On a sunny spring morning, the Sydney lord mayor, Clover Moore, leaves her apartment in inner-city Redfern to walk to her town hall office. Under a canopy of mature London plane trees along Bourke Street, the 79-year-old, who recently won a record sixth term, sets a brisk pace.
All politics is local, and Moore’s career began on these streets. In the late 1970s, Moore created a lobby group, Redfern Community Concern, to fix up a little park in Kepos Street and improve local traffic. This was her springboard to becoming an alderman in South Sydney council in 1980 before a two-and-a-half-decade run as an independent in state parliament. In 2004, she began her unbroken 20-year stint as lord mayor which continued this year with another win in September.
