Read the Tally Room guide to the Sydney by-election.
Voters in the state electorate of Sydney will be voting on Saturday to choose a replacement for the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, who was forced to resign as a state MP due to a new state law passed by the O’Farrell state government. This law required any state MP who is elected to a local council to resign from state Parliament before they can take their council seat.
Theoretically this law would affect any of the dozens of state MPs who were serving as councillors and MPs following the 2011 state election. These included a large number of Coalition MPs, as well as three Greens, one Christian Democrat and a handful of Labor MPs.
With the exception of Clover Moore and Lake Macquarie Mayor Greg Piper, however, none of the other MPs had run for another term on council since being first elected to state Parliament, and they all had plans to step down from council.
Clover Moore has been a thorn in the side of the Coalition government – popular with inner-city residents, she has pursued an agenda that has prioritised cyclists from the inner city over outer-suburbs residents commuting to the city by car for work. She has been able to achieve a lot more than other progressive inner-city mayors thanks to the massive budget of the City of Sydney, funded by rates from businesses in the Sydney CBD.
Previous Coalition governments have undermined progressive forces in the City of Sydney by breaking the southern suburbs of the City (traditionally Labor-voting) away to form a separate South Sydney council, allowing business interests in the inner city to control the rates from the CBD. I’ve previously blogged about state governments manipulating municipal boundaries to pacify a difficult Town Hall.
The race in the Sydney by-election this Saturday is between three main candidates. Clover Moore has endorsed gay marriage campaigner Alex Greenwich to run as her successor, and he is running with the support of Moore’s highly effective campaign machine.
His two main rivals are both recently retired City of Sydney councillors representing the two parties with the highest support in the seat. Chris Harris is standing for the Greens, and Shayne Mallard is standing for the Liberal Party.
Sydney is a progressive electorate but one that has eschewed party labels by supporting Clover Moore. It includes more Liberal-friendly areas in Paddington and Ultimo, and strong areas for Moore and the Greens around Surry Hills and Kings Cross. One common factor is that all of these areas have large gay populations.
Two of the main candidates are gay, and the third, Chris Harris of the Greens, has actively courted the gay community, reminding voters of the Greens’ long term support for marriage equality and taking symbolic steps, such as colouring the Greens triangle in a rainbow on his corflutes.
A recent poll in the seat (with a relatively small sample size) had Greenwich and Mallard tied for first place on 31%, with Harris closely behind on 25%. On those figures, Greenwich would easily win on Harris’ preferences.
If the positions were to be reversed, and Greenwich was excluded and the other two were in a close race for first place, Greenwich’s preferences would probably favour Harris. Greenwich has not issued any preferences, but his voters are likely to favour Harris over Mallard, even if many of them exhaust.
If Mallard is to win, he will need to gain a substantial primary vote advantage. Either Greenwich or Harris’ preferences would not flow fully to the other progressive candidate, with a substantial amount of exhausting and leaking of preferences. If Mallard was to poll over 40% he would likely be able to stay ahead after preferences.
I will be liveblogging the results of the by-election on Saturday night, along with some cursory coverage of the Victorian council elections.
