Ian Royall: Why City of Melbourne council could benefit from more dissent
THE City of Melbourne lord mayoral by-election is tough to read but regardless, the council will soon have a new look and it could also benefit from an injection of dissent, writes Ian Royall.
Opinion
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BOOMING Melbourne, population 4.8 million and counting, is just days away from electing its new civic leader.
Yet for all of the city’s size and world profile, only 144,000 people in inner Melbourne will choose the next person to don the mayoral robes. Well, if past voting patterns are anything to go by, only about half of those will actually bother posting their ballot paper for the lord mayoral vote by Friday.
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This unique electorate of just the CBD and inner-ring suburbs allows votes from property owners, who may or may not live within the municipal boundaries.
And city-based businesses are afforded two votes each — everyone from BHP to Arthur Daley’s Discount Store.
Also, almost 10 per cent of voters live overseas so their level of interest in the minutiae of the city’s day-to-day affairs would be questionable.
Residents (remember them?) are outnumbered on the electoral roll, making up only 58,000, or 40 per cent.
While the electorate is strange and diverse, then there’s the by-election, itself, for someone to replace Robert Doyle. And the surfeit of choice. Plenty of people have expressed a view that, with 14 candidates, there’s quantity but not really that much quality.
There’s an old marketing saying that giving people too much choice gives them no choice at all.
Sally Capp is seen as the front runner and has run a strong campaign. Polished and professional, Capp might must shake the impression in some quarters that as Property Council executive, she’ll be in the thrall of developers.
Capp should garner business support ahead of the Greens’ Rohan Leppert, the only current councillor in the race, who should poll strongly, especially if the party mobilises its inner-city strength. Both state and federal seats of Melbourne are held by the Greens.
Jennifer Yang, who is the Labor candidate in all but name, should benefit from the ALP network.
Yet with 14 candidates, the primary votes will likely be scattered wide and preferences all over the place. For a start, where will Doyle’s chunk of 44.6 per cent of primary votes in 2016 end up?
It’s also not beyond possibility that a candidate with a low primary vote could pick up early preferences and climb up the rankings to win.
Maybe not a Ricky Muir-style Senate victory on the back of 0.5 per cent primary vote in 2013, but this by-election is tough to read.
For whoever wins though, probably the biggest immediate task is to resolve the stalemate around the $250 million Queen Victoria Market redevelopment, seen by some as a Doyle legacy project.
It has to be decided whether to push ahead and challenge Heritage Victoria’s block, go back to the drawing board or, least likely, to scrap the idea of a revamp altogether. Few question that the ageing but much-loved market needs a revival of sorts.
The other big issues are the city’s population boom and homelessness, the latter of which has improved thanks to good intention, money and resources, but it still remains a hot topic.
It should also be noted that the new mayor will have a truncated term of only 2½ years to make his or her mark.
Certainly, whoever wins must provide robust leadership and unity in the aftermath of the Doyle sexual harassment scandal and talk of a “toxic culture” at Town Hall.
Even so, the mayoral job is sometimes a figurehead role and the really big decisions on major developments get kicked upstairs to the Planning Minister.
In many ways, the role’s power is less than its profile.
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It’s also handy to remember that the new head will be one of 11 councillors. And that he or she won’t have the certainty and backing of a voting majority, like Doyle did with Team Doyle, to get motions through council.
Not that, if recent evidence is anything to go by, meetings have been slowed by objections and hours of rigorous debate.
Indeed, the past two full council meetings lasted 15 and seven minutes of public session. And of the 12 motions for debate, all were carried unanimously. Not one objecting voice. Indeed, dissenting voices are rare in the current council, Jackie Watts being the occasional exception.
One such motion was the move last month to gift $300,000 to Trades Hall for renovations at the union’s HQ building on Lygon St, Carlton. There was no public consultation, the decision was made in secret and only made public after the meeting.
Surely, a matter involving a six-figure sum of public funds to be used for someone else’s building repairs deserved more discussion.
Yes, working collaboratively can be helpful, but there also needs to be a contest of ideas.
Maybe what Town Hall really needs is not just a mayor, but an opposition, too.
— Ian Royall is a Herald Sun city reporter
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