If there was ever a template of success for the modern Australian independent movement, it would look something like Clover Moore.
Sydney’s lord mayor has stood as an independent candidate across two different levels of government 14 times, and has never lost an election.
Now 76, Moore almost certainly has fewer years left in public office than others, but her ambitions for independents, at the upcoming federal election and beyond, are big.
“It’s terrific,” she says of the number of female independent candidates hoping to unseat Coalition MPs in May.
“[Holding the balance of power] is the only way we will get real reform. The two major topics that they are running with are climate change and integrity in government.”
Moore is hopeful that having an empowered crossbench will see the “things that the major parties won’t do” happen, including the introduction of a fixed term for federal governments, which she had a hand in introducing at a state level in New South Wales.
Sitting down with the Guardian at her Redfern home during one of Sydney’s recent rainstorms, Moore doesn’t mince her words about the people in charge in Canberra.
“It’s a terrible government, isn’t it?” she says.
She pauses, before adding: “I work with all governments, but really. Where we’ve sought support from the federal government on housing affordability, on action on climate change – nothing.”
Moore doesn’t sugarcoat how tough it is to raise funds as an independent, let alone get elected.
Major parties have teams working to attract donations at all hours, whereas independents have smaller teams and shoestring budgets “doing all the things that the electoral commission is demanding”.
She feels “quite sorry” for the Warringah MP, Zali Steggall, whose campaign received a $100,000 donation from the family trust of former coal company director John Kinghorn.
Asked if the public outcry was justified, Moore says people “don’t have any idea” how hard it is.
Moore is “conscious of legacy” but also brushes off the suggestion she’s out the door anytime soon, despite being in public office since the 1980s.
“I’ve just won an election,” she says. She recounts a story from the end of last year, about how everyone at a pub near her house gave her a standing ovation when she was re-elected for a historic fifth term.
“They are not sick of me, which is quite nice. It’s really hard, but it’s really worthwhile. That’s why I keep doing it.”
Moore’s home is a gallery of that hard work, and the bits of the gig that keep her going. It hits you in the front hallway – a wall plastered with pictures from her adventures in public life.
There she is, beaming next to Barack Obama (“oh, he was lovely”), and in another photo grinning with Lady Gaga, a far cry from her official NSW parliamentary photos that hang nearby.
The hall opens into the living room of her parkside apartment, dripping with brightly coloured art, each with a personal story.
Some of the pieces, she says, are very familiar to her colleagues after two years of Zoom calls from her dining table.
“On one hand, you can say you got more done because you didn’t have travel time, but it meant you didn’t have a break,” she says.
There are sleepless nights as Covid continues to wreak havoc, with lines at food banks that Moore thought she’d never see on that scale in her city and major hits to the council’s budget, which she had worked so hard to bring into balance.
“Do I wake up at three and four in the morning? Do I struggle with sleep? Yes and yes,” she says.
Walks kept her going through lockdowns – often accompanied by her two dogs, Buster and Bessie, who also feature in a large portrait of Moore hanging in the living room – but she struggled.
After a rough start, Moore says the former premier Gladys Berejiklian’s cabinet “made a decision to work constructively with the city”.
She was pleased, because she felt people were better served by governments that were able to work together to achieve outcomes.
“People in local government and state government are expected to work together,” she says.
Other than appearing at some press conferences asking people to come back to the city – and some events to work out how to do just that – Moore says she hasn’t had a lot to do with Dominic Perrottet since he became premier.
“I had a bit to do with him when he was treasurer through activating the city. He seemed really interested in ideas,” she says.
Moore also notes a positive relationship with the treasurer and former energy minister, Matt Kean, and bemoans the loss of the former transport minister Andrew Constance, with whom she reports a good working relationship.
Her ambitious ideas for transport in the city, including the expansion of cycleways and introduction of electric buses, will now have to go through the beleaguered transport minister David Elliott, whose recent comments about not needing to answer the phone in the middle of the night she found “funny”.
“How could he not know?” she asks, talking about the metropolitan train network shutdown. “The whole thing was really odd.”
Top of Moore’s immediate wishlist is making rail transport free on Sundays so people can bring their bikes into the city and explore.
She hopes it will get people back into the habit of coming into the city that she has dedicated half her life to improving.
Watching it shut down and empty out when the virus hit was hard.
“You know those films you see after a bomb has been dropped or everyone’s left for some reason? It was like that,” she says.
“It was really quite extraordinary. Still beautiful physically but people make a city. What people like to do is look at people. Looking at people, noticing their funny habits.”
She’s banking on the human urge to connect, collaborate and stare at each other to eventually lure people back in, but will use the power she has to speed up the process, having already requested council staff return to work three days a week.
Moore is desperately excited for people to experience what the city is like with changes made during the pandemic.
She’s proud of the streetscaping along George Street and hopes the return of cruise ships will see tourists hop on the light rail to Chinatown, which has largely languished since 2020.
Lunar New Year celebrations earlier this year were the first taste of what she hopes is a big year for the area.
“The streets were packed and there was music,” she says. “We walked down from Town Hall to Chinatown and it was the first time I really experienced George Street as we envisioned it would be. It was just buzzing and everyone was on the street and everyone was at outdoor cafes and our seating had people on it. The people had taken over.”
Eventually Moore would also like to see a surface congestion tax for the CBD – something she is only starting to give serious thought as the transport links improve with the addition of her beloved light rail and metro that is still being built.
“As we’re getting adequate public transport, it’s certainly something I could support,” she says.
Asked about her plans for the city, it’s clear Moore thinks in decades.
In 20 years, she hopes Sydneysiders are able to swim in the harbour and cycle to work no matter where they live in their fully electric house.
She also wants dual plumbing in all homes so drinking water doesn’t go down the loo.
“There are a lot of projects still in the pipeline,” she says.
