2015 Kemsley Oration at the PIA

[KULIN NATION ACKNOWLEDGMENT]

It is a great honour to be invited to deliver this year's Kemsley Oration.

Rupert Hamer delivered the first in 1981 and, like our Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, I very much identify with that sensible, moderate progressive Hamer Liberal view of the world.

I grew up and still live in Templestowe, near the Yarra. It was Rupert Hamer who intervened in 1973, a year after he became Premier, to buy a large dairy farm owned by the Smith Family on Fitzsimons Lane to create what is now the magnificent sprawling Westerfolds Park, where we had dog obedience training yesterday. The alternative policy proposal at the time was a large Jennings residential sub-division, on the banks of the Yarra.

Manningham, like the City of Melbourne, is blessed with a very high proportion of public open space – almost 25% if you include all levels of government which is a world record, according to some locals.

However, it also happens to be the only one of Melbourne's 30 councils not serviced by either a tram or a train. Consequently, it has the highest level of per household car ownership of any council area in Australia at 2.2 cars per house.

In 1990, aged 21, I left Manningham and started renting in East Melbourne. Four years later I bought off the plan one of those Becton apartments in the Jolimont Railyards – part of the inspired Post-code 3000 strategy.

In 2004, our growing family couldn't afford to stay in the inner-city with 3 children and we went back to Templestowe, where, for my sins, I subsequently spent more than three years on Manningham council from 2009 until 2012.

At Property Council events, I would only half jokingly claim to be the most pro-development Councillor on Melbourne's most pro-development council. This was based on strong support for the existing Doncaster Hill structure plan, one of Melbourne's best suburban examples of pro-active densification around an activity centre.

We even voted to hand over planning power on Doncaster Hill to a state-sponsored Development Assessment Committee (DAC) with no elected reps on it – but Matthew Guy then became planning minister and Melbourne's first DAC was promptly dropped. That's one of the problems with planning: the rules of the game are always changing.

The deal in Manningham was clear: you can keep Melbourne's first green wedge, your 5000-plus acres lots, 1400 private tennis courts and thousands of unsewered housing allotments, provided you deliver your share of Melbourne's population growth around activity centres like Doncaster Hill.

The only problem with putting thousands of apartments on Doncaster Hill, anchored around the 15 million annual visitors to Westfield Doncaster, is that if it is built out as planned, the result will be complete traffic grid-lock. Unless, of course, Doncaster Rail is delivered, which it should be once we've got the extra inner city capacity from Metro Rail.

In 2012, I made the switch from Manningham to City of Melbourne and have spent the past 3 years as chairs of the Finance and Governance committee and deputy chair of the Planning Committee. Last Tuesday a deputies switch was made out of Planning and into Transport, so tonight is somewhat of a planning swansong.

Like 99% of elected councillors, I'm completely unqualified to pontificate on planning matters, the one quasi-judicial role that elected councillors play. You wouldn't appoint judges who don't have a law degree, but that's how we democratically run planning in Victoria and most of Australia.

My response to this is to support the officer recommendation on the vast majority of occasions. Officers are planning professionals and, from my experience over 6 years across two councils, they overwhelmingly get it right,

One learning from this past 3 years on City of Melbourne is that we are going to have a much rigorous planning induction program for new councillors in 2016-17, so that not all of the skills required are literally learnt on the job.

We made a few governance reforms on planning at City of Melbourne which are worth briefly sharing with you.

After The Age ran an interesting but arguably excessive 7 front page stories about Robert Doyle and developer donations during the 2012 council election campaign, we all unanimously agreed to amend our code of conduct to ban Councillors from meeting developers to discuss an application, unless there is a planning officer present. A good reform designed to maintain public confidence in the system.

The list of donors were fully disclosed and all Councillors have scrupulously declared conflicts and avoided voting on planning applications by their donors. We even keep an online register of these conflict declarations and, perversely, these conflicts have made it easier for some of us to jack up developer contributions. But we're still way behind Sydney. City of Melbourne has taken about $50 million in cash developer contributions since 1988 whereas City of Sydney makes that much in 6 months. We are definitely the low-tax capital city!

The Lord Mayor, to his credit, has committed to publically disclosing his donors before the 2016 election but in my opinion it would be better if his team consciously avoided donations from known developers in the City of Melbourne.

I don't support criminalizing developer donations as NSW has done, but Australia's entire political system needs root and branch campaign finance reform and developer donations to those with influence over land use matters remains the number one high-risk area.

Victoria manages that risk by having councillors vote in public – where it is harder to roll officers - a strong conflicts declaration regime and then sturdy appeal rights to VCAT, where highly qualified judge-like members will quickly over-rule a bad decision made by any majority of councillors who'd been “got at” by an applicant.

