Clover Moore has been Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney since 2004. This makes her the longest serving Lord Mayor since the City of Sydney was founded in 1842.
The time has now come for Clover Moore to go.
How many more absurdities must we, the residents and ratepayers of the City of Sydney Council suffer at the hands of this self-deluded, woke, despot who masquerades around our city streets as the Lord Mayor, righting what she perceives to be wrongs, and vandalising Australia’s most beautiful city with her narrow minded, selfish agenda. She has clearly forgotten that the duties of local government are to use rates to collect and remove garbage, maintain council properties, and fix potholes.
Her recent foray into absurdity took guise of a plot made famous in the Robert Redford 2001 movie ‘The Last Castle’. Coincidently it was set in a military prison and to control the prison one had to seize the flag from the defending forces. Having spoken to a number of folk who worked in her council’s Chambers, and it would appear that she runs Council like a mediaeval fiefdom.
This of course brings us to her recent and most egregious act of foolishness. Actions that even a Labor Premier of New South Wales commented: Confiscating an official City of Sydney flag from a Liberal councillor’s office was a “massive over-reaction” from staff in Lord Mayor Clover Moore’s Council, Premier Minns said.
Mr Minns declared actions of council staff in seizing Sydney’s flag from Cr Lyndon Gannon’s office – revealed in the press on Tuesday – were “outrageous”.
Under the Mayors instructions staff took the flag from Mr Gannon’s office, while it was unattended, after spotting the ensign during a Zoom meeting.
He (Minns) went on to say: “If the Government came into my office while I was in opposition and took a flag down, I’d be pretty angry”.
The Premier said Ms Moore and her council should have better priorities than banning the City’s official flag because it does not contain any acknowledgment of Indigenous Australians.
“It seems like a massive over-reaction and there are other things to be focused on at the moment,” he said.
It can now be revealed that on Tuesday the City’s flag will be subject to a council review, to ensure that it accurately reflects the City’s aspirations and respects Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and heritage”.
The review will “look at international and local examples of truth-telling projects in heritage buildings” as part of changing Sydney’s coat of arms, chains of office, and official flag.
The council is now commissioning a review of the City’s flag and other symbols, 18 months after the Lord Mayor declared the emblems were “at the very least, problematic”.
The symbols include a coat of arms adopted in 1996, and the flag designed in 1908.
Ms Moore first called for a review into Sydney’s emblems and symbols in August 2022, in a motion which was adopted by council.
Cr Mr. Gannon said confiscating his flag was “unnecessary”.
“Rather than unifying us as the most successful multicultural country on earth, we are sending a message that we are ashamed of ourselves,” he said.
“To send a message that we are ashamed of who we are before even completing a review is very disappointing”.
Cr Mr. Gannon said: “A few days later, I got a call from the Council’s CEO stating that because the council was doing a review of the flag, the staff were going to collect it,”.
He said council staff went into office while it was unattended and took the flag into storage.
Ms Moore said the city’s symbols – a Coat of Arms, the Chains of Office, and the City Flag “are, at the very least, problematic”. (You have already said this.)
That review is yet to begin.
The former Coat of Arms depicted an indigenous man and a British settler on either side of a three-mast ship, above the words: “I take but I surrender”.
The flag, adopted in 1908, features a ship under sail, as a reference to Sydney as a maritime port. It also features three designs in the top third: the arms of Thomas Townshend, Viscount Sydney, the English Naval Flag (overlaid with symbols of James Cook), and the arms of Sydney’s first Lord Mayor Thomas Hughes.
“We are in the process of commissioning a review of emblems and symbols in the Sydney Town Hall, to ensure that they accurately reflect the City’s aspirations and respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and heritage,” a council spokeswoman said.
“The City of Sydney flag is based on the City’s former Coat of Arms and contains no acknowledgment of First Nations people. As such, it is no longer flown. The City of Sydney flies the Australian flag, Aboriginal flag, and Torres Strait Islander flag over Town Hall.” As spokesman for Ms. Moore told the media.
