Kylie Moon
& Margaret Gleeson, Sydney
Despite the big increase in the Greens votes in the Sydney inner-west municipalities of Marrickville, Leichhardt or Ashfield at the March 27 NSW local government elections, no Greens councillors were elected as mayors.
In Leichhardt, where the Greens received 35% of the primary vote and won four positions, the Greens were shut out of the mayoral position by a deal between the four ALP, two Liberal and two Community Independents councillors.
Under the deal, Labor councillor Alice Murphy will be mayor and the Liberals' Nick Dyer will be deputy mayor for the first 18 months. The Liberals will then occupy the mayoral position for the next year, before returning it to the ALP.
Greens councillor Jamie Parker, responding to the Labor-Liberal-Community Independent deal noted at the April 14 Leichhardt council meeting (at which the Labor-Liberal mayoral deal was pushed through) that the Greens had received the highest primary vote of all the parties in the March 27 council election and had received a "higher vote than the ALP in every polling booth in Leichhardt".
Parker said the mayoral deal "means Leichhardt will, for the first time ever, have a Liberal mayor". He also noted that the ALP's decision to preference the Liberals ahead of all other candidates was "driving people into the Greens".
Paul Benedek, a Socialist Alliance candidate in the Leichhardt council elections, said that "this deal is an attack on democracy and shows the absolute desperation of the ALP to hold onto power. Labor's gerrymandering of the City of Sydney council elections backfired. It lost a lot of positions in this election, including the position of City of Sydney mayor. We need to make Labor pay the biggest political price for this deal, which reveals the pro-big business nature of the ALP's politics."
The ALP had sought to entrench its dominant position on Marrickville Council through changes to ward boundaries. This backfired in spectacular fashion on March 27 when only four ALP councillors were elected. Five Greens and three independents were also elected.
On April 14, a packed public gallery of 200 witnessed the election of the first non-Labor mayor of Marrickville for 42 years. Barry Cotter, the Labor mayor for the last 13 years, was voted out in favour independent councillor Morris Hanna.
Referring to Cotter, a former Labour councillor observing the vote told Green Left Weekly: "This man must bear the responsibility for the demise of the ALP in Marrickville local politics."
In the contested election for deputy mayor, Greens candidate Sam Byrne won with the votes of the five Greens and two independent councillors.
In the elections for the various committees of the council which followed, ALP councillors abstained from nominating for any positions.
In Ashfield, where four Labor, three Greens, three independent and two Liberal councillors had been elected, left-wing Labor councillor Ray Jones (who had been looked on as a pariah by his Labor caucus colleagues in the previous council) was the only candidate to nominate for mayor.
In the vote for deputy mayor — won by independent councillor Carolyn Stott — the Greens councillors were divided with only one (Mary Hawkins) backing Stott, while the two others joined the Liberal councillors in backing a rival independent candidate for the post.
From Green Left Weekly, April 21, 2004.
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