Speaking of rolling officers, when I was first elected to Melbourne in late 2012, then Planning Minister Matthew Guy was routinely ignoring the advice of our planning officers on applications above 25,000 square metres where he was the responsible authority.

This all came to a head over two matters in early 2013. Firstly, in one of our informal fortnightly catch-ups with a senior officer from Mr Guy's department, the state bureaucrat briefed us on the Australia 108 proposal for Southbank Boulevarde.

I'm generally pro-development but was shocked that in a 130m zone the all powerful Minister was about to approve a 388m skyscraper with little public debate. The bureaucrat was invited to brief all councillors privately and disclosed that approval for this $1 billion-plus proposal to build the tallest building in the southern hemisphere was imminent and didn't even have to go to Cabinet.

Around the same time, a positive story appeared in the Herald Sun about another sky-scraper proposed in Southbank.

On the same morning, am email came through from a former state Liberal politician offering to brief the Lord Mayor, myself and planning chair Ken Ong about the proposal. All of us had Liberal Party pedigree and there was no suggestion of briefing the officers.

Later that day I asked the officers at our regular planning portfolio position what they thought of the proposal and they mentioned numerous concerns. But who would ever know about them?

The swift response to this developer-Liberal-tabloid driven approach was to empower officers. A notice of motion on March 26 2013 commissioned the online release of a full back catalogue of City of Melbourne delegate reports on major Ministerial decisions (ie above 25,000sqm) since 2008, plus, more importantly, an automatic call in to our regular public planning committee of all future Ministerial applications hence forth.

In other words, previously un-released City of Melbourne positions were released and from April 2013 onwards, we started pretending we were the responsible authority with public debate, submissions and the like.

This move lead to a greater adherence to our advice by Matthew Guy, particularly as the state election approached, but there remained one missing piece in the puzzle.

If Council's advice was now public, why not the delegate reports written by departmental officers sitting in Shell House?

We passed a motion calling for this and, lo and behold, Matthew Guy agreed to do it in late 2014 – partly, I suspect, because he knew this move would avoid a certain serial candidate running against him in the safe seat of Bulleen as he transitioned down from the Upper House.

It wasn't easy taking on the all powerful Planning Minister as he let rip with approvals for some very large and quite ordinary towers during his 4 year reign, so at this point I would also like to acknowledge the great work by City of Melbourne's soon to be departing but still fabulous Leanne Hodyl in her Churchill fellowship.

I agree very much with Leann's executive summary, and I quote:

High-rise apartment towers are being built in central Melbourne at four times the maximum densities allowed in Hong Kong, New York and Tokyo – some of the highest density cities in the world.

This is possible because the policies used to regulate decision-making for high-rise developments in central Melbourne are weak, ineffective or non-existent. This enables the approval of tower developments that are very tall and that squeeze out the space between buildings, with little regard on the effect on the residents within, the impact on the streets below or on the value of neighbouring properties.

We have highly competent developers and design and planning professionals in Melbourne. It is the lack of effective policies that is letting Melbourne down. The evidence from these cities is clear. Melbourne would benefit from the introduction of policies that:

• Establish appropriate density controls in central Melbourne;

• Establish density bonuses to link development to public benefit and incentivise the delivery of new open spaces, affordable housing and other community facilities;

• Establish an enforceable tower separation rule;

• Establish apartment standards.

The new planning Minister Dick Wynne is going well so far, but the proof of the pudding will be the built form controls after the current C262 review is completed.

City of Melbourne had the fastest percentage population growth of any Australian council in 2014 – 11.5% for the year. Courtesy of Matthew Guy, a decade of 2000 new dwellings per year on average was suddenly tracking at 6000 new apartments per year and we've got 15 years worth of permitted supply.

Don't listen to the usual suspects like Ellenberg Fraser or Brady Group if they start talking about economic slowdowns. The boom remains afoot – look no further than the State Treasury's mid-year budget update released on Friday, showing stamp duty is now expected to soar by 10% in 2015-16 to a record $5.4 billion.

Combined with the $1.7 billion in land tax and the $600 million Fire Services Levy, the State Government is taking almost double what councils are collecting from property taxes. And we're the ones that need rate-capping, apparently! Incidentally, City of Melbourne has cut its rate in the dollar from 12c in the mid-1990s to less than 5c now, so we've handed back most of the potential bracket creep revenue from rising property prices.

After 26 years in journalism, shareholder activism, transparency advocacy and local government, I'm no planning expert but have a simple philosophy about what makes any institution or system work. Planning cities is no different.

Firstly, you need, intelligent, educated, inspiring, honest and brave leaders.

Secondly, you need a well designed system that supports those leaders and gives them the right incentives to succeed.

Thirdly, you need great information about the performance of the leaders and the performance of the system.

