‘The cracks are starting to show’: Meet the young guns taking on Clover Moore
Like Gough Whitlam after 23 years of coalition government, two key challengers to Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore are sending a similar message: “It’s time.”
Both in their 30s, and with a laserlike focus on housing affordability, nightlife and improving the city’s basic services, the Liberal and Labor candidates believe they have what it takes to deny Moore an unprecedented sixth term in the job when the community votes in September.
Zann Maxwell and Lyndon Gannon, candidates for the City of Sydney mayoral election, outside Sydney Town Hall.Credit: Louise Kennerley
NSW Labor in late June endorsed 35-year-old former Melbourne-based lawyer Zann Maxwell to run for the position of lord mayor (the City of Sydney mayor is directly voted for by the people) and councillor, while councillor Lyndon Gannon, 33, will run for the Liberals.
From different sides of the political spectrum, they have a united message: “The issues that matter most to Sydney’s future have moved on from Clover Moore’s heyday,” said Labor’s Maxwell.
“When Clover Moore was first elected, a good job and hard work were a young person’s ticket to making a life here – now they need a lottery ticket as well.”
Gannon agrees: “There’s definitely a mood on the ground for change in leadership. After 20 years of Clover, it’s clear the electorate has had enough.”
Nightlife, housing – and bins
“We’ve got suburbs full of young people who can’t afford to live in Sydney,” Gannon said. “And they can’t get a meal past 9pm.”
The City of Sydney, with a median age of 34, is one of Australia’s youngest LGAs. The city hasn’t done enough to make it a good place for young people to live, he said, citing NIMBY sentiment toward nightlife around Moore Park.
“The voices are weighted unfairly to those that complain, rather than the suburbs of the tortured generation of youth.”
A handful of people on the dance floor at ARQ Nightclub on Oxford Street, which is experiencing a major identity crisis.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone
For Maxwell, vibrancy cannot be separated from housing affordability.
“I was speaking to an older man from the gay community who has lived here for 37 years, and he said … it has been important for a long time for people from those rainbow communities to come here where they’re able to find safety and community and love,” he said.
“The present generation is being locked out of all that by the affordability crisis.”
The two are united on the horror state of the city’s bins. The city privatised most bin collections in 2019 and a series of pay disputes late last year left some maggot-infested bins uncleared for weeks.
“One of Clover Moore’s superpowers is passing the buck. But garbage collection is absolutely her job,” Maxwell said. “When things go wrong, the mayor is powerless to fix it, because of a vast and exotic supply chain.”
Lord Mayor Clover Moore has competition.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
Maxwell said he would investigate bringing waste collection back in-house, but Moore said that would be “incredibly costly and disruptive”.
“Watching others spruik ideas that would take countless years to implement and potentially bankrupt the city is one of the reasons I have sought re-election,” she said. “Lord mayoral candidates making commitments about waste collection should tell the community which services they plan to cut or how much more they will be charged to pay for these so-called plans.”
The end of Moore’s reign?
Moore – first elected lord mayor in 2004 and who has been in some form of public office since 1980 – took home 42.9 per cent of the vote last election, after a 14.9 per cent swing against her.
“The Clover Moore legacy has a lot of positive aspects in it,” Maxwell said. “[But] the cracks are starting to show.”
The poll was further complicated on Thursday by the latest candidate: independent Yvonne Weldon, the first Aboriginal person on the council. In the last election, she secured about 12 per cent of the vote.
Yvonne Weldon is running again for lord mayor.Credit: Steven Siewert
“I’m running to be Sydney’s first Aboriginal mayor. A mayor who serves rather than presides. I’m ready and the time is right,” she said.
There has never been a Liberal mayor of Sydney (Lucy Turnbull was an independent) and Labor last held it in 1987. Moore previously said it would be “disastrous for the city to fall into one of the major parties, based on their historic[al] performance”.
Gannon was a candidate for the state seats of Balmain in 2015 and Sydney in 2019, and worked for then-treasurer Joe Hockey and NSW arts minister Don Harwin. Maxwell was a staffer in Victorian politics before advising Senator Kristina Keneally and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. He manages corporate affairs for the disability services provider app HireUp.
He moved to Sydney in 2017 but said he should have done so earlier.
“The outdoor physical beauty of the place means it has quite a different flavour to offer than Melbourne,” Maxwell said. “Sydney [has] that raw potential, and it is a great city. But it could be one of the best.”
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