‘Turn up’: Melbourne Lord Mayor urges state government to make workers come back to the office full time
Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece has called on the state government to follow his council’s lead and bring their staff back into the office full time.
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Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece has called on the state government to follow his council’s lead and bring their staff back into the office full time.
Mr Reece has also urged Victoria to do more to embrace foreign investment, particularly in the City of Melbourne, and reaffirmed pre-election pledges to pursue a Little India segment of Melbourne’s CBD or Docklands area.
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Speaking at the Wingate JLL Annual Private Lunch Event, the Lord Mayor was part of a panel on Reviving Victoria and said he believed it was time for the state government to follow the state’s most powerful municipality in ordering white collar workers back to the office.”
If you are a police officer, you have to turn up to your workplace, and I think it should be the same for public servants as well,” Mr Reece said.
His comments followed statements from prominent chef and developer Chris Lucas noting that Melbourne had become a night time economy in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Asked to reaffirm how he would bring life back to Melbourne’s CBD, Mr Reece said he would continue lobbying for barriers to be removed from foreign investment in the CBD – which he has previously indicated he believes should have its own special economic zone to help foster economic benefits for the wider state.
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The Lord Mayor said Melbourne had been “built on foreign capital”, starting with the British and European nations, with more recent years seeing high spending from nations including Singapore, Malaysia and India.
“We should be welcoming it and not putting barriers in front of it,” Mr Reece said.
The panel also featured Urbis director Jane Kelly and was chaired by JLL’s Josh Rutman, with approximately 400 real estate professionals and development bosses in the room, including the likes of Tim Gurner.
Flight Centre co-founder Geoff Harris was also a keynote speaker at the event.
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