Once again the shouters of the Murdoch press in Sydney and on 2GB (Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, Chris Smith, etc) have been ignored by their audience. For years now, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph and The Australian have run a highly negative line against Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore, assisted by the likes of Jones, Hadley and Smith, who have usually ranted from the same song sheet as the News Corp hacks.

At the limited NSW local government elections on Saturday, the people of Sydney ignored the ranters and returned Moore with an increased majority — in fact, she received a 9% swing. That is despite a blatant gerrymander by the Coalition NSW state government that gave 23,000 businesses in the Sydney City area alone (and not in Parramatta, Chatswood, North Sydney, Newcastle or Wollongong, just Sydney City) a vote (which was compulsory). The gerrymandering of the vote was seen as a crude attempt to get rid of Moore by the Baird government.

In an editorial in Saturday’s edition of the Telegraph, the paper urged voters to vote against Moore. Under the punning headline “It’s time that we had less of Moore”, the paper said:

“It is time to end the Clover Moore era in Sydney politics. Regardless of your opinion of our Lady Mayor, she has enjoyed a long tenure in her position and it is time for a change. She needs to exit graciously and make way for a new team with a new vision for Sydney.”

Voters clearly missed the gratuitous advice from the Tele and its newbie editor, who has now his second misfire. He campaigned mightily against the ALP and Bill Shorten in the July 2 federal election. But Labor made big inroads across the Tele’s heartland — western Sydney.

On Saturday, Labor attracted large swings in the western Sydney local government areas of Liverpool, Penrith, the Blue Mountains, Blacktown, Campbelltown and Camden — all areas where the ALP won or increased its vote on July 2.

And what was the Telegraph’s response this morning to Saturday’s result? You wouldn’t be surprised to know it was buried on page 10 in a report with a strapline on top entitled “State of Disarray” and the report itself headlined “More Madness”, with the strap line “Mike Baird’s worst nightmare has come true with ‘four Moore years’ of costly chaos”.

Seeing as the council Moore presides over has no debt and operates at a surplus, the Telegraph’s claim of “costly chaos” is another invention of those febrile inventions of Holt Street.