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Tuesday September 29, 2026 
27 September 2026
North Sydney’s ten councillors will elect a mayor tomorrow night. Residents elected the councillors, but under the council’s current system they do not vote directly for its leader.
Zoë Baker has held the mayoralty since January 2022. Her Real Independents, with support from Labor, command a consistent six of the ten council votes. The Greens provide a reliable seventh. The question is whether Baker wants another two years or will hand over to her deputy and closest political ally, MaryAnn Beregi.
Beregi has been a key organising force behind the Real Independents throughout their time in control of council. Alliances have shifted, but she and Baker remain its defining figures.
The mayoral vote comes at the midpoint of the council term, less than six months before the NSW election. By the next local election, Baker will have served 20 years as a councillor and Beregi 16. Speculation has turned to whether either might seek a seat in state parliament.
There are plausible contests for both. Most of Baker’s St Leonards Ward lies in Willoughby, where Liberal Tim James defeated independent Larissa Penn by 2.6 percentage points in 2023. Beregi’s Cammeraygal Ward sits largely within North Shore, where Liberal Felicity Wilson defeated independent Helen Conway by 5.7 points. James and Wilson hold shadow ministerial portfolios and have worked their electorates diligently. Neither can assume that will settle the next contest.
In Willoughby, Baker and James may already be rehearsing for a bigger fight. The future of Kelly’s Place Children’s Centre, on the site of the planned Hume Street Park expansion near Crows Nest Metro, has become a proxy battle between them.
Baker argues that a growing, increasingly dense Crows Nest needs more open space. Council has resolved not to renew Kelly’s Place’s lease beyond December. James has taken up the centre’s cause, pressing the state government about its future. Supporters say council has failed to resolve what will happen to its families and staff.
Labor planning minister Paul Scully has now entered the dispute. He has warned Baker that he could cancel the state’s $9.3 million contribution to the park expansion unless he is satisfied council is supporting families affected by a closure. His department is considering designs both with and without childcare. Construction will not begin before the state election.
Baker can point to a formidable local base. Her ticket won 46% of first preferences in St Leonards Ward in 2024, when no endorsed Liberal ticket was on the ballot. That suggests at least some habitual Liberal voters were comfortable backing her. Yet Baker has never presented herself as a Liberal in exile, as some teal independents have done. Her comments in council over the years suggest she is resolutely anti-Liberal.
A state campaign would face a different electoral test. At a federal election, voters must number every candidate. At a NSW state election, they can stop at one. If their candidate is eliminated, their vote can leave the count without reaching either finalist.
That happened to 5,826 formal votes in Willoughby in 2023 and 6,808 in North Shore: roughly 11% and 14% respectively. In North Shore, Labor’s Godfrey Santer began with 8,239 first preferences and had accumulated 10,330 votes when he was eliminated. Of those, 5,284 went to Conway, 1,053 to Wilson and 3,993 exhausted. Conway needed more of those voters to stay in the count.
Federal independents have overtaken Liberals with strong Labor and Greens preference flows in Warringah, the former federal seat of North Sydney and, narrowly, Bradfield. NSW’s rules make that route less dependable. An independent needs both a strong first preference vote and supporters of other candidates willing to keep numbering their ballots.
Nor should anyone assume Labor would strategically support a Real Independents state campaign. Its North Sydney councillors, Santer and Shannon Welch, have reliably backed Baker’s bloc. The NSW Labor government is another matter. Scully’s intervention over Kelly’s Place shows how the two can be at odds.
Bradfield Park shows a more complicated relationship. North Sydney Council has been pressing for the return to public use of part of Bradfield Park South, which was vested in the roads authority for the Sydney Harbour Tunnel in 1987. Yet legislation passed by the Minns government in August expressly vests the land described in that 1987 Act in the new NSW Motorways agency and was accompanied by an announcement on planned designs for the area – a direct challenge to Council influence over the park’s future, which, notably, NSW Labor has promoted through a political lens on social media. Support from two Labor councillors should not be mistaken for agreement from the state government.
One Nation could complicate the electoral arithmetic. It did not contest Willoughby or North Shore in 2023, and its recent statewide polling at around 25% over eight polls this year cannot simply be transplanted to the lower north shore. But its Warringah branch has been holding apparently packed pub meetings in North Sydney. More troubling for the Liberals is its potential to draw away people who once represented them. Former federal Liberal candidate Katherine Deves and Pat Daley, a retired police officer and former Liberal councillor, are two recent recruits.
James won 43.6% of first preferences in Willoughby in 2023; Wilson won 44.2% in North Shore. A shift from those Liberal votes to One Nation could bring an independent closer to the incumbent. A larger shift could conceivably put One Nation in contention for the final two. Some of its voters might preference the Liberal; others might stop at one or go elsewhere. Under optional preferential voting, the Liberals cannot count on recovering votes lost to a challenger on their right.
The independent side has a problem of its own: it is not one movement. Baker and Beregi built the Real Independents’ council base before the teal wave. North Sydney’s Independent, which backed Kylea Tink’s successful 2022 federal campaign, came from a different network, with little obvious membership overlap. When I attended the launch of Helen Conway’s state candidacy in 2023, I saw no known Real Independents supporters. At an earlier meeting, three attended as observers rather than evident supporters. The more obvious crossover was from across the harbour, among supporters of former independent MP Kerryn Phelps.
North Sydney’s Independent’s successor, Northern Sydney’s Independents, is seeking its own candidates for next March. It cannot be assumed that it would desist and instead rally around Baker or Beregi if they run. The Baker/Beregi council record, including a 52% rate rise, would become a state campaign issue and may act as a deterrence to NSI support. Zali Steggall has supporters, including in Mosman, who could matter in North Shore. Again, her past goodwill towards the Real Independents is no guarantee of an endorsement.
For now, a Baker or Beregi candidacy remains speculation, encouraged in part by supporters who have told the North Sydney Sun they would like to see them run. Tomorrow’s vote will reveal which woman intends to lead council. It cannot tell us whether either could win a state seat, or whether the independent groups would unite behind either of them. The Hume Street Park dispute has nevertheless shown how quickly the dividing lines of such a contest could emerge.
There is a local precedent. Ted Mack turned the North Sydney mayoralty into victory in the state seat of North Shore in 1981. When he left state to go federal in 1988, his ally Robyn Read won the by-election. Baker and Beregi have built the kind of local presence that evokes that history. Tomorrow night may offer the first clue as to what they intend to do with it.
– Grahame Lynch