Kickstart Victoria: Melbourne’s lord mayor hopefuls outline their visions to get city back on track
Four of Melbourne’s leading lord mayor hopefuls outline their visions for breathing life back into the city after the devastating coronavirus restrictions are eased.
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Going ahead with the Metro 2 underground rail project, building over the CBD rail lines and bringing lost businesses back to the city are among the ideas put forward by lord mayor candidates to boost inner Melbourne.
While the City of Melbourne lacks the finances and jurisdiction to deliver many of the proposals, the candidates believe the measures are needed to help revive the CBD.
Here, four of the leading lord mayor hopefuls outline their visions for getting the inner city back on track amid the devastating pandemic shutdowns.
Campaigning to win a second term, Lord Mayor Sally Capp focuses on women’s sport events, art and culinary attractions.
Her main rival, Deputy Lord Mayor Arron Wood, would like some big infrastructure projects done, but he’s also keen on the “small things” that help to build a city and community.
Labor Party candidate Phil Reed proposes practical measures such as luring businesses back to the CBD that were driven out by high rents.
And pollster Gary Morgan, the perennial candidate, has some big ideas on his wish list, including pulling down the inner city public housing towers and rehousing residents in vacant CBD apartments.
The October 24 council election will be held by postal vote.
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SALLY CAPP
Melbourne should host a festival of women’s sport to help revive the city’s fortunes, says Lord Mayor Sally Capp.
Ms Capp said that a series of events including the city playing a key role when Australia hosts the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup should be pursued.
“We should be a hub for women's sport globally, we’ve got the infrastructure set up,” she said.
“We need to attract more netball, more basketball, more golf, more rugby — sports that women are starting to grow at competition and elite level.”
The Lord Mayor said the focus on women’s events would bolster Melbourne’s international reputation as a great sports centre.
Also on Ms Capp’s agenda is growing the city’s esports events given the huge global audiences the sector attracts.
“We should become the nation’s premier gaming destination,” she said.
While Melbourne is already known as a key arts and culture destination, Ms Capp said that displaying more art outdoors would enhance the city’s attractiveness.
“Having people wandering around our city in a COVID-safe way, appreciating world-class public art, is a terrific way of getting our locals activated, and then having people from the around the world planning their visit to Melbourne,” she said.
Art would be sourced from public and private collections, and later new works could be commissioned.
The Lord Mayor is also keen for the huge Metro Tunnel works’ acoustic sheds to be made into “arts installations in their own right”.
On the culinary side, Ms Capp believes the city would benefit from a biannual, week-long Melbourne Restaurant Week conducted in partnership with the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.
“Restaurants, cafes, pubs, or any participants where we can feature signature dishes at fixed-price menus so we can encourage more people to come,” she said.
“A Melbourne twist would be progressive dinners and a parma night where every participating venue produces their version of a parma.”
The City of Melbourne would invest $1.5m to market the event and $500,000 to subsidise parking in the city.
Ms Capp also wants the city to host the nation’s first technology festival with key events in the CBD.
Capp’s one big idea: $80m for Greenline project which will deliver new parks, bikeways and walkways. Greenline will create jobs, boost business, generate property value uplift, improve liveability for locals and attract visitors.
ARRON WOOD
Upgrading a key Docklands precinct and delivering big transport projects such as Metro 2 would boost inner Melbourne, according to a leading lord mayoral candidate.
But Deputy Lord Mayor Arron Wood said it was also important to understand and invest in the “small things” that contribute to make the city big.
Mr Wood said Docklands desperately needed improvements such as upgrading Harbour Esplanade, renewal of Central Pier and the redevelopment of Marvel Stadium.
“It’s an indictment on current leadership that Central Pier sits derelict and idle when it was home to thriving destination businesses not too long ago,” he said.
Mr Wood said it was also time to build over CBD railway lines.
“Let’s finally construct Federation Square East using low-cost lightweight decking to deliver an AFL-sized community oval, arts and cultural institutions, and community facilities as the gateway from Fed Square to our mighty MCG,” he said.
Metro 2 — an underground rail line between Clifton Hill and Newport — would have stations at the Fishermans Bend urban renewal precinct.
“Fast-tracking the project would supercharge the construction industry in a precinct that will be home to 80,000 residents and 80,000 jobs, and also enable fast rail to Geelong,” said the Deputy Lord Mayor.
Mr Wood said other projects that should be fast-tracked to transform the city include Airport Rail, a rapid bus transit network with 10-minute frequencies and the proposed Suburban Rail Loop.
