The battle for the City of Sydney
Listen nowDownload audioshow transcriptBroadcast:Sunday 5 October 2014 8:05AM (view full episode)

 Image:       Embattled Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore shows Mr Monopoly the sights of Sydney. Has she had her last roll of the dice? (WILLIAM WEST/AFP/GettyImages)       
New legislation that gives businesses two votes in Sydney City Council elections is under attack for being undemocratic and an attempt to oust long serving Lord Mayor Clover Moore, but proponents say businesses are denied a voice under the current voting system. Ann Arnold reports on the players behind the contentious bill.
 
The fox with a bird in its mouth stands alone. Other taxidermied animals, or at least their heads, are mounted on the walls of the office of the Shooters and Fishers Party at NSW Parliament House.

The reality is, if she doesn't support us, well, we don't support her. It's as simple as that.

      Robert Borsak, Shooters and Fishers Party

Robert Borsak says hunting is not his only passion. As an accountant by profession, he is interested in business. That’s one reason the upper house member tabled a controversial bill that gives businesses in the City of Sydney two votes, compared to one each for residents.
Some Liberals and business people are very uncomfortable with the Coalition government’s support for the bill, which was passed two weeks ago. They are concerned about the move away from the democratic principle of one vote, one value.
In Sydney, the government’s opponents are outraged at what they see as an attempt to oust the long serving independent lord mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, from power.
The mystery up until now has been why—and how—a politician best known for his boast of killing a bull elephant in Africa was able to change the way the Sydney CBD votes.
For Borsak, there were old foes involved. When Moore was in parliament as the state member for Sydney, she took a strong anti-gun stance.
‘Look, that's not the motivation for doing this sort of stuff,’ Borsak says. ‘But the reality is, if she doesn't support us, well, we don't support her. It's as simple as that.’
Borsak also fell out with former premier Barry O’Farrell last year when the government reneged on a deal to allow shooting in national parks.
When an ambitious Liberal Party councillor, Edward Mandla, came to see him, complaining that Premier O’Farrell was not willing to move on a committee recommendation that City of Sydney business should be given two votes, Borsak was all ears.
Mandla, who lives in suburban Beecroft, was elected to the council in 2012. At the time, he was on the electoral roll—a prerequisite for standing as a candidate—as a proxy for a Potts Point hotel owner.
He is described on the City of Sydney website as having spent three decades in business, currently as the general manager of Mandlason Search, a research and headhunting firm. He told Background Briefing he is also on the boards of two start-ups. Mandla says his office is on York Street, but that his work is done discreetly and clients don’t come to his office
The manager of the building is John Preston, a member of the Liberal Party and a campaigning associate of Mandla’s. He told Background Briefing that Mandla rents a small space in a shared office. Preston was at the first meeting in Borsak’s office.
The Shooters and Fishers MLC had been the deputy chair of the parliamentary committee which reviewed the 2012 local government elections across the state and the City of Sydney in particular.
 Image:       Is the Shooters and Fishers Party's Robert Borsak on the hunt for Lord Mayor Clover Moore? (Ann Arnold)       
 6park.com
Mandla gave evidence at the committee, as did Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, both were enthusiastic about giving business more of a say with two votes. Melbourne City Council gave two votes to business 17 years ago under Kennett government reforms. No other city in Australia does it, and a report by senior Victorian Liberal figure Petro Georgiou this year recommended that Melbourne change the two votes back to one.
The  NSW committee, which was dominated by Coalition members, was told by Mandla and others that the City of Sydney was not focused enough on business.
Business rates account for nearly 80 per cent of the council’s rates revenue. The existing voting system, however, makes it difficult for businesses to vote—they have to re-enrol after each election, and turn up to Town Hall on polling day. The turnout has been very low.
‘I actually saw [Borsak’s] eyes narrow a couple of times when he heard the testimony,’ Mandla recalls. ‘He called out, “this is wrong, you shouldn't have taxation without representation, no wonder the City of Sydney rarely talk about business.”’
That was the genesis of the bill, which Edward Mandla and a group of associates worked with Borsak and his staff to draft. They also decided they would need media backing if they were to win over the new premier, Mike Baird.
‘That was the next stage of what I had to do,’ Borsak says. ‘If I'm going to get the opportunity, even with a new Premier, to try to I suppose pressurize them, then I need people to help me advocate for that.’
‘You don't have a very big pulpit when you're a cross-bencher. [2GB broadcaster] Alan Jones for example had been campaigning on issues around the City of Sydney for a long time.’
‘I know the Daily Telegraph is also a great campaigning newspaper that, whether you love them or loathe them, the reality is that they have an opinion and they're prepared to put it forward.’
‘So I approached both of them and asked them would they be prepared to support me and what I was doing and—that's not a conspiracy, that's not them calling the agenda; it's simply, uh, a congruence of ideas.’
The government came on board. Local Government Minister Paul Toole said the government believed businesses should have two votes to reflect their rates contribution. However, he would have preferred to wait and put up a more comprehensive package of local government reforms based on the work of the parliamentary committee.
Moore and her supporters are convinced that doubling the vote for businesses is another Liberal Party move to reduce her power.
The bill’s advocates maintain there’s no guarantee a bigger business vote will result in a bigger Liberal vote. Moore, however, has been quick to turn the voting changes against the government.
‘This, at a time when there is the stench of corruption and developer donation hanging over this government, which is being played out in the ICAC, day by day,’ Moore told a support rally in Sydney.
‘Wouldn’t you think they’d get their own house in order before mucking ours up!’
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