Councillor Chris Harris

The Greens had a great breakthrough last night in winning the Deputy Lord Mayor ballot despite the Lord Mayor’s attempt to shut down the election.

In a bizarre twist at the City Council last night the Lord Mayor panicked at the prospect of losing the Deputy Lord Mayoral position and tried to shut down the election. The first indication that something was amiss was that the ballot had been moved later in the agenda without explanation.

When the meeting finally reached that item the Lord Mayor, with her usual aplomb, and reading from a carefully prepared text, announced that she no longer required a deputy to help her with her two jobs – Lord Mayor of Sydney and Member for Bligh. She immediately proposed that the election not take place and that a Deputy Lord Mayor not be elected. She argued that there was no longer any need for the position and there was no legal requirement for one anyway.

In fact, the Lord Mayor was quoted as saying that she should be able to appoint the Deputy Lord Mayor. This is obviously the Lord Mayor’s view of democracy — if something doesn’t suit her political aspirations she will try to change the rules.

But it didn’t work this time.

The 5 multi-party councillors, disgusted by this un-democratic behaviour, walked out of the meeting pointing out to the Lord Mayor that she no longer had a quorum.

The meeting was adjourned for half an hour, after which the Lord Mayor sent a message to the dissenting councillors that she was withdrawing her motion and the Deputy Lord Mayoral election would go ahead.

Two nominees, Cr Robyn Kemmis from the Clover Team and The Greens Cr Chris Harris, were then put forward and the vote was tied at 5 each. As is the custom, the two names went into a hat. The result was an historic win for the Greens.

The Lord Mayor’s attempt to abolish the deputy position was an extraordinary and ill-considered move, apparently borne out of her frustration at not being able to control the election.

I’m honoured and humbled by the expression of confidence from my colleagues and I’d like to thank them for their support in endorsing me.

I promise that during my period as Deputy Lord Mayor I will concentrate on the city reducing its environmental footprint via energy reduction initiatives and more aggressive targets to reduce water usage and collecting surface water runoff. The City urgently needs to set a zero Greenhouse emissions target and provide a timeline to achieve it.

Download:

• Media release (Microsoft Word) from the office of Sylvia Hale