“Let’s again become a global leader in research, building on our amazing existing resources such as the Peter Doherty Institute,” he said.
“We can turn the COVID crisis into a huge export win by perfecting rapid testing and world leading contact tracing systems, allowing our businesses and economy to open COVID-safe.”
Equally important, Mr Wood said, were the small things, such as getting residents and others to adopt a street or precinct.
“Residents, businesses, precinct associations, chambers of commerce would then be supported with requests for beautification, cleaning and upgrade works to renew our civic pride,” he said.
Mr Wood said more council support for small community projects would help deal with worsening issues such as graffiti tagging and illegal rubbish dumping.
Wood’s one big idea: Use federal and state stimulus funding to build 6000 new affordable homes each year for the next decade to truly solve homelessness across Victoria while supercharging the construction industry and saving money.
PHILIP REED
Labor’s lord mayoral hopeful Phil Reed would love to see a Chicago-style Millennium Park created over the railway lines between Federation Square and Richmond Station.
“But frankly, it doesn’t drive particular economic stimulus at the moment,” he said.
“It’s a challenging, city-transforming project, but I’m conscious that at the moment we need to stimulate business activity.”
Mr Reed said a priority should be filling up all the office and retail space in the inner city that’s been left empty by economic trends and pandemic shutdowns.
“We’ve had recently departed industries from the city priced out by rents in recent years that can be easily brought back,” he said.
“Things like textiles, the rag trade, these could be really quick and easy wins to try to encourage them back.”
Mr Reed said the City of Melbourne should step in to help business by providing liquor licence exemptions and covering public liability insurance premiums for 12 months.
“And where businesses can’t fill the gaps you invite arts and community groups to start filling them,” he said.
“It allows them to create the sense of colour and movement that will be needed to ensure that the city has a sense of vibrancy about it that it is attractive for visitors and future workers to come back in and say ‘yes, we do want to be part of this joint again.’ ”
Mr Reed said the pandemic had shown the importance of frontline workers, so the inner city should be promoting developments like build-to-rent to provide affordable housing.
“You not only stimulate some building activity, you stimulate a particular style, and it gets a particular demographic of worker who needs to be back in the city,” he said.
“It works for housing affordability, works for business, works for the economy.”
Also on Labor’s agenda is using urban renewal areas like Fishermans Bend and Egate for a waste-to-energy plant, and encouraging medium-sized businesses to the precincts since demand for high-density housing is likely to fall.
Reed’s one big idea: A rate holiday on new or refurbished build-to-rent developments incorporating at least 30 per cent of affordable housing to reactivate the commercial building industry through new developments and the conversion of existing buildings.
GARY MORGAN
Building the Airport Rail Link and luring more corporate headquarters here should be priorities for Melbourne, says pollster Gary Morgan.
The boss of Roy Morgan Research is having another tilt at Town Hall, with sitting councillor Jackie Watts his number one councillor candidate.
Mr Morgan has been a staunch advocate for pandemic restrictions to be eased further, calling for all CBD shops, restaurants and hotels to be reopened now for local residents, including those in inner suburbs such as Docklands and Southbank.
But he believes a key part of rebuilding the CBD involves upgrading public transport and making it COVID-safe.
“The Airport Rail Link must be built now. Years of talk must become action, especially as Melbourne is the only capital city with a 24/7 international airport,” he said.
“The City of Melbourne must also focus on bringing more Australian and international corporate head offices to Melbourne as we have world-class facilities like the health system, schools, universities and lifestyle.”
Mr Morgan said the state government should sell off inner city public housing towers for development by the private sector.
“Residents from the towers must be immediately relocated to COVID-safe housing,” he said.
“The opportunity exists now — there are many empty apartment towers in the city that would be ideal for short-term accommodation while more permanent homes are decided.”
Mr Morgan said the homelessness problem must be solved once and for all, and the education system improved to deal with the looming unemployment crisis.
“The strategic imperative of the city must be to promote the best of what Melbourne can offer — shopping, entertainment, the arts and tourism,” he said.
“We need to embrace virtual reality and leading edge technology with a view to Melbourne 2025 being the place where everyone wants to live, work, shop, and play.”
Ms Watts, who heads the Melbourne Maritime Heritage Network, wants a “maritime heritage trail” created along the Yarra River from Birrarung Marr to Bolte Bridge.
Morgan’s one big idea: Melbourne needs an ongoing “Clever Roundtable” to help solve looming historically high jobless levels. Would involve the council, governments, industry, universities and unions working together.
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