccurate facts had not yet been ratified, and would be raised for discussion at the next council meeting.