No Moore for Sydney

Nominations for the office of Lord Mayor of Sydney will close in just a few days and many Sydneysiders are desperate for a quality candidate to run against the long in the tooth incumbent, Ms Clover Moore.

The fact is Sydney’s Town Hall currently lacks a great deal. It lacks leadership, gravitas, political savvy, administrative skill, the ability to attract business, jobs and tourists, and critically, the skills to connect with a broad section of the community.

Qualities Ita Buttrose, Australia’s first woman of business, has over the decades exhibited time and again.

Below is a speech a great many Sydneysiders would walk over hot coals to hear, but with the clock ticking towards 8^th August, the day the door to nominations slams shut, their hope for change in Town Hall is slowly ebbing away. Here it is.

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen,Who am I? And what am I doing here?

My name is Ita Buttrose and I’d very much like to begin with a little background about myself, before sharing with you what it is that I want to achieve as the Mayor of Sydney.

I started working at The Australian Women’s Weekly as a copy girl at the age of 15.  Over the years I grew into a journalist, editor of the Weekly at the age of 33, publisher, businesswoman and author. Under my editorship, but with a great deal of help from my wonderful team, I made the Weekly, per capita, the highest circulating magazine in the world.

My life in the world of print media included the creation of Cleo, working for Sir Frank Packer and his son, Kerry. They owned Australian Consolidated Press, a huge magazine and television empire.

I became Editor-in-Chief of Rupert Murdoch’s Daily and Sunday Telegraph, making me the first woman to edit a major metropolitan newspaper in Australia. I loved that job: especially the part of the job that required me to stand up to Rupert.

I also had a stint at Fairfax running the Sun Herald. That was not a happy period in my life.

Towards the end of what I call my “print media life”, I published Ita, a magazine for women over 40. Or as we used to say, “for the woman who wasn’t born yesterday”. Regrettably due to my pockets being too shallow to compete with the “big boys” and it’s always the boys, as if you didn’t know, coupled with what in hindsight seems like being ahead of the curve with respect to topics canvassed in the magazine, that venture didn’t last too long.

People over the years stop me and ask ‘Ita are you saddened or depressed by the failure of the magazine”? To which I always reply: “failing isn’t trying and not succeeding. Failure is never trying”.

And so here I am. Trying. Trying to be mayor. So what kinds of mayors are there? And if elected, what kind do I hope to become? When it comes candidates for mayor, it's hardly a revelation that all candidates are not alike.

They differ in interests, in vision, in styles and in experiences. If you took a collection of mayors from different towns and hosted a barbeque, you might want to seat them among those with common interests. But what would those interests be?

Mulling over this issue in recent weeks, I came up with five broad styles of mayors. There is no right way to be a mayor. Mayors can be successful in any of these types. But I strongly believe that two types tend to do better over their time in office: the “managerial” mayor and the “neighbourhood” mayor.

I looked at mayors from a country that has an abundance of mayors: the United States of America, appreciating of course that the range of activities of Sydney’s mayor is more truncated than that of a typical American mayor. I note there are five types.

The first type of mayor is what is called the “deal-making” mayor, and a fine example is Richard Riordan (former mayor, Los Angeles from 1993-2001). The “deal maker” is a person who loves to make newspaper headlines, usually in deals for large development projects. Imagine any loud, filthy rich and how do I say it….“colourful” business identity as mayor and you have the general idea.

The second type is “ethnic” advocating mayor. Kwame Kilpatrick (Mayor of Detroit from 2002-2008) is a fine example. This kind of mayor comes to office determined to level the playing field in favour of one ethnic group. Alas, sometimes this infatuation with one topic blinds such advocates to everything else going on in his or her city.

The third type is often called the “manager” or “managerial” mayor such as Michael Bloomberg (New York City 2002 and still in the job). The name describes the style. This is the mayor whose passion is making government work better, faster and ideally cheaper.

