Independent councillor Yvonne Weldon wants the City of Sydney council to drop Moore’s titles of lord mayor and right honourable,saying they are inconsistent with contemporary,multicultural egalitarian values.
City of Sydney councillor Yvonne Weldon wants the council to dump Moore’s titles of lord mayor and right honourable.Rhett Wyman
“Lord suggests aristocracy and superiority. The mayor ought to be a servant of the people,rather than their master,” she said.
Lord mayors preside over Australia’s other capital cities as well as Wollongong,Parramatta and Newcastle.
Weldon’s notice of motion,which will be debated at the council’s meeting on February 19,said imperial honours,titles and awards had been abolished at both national and state levels.
“Local representatives should be accessible to the community,” she said. “Unnecessary pomp and fanfare makes local government less accessible.”
Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore is “happy to consider” Weldon’s call.Dion Georgopoulos
Moore is “happy to consider” Weldon’s call to ditch her titles,but the title of lord mayor required an amendment to state law,a council spokesman said.
“The government or an individual MP would need to determine whether such legislative change is likely to provide benefit to the community and whether it is worth devoting the time and resources of the parliament to this before introducing the amendments for debate.”
The spokesman said the title of “right honourable” was rarely,if ever,used:“Mostly people just say Clover”.
Moore does not fly the City of Sydney flag or has never worn the lord mayoral robes,he said.
“She wears a chain at civic events only – citizenship ceremonies and council meetings are the only regular occurrences – but the chain has no medallion.
“She returned the chains with the city’s old crest to the civic collection and does not wear them.”
Weldon,the first Aboriginal councillor in the City of Sydney’s 180-year history,called for a review of the council’s colonial statues following the defeat of the Voice referendum in 2023.
Moore instructed staff in 2022 to review the council’s symbols and emblems “to ensure that they respect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and heritage”.
Weldon said:“The lord mayor promised to review the city’s symbols and emblems 18 months ago. It’s disappointing that little progress has been made.”
Concerns have been raised in the past about the council’s symbols. In 2019,Labor’s Linda Scott,then deputy mayor, a set of chains with a medallion depicting an Indigenous man opposite a colonial settler,alongside the words:“I take but I surrender.”
However,Liberal councillor Lyndon Gannon does not think all references of our colonial past should be removed.
“To say titles like lord mayor are culturally inappropriate is ridiculous,” he said. “I mean,what if we had an Indigenous governor-general? In Yvonne’s view they would be a traitor to their mob.”