Finally, based on accurate and timely information, you need to be able to change both the leaders and the system if the facts warrant it.

A non-violent change of government in a democracy is the best example of that ability to systemically deliver leadership change where necessary.

During last year's Kemsley oration, Elizabeth Proust took aim at our excessive three tiers of government and the system of having 30 different councils in metropolitan Melbourne. She preferred the Greater Brisbane model of a single council.

I agree that a New Zealand-style 2-tier system would be preferable, which is what operates in the ACT which has no local councils.

The Australian states are too big but we're stuck with those historical boundaries.

NSW is belatedly moving on council reform and will probably finish up with the magical number of 100 councils state-wide and about 12 in Sydney.

12 would be a sensible number for Melbourne as well. It is bizarre that Tiger Woods could hit a driver from the steps of Parliament House into the City of Yarra, which starts on the corner of Nicholson St and Victoria Parade, just beyond the ICI building.

Similarly, why on earth is St Kilda Rd beyond Dorcas Street, City of Port Phillip on the western side and City of Melbourne on the East? It should be one singularly governed iconic Melbourne Boulevarde.

Victoria, in spite of moves in Melbourne and Geelong, is behind every other state which has moved further on the question of attracting quality and respected local leadership through directly elected mayors. We must do this across the board.

I'm often struck by how knowledgeable council officers are but how few council officers ever bother to run for council. Why would you bother? The Minister approved the usual 2.5% annual pay rise last week, but your average Victoria councillor is still struggling along on less than $30,000 a year, invoking the old peanuts and monkeys analogy. Maybe we should negotiate like the fire fighters rather the meekly waiting to get the pay memo.

The biggest skill-set we lack is people with a business background. It is such a shame that your typical professional director doesn't view local government as a creditable positon in any good portfolio of board seats, which should comprise a not-for-profit, two public companies and one council.

Looking more broadly, we also have very few qualified planners or architects in senior political positions. Instead, we have too many unionists, lawyers and journalists making it to high office.

One of the reasons City of Melbourne has done so well in planning in recent decades has been the longevity of leadership provided by Prof Rob Adams, a genuine world figure in city planning.

Rob's record speaks for itself but one of the keys to his success has been the way he combines excellent corporate memory with great technical knowledge, inspiring communications skills and effective internal politics. We don't call him the 12^th councillor for nothing and it has worked well for Melbourne having Rob as chair of the capital works committee.

As chair of the Finance Committee, I'm continuing to advocate for more transparency and long term planning around our capital works program and a stronger centralized finance function. But I'm more than happy to concede that Rob's “score board” as head of a delivery agency who also gets to lead the capital allocation decisions has delivered great results for the city.

City of Melbourne wouldn't have such beautiful bluestone footpaths if Rob, with the support of dozens of councillors of all political colours, didn't allocate tens of millions of rate revenue to this program over the past 30 years.

We obviously also owe a great debt of thanks to Robert Hoddle, for our wonderful wide streets and Charles Latrobe for that original network of inner city parks.

The planning leadership in Melbourne has generally been very good for 180 years. For instance, the 1850s mining boom wasn't squandered like the most recent one. The proceeds of the gold rush were used to build one of the world's great Victorian architecture cities.

Similarly, it was inspired to support education through the world first initiative in the 1870s of mandating that schools would be secular, compulsory and free – and then making a capital allocation to build 600 schools in 5 years.

As you know, Melbourne was this year named world's most liveable city for the 5^th consecutive year. A great accolade and recognition of the many people and organisations who have worked so hard to build and shape our city of the years.

Tonight I'd like to also dwell briefly on Melbourne's success.

Melbourne has great vitality. It houses a successful city community which attracts energy innovation and creativity into our city.

When thinking about the life or out cities, we ask:

· WHY DO PEOPLE CHOOSE TO LIVE IN OUR CITY?

· WHY DO THEY ENJOY WORKING IN OUR CITY?

· WHY DO THEY VISIT OUR CITY?

If we get the “why” right in our policies and decisions – we get a vibrant city.

Let's consider that last question: why would people want to visit our city?

Once tourists only visited cities because they wanted to see 'old buildings', history, antiquity.

Paris changed all that in the 17^th century when it was the first city to celebrate not what was, but what is: it celebrated the present and the future, not the past.

In the 17th century, people were wandering around Paris with guidebooks showing them where they could get the best coffee, the best win, the best brioche, the latest fashion, see the newest architecture and where to find the best caterer for that special event.

In other words, Paris told visitors what there was to do and enjoy and experience in their city. That is vibrancy – focusing on cities being for people.

Our approach in Melbourne with postcode 3000 was also inspired.

In 1978, architectural commentator Norman Day described Melbourne as "an empty, useless city centre" on the front page of The Age newspaper (And Rob Adams has been using this for his campaigns to improve the city ever since.)

