Nick Reece promised plenty to be lord mayor in his own right. Now he needs to deliver

Nick Reece offered Melbourne voters a familiar face and name, and the promise of a safe pair of hands.

Now, he will have four years to prove he can back that up – or expose it as a facade.

Lord Mayor Nick Reece at Drill Hall for the final computer count for the City of Melbourne elections on Thursday.Credit: Eddie Jim

The former deputy lord mayor – who took over the top job when Sally Capp stepped down in June – has retained the keys to Town Hall, elected in his own right.

Reece took full advantage of incumbency, using it to get his name and face in front of voters.

He offered continuity and experience, pledging to keep going with many of Capp’s policies, such as the Greenline linear park alongside the Yarra and the fulfilment of the city’s bike lane program – with some tweaks.

Reece also endeavoured to run a positive campaign full of new policy ideas, promising to “be a big target”.

Some of his policy announcements were welcomed: a rate freeze for one year to address cost-of-living pressures; a four-year hold on increases in fees for street parking.

Not so others, including his pledge to sell the City of Melbourne’s share of the Regent Theatre and to deploy his own uniformed pseudo police force of “city safety” officers – complete with Kevlar vests and body cams – throughout the CBD.

There must be some hesitancy about him carrying through on the plan to sell the Regent, given the staunch opposition from the arts community and the theatre’s operator, the Marriner Group. There has also been deafening silence from the state government, which owns the remainder of the theatre.

Reece’s campaign pledges – like those of all candidates – also strayed into areas lord mayors have no control over, such as extending the free tram zone and even reforming fringe benefit tax.

“You’ll never hear me say, ‘I don’t hold a hose,’” Reece said in defence of his overly ambitious expansion of lord mayoral remit.

How much these campaign missteps reflected in the election results is hard to say, but he did perform poorly at the ballot box compared with his recent predecessors.

Reece snared just 24.35 per cent of first preference votes from group A ballots and had to rely heavily on preferences to get him across the line ahead of Greens candidate Roxane Ingleton.

At the 2020 election, Capp got 31.6 per cent of first preferences. In 2016, Robert Doyle picked up 44.2 per cent.

Reece spent big on the election – though just how big we won’t find out until next month. Candidates aren’t required to disclose their campaign donations until 40 days after the polls close.

We know he engaged Daniel Andrews’ former top advisers at FMRS – Lissie Ratcliff, Jessie McCrone, Ben Foster and Adam Sims.

However, the “formers” campaign machine at times floundered in the lord mayoral election without the ex-Labor premier’s particular brand of electoral Teflon.

Reece is a long-time Labor member and previously worked as an adviser to both Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.

But for his lord mayoral campaign, he worked to distance himself from the party.

He ran as an independent and chose Liberal Roshena Campbell as his running mate for deputy mayor – a bid to appeal to voters from both sides of politics.

When it came to allocating preferences, Reece was quick to send his where it would be most politically beneficial – not Labor.

He was also given the all-important tick of approval from the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry – a crucial endorsement given eligible businesses in the City of Melbourne get two votes while residents get one.

And while the election campaign was at times uninspiring, it at least highlighted some of the issues facing Melbourne’s city centre – particularly concerns about housing, safety and the cost of living.

What remains to be seen now is whether Reece can deliver on the many promises he made to secure the role he coveted.

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