Councillor Chris Harris

Media Release

Less than 2 years into her reign as Lord Mayor, Clover Moore sacks her second CEO.

Today the Lord Mayor Clover Moore announced that Mr. Peter Seamer, CEO of the City of Sydney Council had resigned. This is less than one year into his contract and follows the sacking of previous CEO Robert Dom in late 2004. Today, Ms Moore refused to answer the question on whether Mr. Seamer had resigned or had been pushed.

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Media Release

Our Lord Mayor of the city, Ms Clover Moore, not content with the Lord Mayors job and being the member for Bligh, last year elected herself as Chair of all Council committees. Now, to top it off, she has made herself the chair of the Bicycle Strategy Steering committee.

“We note Lord Mayor, that you have decided to attend the remaining meetings of the Cycle Study Steering Committee as Chair.” Email from Council staff

To date Ms Moore has never seen it important enough to attend a Bicycle committee meeting let alone chair one. Only three councillors have ever been at these meetings and they chose Greens Cr. Chris Harris as the chair.

The question is why would the Lord Mayor, given her huge commitments, wish to take over this position when for the past 12 months, it has been successfully chaired by Cr. Harris?
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Media Release

Last night, at the City of Sydney Council meeting, Greens Cr Chris Harris
attempted to present a petition from 2800 concerned inner east residents.

The petition called for the Lord Mayor to advocate on behalf of that
community to reverse the road closures and road works that are causing
massive traffic chaos in the local streets of Darlinghurst and surrounding
areas.

“The Lord Mayor relied upon a technicality to prevent the petition being
presented to the council. She wouldn’t even allow me to read the petition
to the councillors. All the Lord Mayor allowed was for the petition to be
placed on the table. She showed no interest whatsoever in the petition nor
the fact that 2800 people signed the document in good faith that their voice
would be heard. In fact the Lord Mayor didn’t even pick up the petition.”
Cr. Harris said

“Surely the responsibility of the Lord Mayor is to at least listen to the
views of the people who she represents. To use a procedural manoeuvre to
block community concerns is extremely disappointing.

Cr. Chris Harris “It’s easy for me. As a Greens representative, I operate
under a set of principles that lead me to allow all points of view to be
heard. Sadly, particularly in the case of the Bourke street closure, this
principle doesn’t appear to exist at Town Hall.”