Why this Melbourne mayor’s got a big crush on Sydney

The new Lord Mayor of Melbourne Nick Reece made news this week for, extraordinarily, saying admiring things about Sydney. I talked to him on Wednesday.

Fitz: Thanks for your time, lord mayor and … how far you’ve come, Nick. You and I got to know each other years ago when we recognised each other as the only two sane commentators on Sky After Dark, before I went mad, and they had to shoot me. I gather you are still soldiering on. Why?

Nick Reece with Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, who “has totally bucked the trend winning election after election”.

NR: I actually enjoy it, I love a good debate even if I don’t agree with the host or whoever I’m with. I often find I will get a new perspective on an issue. But don’t worry Fitz, I’m not about to catch the Sky News Mind Virus.

Fitz: [Laughter.] Fair enough. My assumption was that you were on Sky News because you were one of the very few Labor people who could bear to be there, but when I look at your resume, it’s seriously substantial. You were one of the original directors and driving forces of the newspaper The Big Issue?

NR: I was certainly involved from the earliest days. The original concept came from the UK. It’s a simple idea. It’s a magazine which has good journalism and it is sold on the streets of Australia by homeless and marginalised people, with half the cover price going to the vendors, while the other half goes to pay for the journalists and the production. It’s grown to be probably the most successful social enterprise in Australia, providing an income for thousands of people. But more than that it’s helped change perceptions about homelessness in Australia. Homelessness used to be something that was hidden away from society, but now people can put a face to it, and it is someone they are friendly with who sells The Big Issue.

Fitz: And you were also one of the original “mo-vers and shavers” for Movember? (Be my guest, you can patent that!)

NR: It was actually two good mates of mine, Trav and Luke, who started it. I was one of the original “Mo Bros” who grew a mo and came along for the ride. We were young and living in share houses in Fitzroy at the time. Again, such a simple idea. Ask your friends to sponsor your mo’ for a month and raise money for charity. One of the guys’ dads had prostate cancer and we’d also lost some mates to suicide. So the aim was to raise money for prostate cancer and for men’s mental health. Twenty-one years on, and what a hairy ride – Movember has raised $1.6 billion and is running in 20 countries around the world.

Fitz: Before we get to Sydney, you worked as a senior adviser for prime minister Julia Gillard, and were in the room when she made her famous misogyny speech to Tony Abbott: “I will not be lectured about misogyny by this man, I will not!” Tell us about it. Did you recognise it at the time as an off-the-cuff Australian Gettysburg Address?

NR: It was an incredibly powerful speech made off-the-cuff, but we didn’t recognise the significance at the time. We had been saying for some time to the prime minister that she should call Tony Abbott out on some of his behaviour in the chamber, and not just continue with her usual stoic, dignified approach. On that particular day Abbott was needling her. And when he made the indirect reference to her father, something inside her snapped, and she unleashed.

Fitz: And when you were with her back in the prime ministerial office, did she recognise it as a Gettysburg speech?

NR: No, we all thought it was an incredible, heartfelt speech in the chamber. But it was also just another day of rancorous debate during a pretty tough term of parliament. Julia was always like: “What’s next? Let’s move on to the next thing.” And there wasn’t even much of a bump in the press gallery on the day. It was only in subsequent days when the international media picked up on it and it circulated on YouTube that the whole thing exploded.

Fitz: Which, for the record, is what happened at Gettysburg. People at the time liked it, but it was only when Lincoln’s words circulated via The New York Times that the whole thing truly took off!

NR: Well, The New York Times was one of many media organisations that contacted us in the days after that speech, wanting comment and interviews. It was amazing how it struck a chord around the world.

“Look at George Street … it’s one of the best urban development projects in the world.”Credit: Ben Symons

Fitz: All right, so here in Sydney, we’ve long said that the only good thing to come out of Melbourne is the Hume Highway – boom-tish – while truly nurturing a grudging respect for the Victorian capital, and we suspect you feel the same for us. Now you’ve broken cover, and said some very kind things about Sydney this week, noting that we’re right up there with Melbourne as one of “the two best cities in the world”. What brought this burst of warmth for us in Sydney?

