Melbourne Lord Mayor gets down to business after election win
Getting Melbourne’s key infrastructure projects on track is the top priority for newly re-elected Lord Mayor Sally Capp as she gets stuck into work. See what’s on the agenda.
Victoria
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Getting on with key projects such as the $250m Queen Victoria Market redevelopment and the Southbank Boulevard upgrade is a key priority for newly re-elected Lord Mayor Sally Capp.
Ms Capp is also keen to push her pet project Greenline — a 10km linear park running through the inner city — and to keep lobbying for extension of the free tram zone.
“I plan to be getting a full and detailed briefing on key infrastructure projects next week, including Queen Victoria Market, Southbank Boulevard, Elizabeth Street and others,” she said.
“Improving our performance on delivering these projects is critical. Our community expects these projects to be continued without delay and with less disruption.”
Cutting through Town Hall bureaucracy will be a major challenge for the Lord Mayor and councillors, with the City of Melbourne consistently underspending its annual capital works budget by about $20m in recent years.
Ms Capp will appoint one of her newly-elected team members, lawyer Roshena Campbell, to ensure works are delivered efficiently and in a fiscally responsible manner.
Ms Campbell is among four councillors that got up on the Lord Mayor’s ticket, with the others Deputy Lord Mayor-elect Nicholas Reece and sitting councillor Kevin Louey.
Polling just under a third of the vote, the team had hoped to get a fifth councillor elected, but Mark McMillan, an RMIT law academic, fell short.
Despite winning a gruelling lord mayoral by-election in 2018, Ms Capp said campaigning was still new to her as she had no background in politics.
“Having so many virtual candidate nights on Zoom was a bit surreal,” she said. “It’s much harder to gauge how the voters are responding to your speech or policy points.”
Ms Capp paid tribute to the support from family and friends during the campaign, particularly her husband, Andrew Sutherland.
“Andrew had to upskill his expertise in photography and lighting because so many things such as candidate photos or Zoom meetings all had to happen inside and at home due to restrictions,” she said.
Unlike her predecessor Robert Doyle, Ms Capp won’t have a majority on council, so will have to work well with a diverse group of councillors including a CFMEU official, two Greens, Liberal and Labor Party members, and a Docklands resident with an LGBTQI background.
Ms Capp said she had met with the new councillors and was impressed. “There’s a range of different experience, from small-business owners and residents through to community health and the legal profession,” she said.
“All the councillors have expressed their understanding of the immense challenge we are facing in Melbourne.”
A former senior ALP figure, new Deputy Lord Mayor Reece is an executive at Melbourne University and the global chairman of health charity Movember.
Mr Reece said his priorities were clear.
“This is a time for all of us at Town Hall to work tirelessly with our community, local businesses and all levels of government to kickstart our economic and cultural recovery,” he said.
Mr Reece said he didn’t want to be defined solely by his Labor background, saying he had received congratulatory messages on his election from both sides of politics.
“I want to be known as a councillor who people can come to, and I will help them get things done,” he said.
“For me that means being able to work with Spring Street, but it also means being able to work with Canberra.”
The new council will be sworn in on Tuesday.
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