Councillors pick two Greens to lead Randwick City

Greens councillors Clare Willington and Masoomeh Asgari have been elected mayor and deputy mayor of Randwick City Council, replacing Labor mayor Dylan Parker – who had served a two-year term – at a scheduled extraordinary meeting held on September 29.

Cr Willington, previously deputy mayor, defeated the only other candidate for the mayorship, the Liberal Party’s Cr Christie Hamilton, by 10 votes to five, for a term until September 2028.

Cr Asgari was elected as deputy mayor by the same margin, against the Liberal Party’s Cr Bill Burst, for a term until September 2027.

The change follows an arrangement in place since 2017 under which Labor and the Greens share the mayoralty and deputy mayoralty within each four-year term on Randwick City Council, despite the Greens holding only three of 15 seats.

The elected council currently comprises of six Labor members, five Liberals, three Greens, and one Independent.

Before the voting took place at the meeting, Randwick Voices group member Simone Joffe – the only member from the public gallery who registered to speak – reminded the councillors that more than 1,100 residents had signed a petition seeking more transparency on how the mayorship is determined.

“If there is an agreement, tell the community what it is. If there is no agreement, tell the community that too,” she said, urging for a mayor to be elected that is “for all of Randwick”, and asking one member from each party to publicly declare that there was no prior deal done, to prove it. None did.

During the meeting, immediately after the result of the voting was confirmed, Liberal Cr Daniel Rosenfeld said it was “very disappointing that the Labor Party has once again voted for a Greens mayor” and that the Greens had caused “much anxiety in the Jewish community in the Randwick Local Government Area (LGA)”, before a point of order, and a direction from the general manager to confine remarks to congratulating the new mayor, prevented him from finishing his point.

Cr Willington said she was “proud, pleased, and somewhat astonished” to be elected mayor in just her third year of serving on council, and pledged to lead “by Greens principles of climate and social justice”, and according to “the principles and actions of our recently endorsed social cohesion and multicultural plan”.

Her first action as mayor, she said, would be to request to meet with the La Perouse Aboriginal Land Council “to listen to the advice of local elders”.

Cr Parker said he is “very confident that you [Cr Willington] will discharge your duties very well,” adding “I commend your election”.

Cr Rosenfeld told The AJN the day after the extraordinary meeting, “I am disappointed that all the Labor councillors voted for a Greens mayor, given the well-known issues the Jewish community has with the Greens Party.

“The Jewish community in the Randwick LGA is sizeable, and I have had numerous correspondences from members of the community expressing their concerns in recent weeks.

“I am also disappointed that I wasn’t able to express my thoughts at the meeting” – a reference to being cut off mid-speech.

Meanwhile, at the previous ordinary meeting of the council, held on August 25, Greens councillors Willington and Veitch both voted against a Mayoral Minute penned by Cr Parker that endorsed council’s participation as an event partner in the 2026 Local Government Summit Against Antisemitism, to be held at Bondi Beach in November.

And they had specifically requested that their votes against that Mayoral Minute be included in the recorded minutes.