He said that staff took the flag “for safe storage in the City’s civic collection”.
It would appear that she (Ms. Moore) is single-handedly wanting to rewrite the historical truth behind our great city, and fashion it into what she believes is her woke utopian dream.
Further abuses of her office:
But her abuse of office doesn’t end here. The eye-watering figure taken home by the 22 staff employed by Sydney’s Lord Mayor has been revealed, and it’s no surprise many think it’s “overkill”.
The insane annual salary of staff working for Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore has been revealed, along with her jaw dropping forecasted spend of $47 million over the next decade. No doubt to pay for more serfs to do her bidding?
The almost $50 million budget exceeded Sydney’s entire affordable housing plan and would account for the salaries of 22 full time staff employed to work in her office, it was reported in the press.
On average, each staff member would reportedly be paid around $179,000 per year.
This incredible spending comes as it was revealed the Lord Mayor spent $114,000 more than her allocated budget last financial year, spending an enormous $3.955 million.
Since 2015, according to the material published in The Daily Telegraph. TCSC has spent $28 million on staff and amenities.
The Lord Mayor was spending more on staff “than the city spends on diverse and affordable housing,” City of Sydney Labor councillor Linda Scott said, in an interview given to the media.
“If the Lord Mayor cut her political staff by just 40 per cent, the city could make childcare services and access to council swimming pools free,” she said, calling on a “change” at the City of Sydney Council.
Ms Scott was perplexed over why the Lord Mayor needed “so many” staff when most councillors had just one or two.
Spending has increased since her 2004 appointment by 11.7 per cent, the publication also revealed.
Revelations about the salaries of Ms Moore’s staff came after her office faced scrutiny for spending $450,000 on foreign aid.
Sky News host Liz Storer accused the City of Sydney of “using and abusing” its access to ratepayer money and neglecting opportunities to spend it locally.
Funding that could have been spent tackling homelessness in Australia was sent to various charities in Syria, Turkey, Vanuatu, Pakistan, and Tonga, Storer said.
“Never mind that the last census in 2021 told Clover Moore we’ve got over 300,500 homeless people right here in the Sydney CBD,” she commented.
“Charity begins at home, Clover Moore”.
“Remember this is the same council, funded by us, which just last year said that they were giving half a million dollars of ratepayers’ money to supporting the Yes campaign”.
Be It building cycle paths in an already crowed city that no one uses. Creating traffic chaos and parking and delivery nightmares within the CBD and within excess of 350 kilometres of poorly designed, not fit for purpose potential death traps, Moore had hamstrung the city with her dystopian paranoid fantasy. According to a report published, ‘Protected Bicycle Lane – on or off-road bicycle Sydney’ “Growing Cycling Contribution”. Understanding the fundamentals by Dr Elliot Fishman – the cost of these white elephants are a staggering $9,900,000 per 5kms.
Vandalizing Moore Park Golf Course under the guise of a need for more open public park space. (By the way Centennial Park, which lies 100 meters just to the east is 189 hectares. Together with Queens Park another 26-hectare urban park, set in a natural amphitheatre at the foot of dramatic sandstone cliffs, with panoramic views of the Sydney region is still much underutilised).
And who could forget her ramblings followed the release of an updated design for the Pavilion’s sister sculpture, Junya Ishigami’s Cloud Arch.
The new details came with an updated price tag — an increase from the previously slated cost of $3.5 million to $11.3 million.
On this occasion Cr Moore fronted the media to defend the project, calling the Cloud Arch “the most significant public artwork in Australia in decades,” one which would create a “heroic and celebratory entrance to George St”.
Not to mention her 3.2 million dollar egg crate sculpture.
The vanity and delusions of this self-styled deranged Druid knows no bound. It is truly time for Clover to put her cue in the rack and disappear into the sunset and let us, the all suffering people of Sydney, get on with our lives in peace.
