Do we like Clover Moore?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent record and no harmful words found, but one contested stance on Israel-Gaza and a few sticky local-politics stoushes keep her short of the top.
Clover Moore started out as an English and History teacher at Fort Street High School, then went into local government as an alderman in the early 1980s. She won the NSW state seat of Bligh as an independent in 1988 and later held Sydney too, before becoming Lord Mayor in 2004. In 2023 she was made an Officer of the Order of Australia.
She has since become the longest-serving Lord Mayor Sydney has had. At the September 2024 election she won a sixth term, which she called the product of a really concerted campaign to get rid of her. She has said she doesn't expect to run again, so this could be the last chapter.
Her two decades haven't been spotless. In 2024 Golf Industry Central reported critics saying she hadn't disclosed that her home is near the Moore Park golf course, whose partial closure she long pushed, and called it a possible conflict of interest. The article carried no response from her and reported no finding on the claim. Back in 2012 complaints lodged with the council's CEO alleged favouritism over a playground and a guest speaker; her spokesperson dismissed the nepotism claim, and the article reported no outcome.
The election-day corflutes row in 2024 was a bad look. Yvonne Weldon, her Wiradjuri rival, publicised video of a Moore volunteer allegedly removing her signs. Moore apologised and said the volunteer had been told to put them back straight away. It was a campaign blunder rather than a pattern, and she owned it.
On the harm test, we found no demeaning or harmful words of her own about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and the coverage we read has her talking up progressive policies. The record on trans issues specifically is thin, and we couldn't verify the rainbow crossing and other Oxford Street work to a dated source, so say it plainly: a gap, not a gold star. The one real asterisk is the Middle East.
In 2023 she blocked a push to light Town Hall in Israeli colours, saying one-sided motions or statements are divisive and harmful, and drafted her own motion instead. In 2026 she moved against the 'globalise the intifada' forum, saying free assembly has to be balanced with a responsibility to ensure public safety. Where you land depends on whether you read that as even-handed civic caution or as bowing to political pressure.