The fourth type, the “protest” mayor Laura Miller (Dallas 2003-2007) is an example. These are mayors elected to protest some situation or issue. But as the issue recedes, these mayors tire all but their most glued-on supporters. Unless they find a new axe to grind, and find it soon, these folk soon go the way of the dinosaur.

And lastly the fifth type is the “neighbourhood” mayor. Thomas Menino (Boston 1993 and still on the job) is a wonderful example. These are mayors who are focused on making neighbourhoods healthy. They revel in the small details and can talk the leg off a table about local tree plantings and updating a scout hall. Some think of them as small-minded so-and-sos. Perhaps some are, but there's a reason these mayors last so long in office. The very best listen to their communities and they are proactive.

So what is my philosophy towards the job of mayor? I see myself as a mix of managerial and neighbourhood mayor. My drivers are five fold: to innovate, to educate, to save money, to employ good sense and above all else, to listen.

I utilised these qualities when working in the corporate sector and more recently in the not for profit space.

Enjoyable as it was, even more enjoyable than my time in the business world was my time in and still is my time working in the not for profit sector. I was President of Arthritis Australia, director of Australian Prostate Cancer Foundation, Chair of National Breast Cancer Advisory Network and Chair of the National Advisory Committee on AIDS. Currently I am Patron of the Macular Degeneration Foundation and President of Alzheimer's Australia.

What my mother taught me about life was right: You should strive to be better and to be thrifty (especially with others people’s money), have a low tolerance for BS and no tolerance for thieves. Before acting, ask how others might view what you’re doing. Commonsense stuff for sure, but not always common sense for governments.  

My role model in city government is Mayor Bloomberg. The guy has been in the job for a decade and is far more often admired than not. Politically he is independent.

He’s done many things right in his years in office. He has focused attention on measuring and setting goals for city services and developed a brilliant system of measuring results (using the city’s innovative 311 phone system as the one number the public calls to access non emergency council services).

And he employs “good sense.” He has buckled the long held attitude that “government knows best” and tossed out the mantra that says the best form of consultation is when city managers talk only to those who agree with them.

As my children Kate and Ben will freely attest, I’m not this city’s smartest woman, but I do have an appreciation for human resourcefulness. I can’t solve my city’s problems on my own.

As mayor, I would spend a lot of time thinking about who I could get together in the one room to analyse our city’s problems. What information I could provide them and what decision-making processes we could employ. Together. So that Sydney’s problems could be solved and solved quickly.

Sydney has many problems and a Mayor’s job is not to advocate for her constituents, not to protest and not to agitate. Her job is to solve and to deliver.

I have no political axe to grind. If you don’t believe me, check out my 350 page application for this job, better known as my latest book, A Passionate Life, published a couple of months ago.

You’ll read that I have worked with both sides of the political fence. I am not partisan. I am dedicated. I do not want the job of Mayor so I can regurgitate to you all the symptoms of what’s wrong with Sydney – violent behaviour, heavy traffic congestion, poor traffic management, insufficient consultations with business and community groups. Instead, I want to attack the root causes. I want to solve problems.

I am not seeking the job of Mayor for the money. I am not looking for something to occupy my time. I have a full plate. But I want the job in place of my current full plate.  I think coming to this job at my age has many, many more pluses than minuses. The biggest plus of all is decades of experience.

Another great city, New York, has a mayor whose experience has guided him to many victories. He’s lowered the crime rate and made all parts of the city safer to walk in after dark. He forced food vendors to list the number of calories on their offerings and he has outlawed the use of trans fats. Recently he stood up to the lobby group best known as Big Sugar by putting a cap on the size of sugar laden soft drinks available for sale.

Nobody comments negatively on his age. The guy, Mike Bloomberg, like me is 70.

So, I say to all of you, enjoy the city you live in. And let me make it work better.

Revel in its idiosyncrasies and take pleasure in its customs. Laugh at its foibles but resist the lure to apologise for them.

Above all, remember that what makes Sydney different is exactly what makes it great. And its greatness has no bounds. For those who don’t know me, my name is Ita Buttrose. And I want to be your mayor.