NR: I feel it. I’ve always felt it. If I couldn’t live in Melbourne, there’s only one other city I would truly love to live in, and that’s Sydney. And I often think that in Australia, we don’t appreciate the fact that we have these two unbelievably brilliant cities … side-by-side on the east coast. “Sydney is the movie and Melbourne is the novel.”

Fitz: I love that, I think, but what do you mean, exactly?

NR: Sydney is very flashy, and it’s got the world’s most beautiful harbour. And people who live in Sydney are obsessed by how close they can get to that harbour and what view they have of it. Melbourne has a very interesting internal life as a city. We love our bookshops, festivals, our food, our theatres, and sports. We love having conversations with ourselves, about ourselves. In Sydney, you turn up in activewear to your Mum’s funeral. In Melbourne, you wear a black puffer jacket to a job interview.

The CTA building in Martin Place, lit up for Vivid. Credit: Destination NSW

Fitz: All right, you also said you admired Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, “a legend who copped a bit over the years but was someone who deserves huge credit for her vision and determination”. What do you, as a new lord mayor of Melbourne, admire about our veteran lord mayor?

NR: The first thing is her electoral success. The shelf life of politicians in this country seems to have gotten shorter and shorter. And there is Clover, who has totally bucked the trend winning election after election. This has allowed her to see through policy and projects which she has been a supporter of for a long time. Look at George Street, with the [light rail] and pedestrians – it’s one of the best urban development projects in the world. When I was in Sydney recently, I was walking down George Street in the evening and seeing the thousands of people walking through the centre of Sydney. It’s been totally transformative. Clover can take a lot of credit for that.

Fitz: You were up here to see our Vivid festival, and said you had a lot to learn from it. What, particularly?

NR: In Melbourne, we are looking for new ways to activate our city during the winter months. I love what Vivid has done through incredible light projections, installations, music performances, and speaking events to bring people into the city. We’ll do it in a Melbourne way, but Vivid has given us some good ideas.

Fitz: In Sydney, we’re dealing with a housing crisis. How’s your mob going on that front?

NR: We do, too, though it’s not as acute as Sydney’s. Our median house prices are significantly lower than Sydney’s, and we don’t have the same geographic constraints that Sydney faces in terms of the development of new housing. But we do have huge population growth, which means we need to keep the new housing supply coming. My municipality, the City of Melbourne, was the fastest growing capital city in Australia in percentage terms last year. I’m a proud pro-development lord mayor, and a lot of that is happening in medium and high-rise residential towers.

Fitz: And I gather you credit Sydney for the way you do some of it?

NR: Yes, when I was first elected a councillor a number of years ago, one of the first things I did was travel to Sydney, and – just like I did last week – spent a day meeting with people at the City of Sydney and in the NSW government. Getting under the bonnet and just saying, “What’s working here, guys? What can we learn from you?” One of the ideas I got from that first trip was around Clover Moore’s “Design Excellence Program”. I ripped off many of the features of that program, introducing into Melbourne things like design review panels for new development proposals, and the use of development bonuses to reward good architecture and design.

Fitz: I know the answer, of course, but remind us what a design review panel is?

NR: It’s a group of outstanding architects, landscape architects and urban designers who can peer-review major projects when they’re submitted to the city and provide feedback on the quality of the architecture and design. We are looking for buildings that give more back to the street and the city than they take. Melbourne has a distinct design identity that is highly regarded, and the panel has proven its value by ensuring major projects use materials and concepts that represent our city and tell a story about Melbourne.

Fitz: You’ve got my vote! And what is a “development bonus”?

NR: If they get it right, you allow them to build more on the site than they otherwise would have been able to.

Fitz: I also see you’re credited with introducing measures like “forcing graffiti taggers to fund clean-ups”. What does that mean?

NR: While we’re famous for our street art, tagging and vandalism has been a big problem in Melbourne and so we’ve made a huge effort to clean up the city – including making offenders accountable for their crimes. Our “you spray, you pay” policy means our lawyers put in victim impact statements on behalf of the community and seek orders from the court to make vandals pay or clean up their own mess. We also have new cleaning vehicles, 24/7 Clean Teams, on the street. And we introduced new targets for the removal of tagging and graffiti. Any racist, antisemitic or offensive material will be removed within an hour of it being reported.

Fitz: I think we can learn from you. Nick, more power to you and yours in Melbourne.

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