Postcode 3000 was partly a response to Paul Keating's recession we had to have when Victoria was really struggling after the loss of the State Bank. It was a deliberate campaign to bring people and economic activity back into the city centre.

When we started postcode 3000 there were 600 dwellings in the central city, the CBD. Today, it's 28,000.

We created an inner city community for people rather than a mono-functional business centre. Today we even have the Property Council talking about the need for precincts to be “commercial only”, such is the preponderance of residential, cultural and culinary activity in our 24-hour city.

We do need to be careful not to tax business away from the city – land tax and the fire services levy are heavily weighted against commercial landowners, whereas residential remains relatively tax free, especially when you consider stamp duty exemptions for off the plan purchases. Industrial properties pay 13 times what residents pay for the fire services levy and with commercial users it is 8 times. Contrast that with City of Melbourne rates which are only 17% higher for commercial, not 800%.

Today's Melbourne CBD has:

- THE HIGHEST RATIO OF STREET FURNITURE IN THE WORLD;

- A DIVERSITY OF RESTAURANTS AND CAFES: THEY HAVE GROWN FROM 600 IN 1978 TO MORE THAN 2000 TODAY; and

- SWANSTON ST, OUR CIVIC SPINE, HAS MORE PEDESTRIANS PER DAY THAN REGENT ST IN LONDON, AS WELL AS BEING THE BUSIEST TRAM ROUTE IN THE WORLD.

- MELBOURNE IS A CITY OF 4.4 MILLION. ON A BUSY DAY 1 MILLION PEOPLE USE THE CBD: WORKERS, RESIDENTS AND VISITORS.

- SIDE BY SIDE WITH POSTCODE 3000, WE CREATED A FIRST CLASS PUBLIC REALM FOR MELBOURNE'S PEOPLE, AND OUR VISITORS.

- WE TURNED THE MOST MALIGNED PUBLIC SPACE IN MELBOURNE, OUR CITY SQUARE, INTO THE CITY'S MOST VIBRANT SPACE BY REDESIGNING AND ACTIVATING IT: WE MADE IT ATTRACTIVE TO VISIT, TO LINGER, TO ENJOY.

- DEVELOPED A NETWORK OF SMALL STREETS: LANEWAYS OF ATMOSPHERIC GALLERIES AND QUIRKY RETAIL FILLED WITH ART AND CAFES.

- AND WE CREATED A PEDESTRIAN NETWORK TO MAKE IT EASY TO GET IN, THROUGH AND AROUND THE CITY. WE WIDENED FOOTPATHS TO 8 METERS AND CONVERTED 84ha FROM ASPHALT INTO FOOTPATHS OR GREEN PUBLIC OPEN SPACE. WE PAVED OUR STREETS IN BLUESTONE AND MADE IT EASY TO SET UP TABLES AND CHAIRS ON THE FOOTPATH AND EASY AND CHEAP FOR RESTAURANTS AND BARS TO DO SO.

- AS BUILDINGS WERE BEING REBUILT OR RENOVATED IN THE CITY, WE REQUIRED ACTIVE STREET FRONTAGES. We created the world leading urban forest which New York has adopted as a policy only this month.

- WE INVESTED IN JOINT VENTURE PARTNERSHIPS TO ATTRACT WORLD CLASS EVENTS AND CREATED LIVE SITES TO SUPPORT THEM THROUGHOUT THE CITY. NOT EVERYONE CAN BE AT CENTRE COURT FOR THE AUSTRALIAN OPEN: BUT THE WHOLE CITY CAN FOLLOW IT ON BIG SCREENS IN PUBLIC SPACES.

In short, we created a new city life, the essence of which is the vitality of the street and public places. And weren't we lucky with Robert Hoddle's original vision to have 30 metres between buildings, as opposed to the 20 metres we see in Sydney. That decision, more than any other, allows Melbourne to have the world's biggest tram network, running fully 500km or 250km each way.

In a relatively short space of time and at modest cost, we went from a fleeting city to one where you are invited to stop and linger. Today you can measure the "health" of the city by the dance of its streets, laneways and parks.


The other key ingredient to Melbourne's success lies in our people. They demanded the transformation of the city centre and we responded with a purposeful, clear strategy and vision that we have stuck to for 25 years.

One of our great success stories has been out night time economy, which has been diversified with more events and festivals, longer opening hours for key institutions and great infrastructure courtesy of legacy theatres like The Regent being restored and new additions such as the Melbourne Recital Centre.

The aim was to bring a broader demographic into the city at night by broadening the city's artistic offer. On top of that. we have a retail and hospitality strategy. It means we have a clear direction and shared vision for supporting these sectors.


We have seen extraordinary growth in footfall in our retail core in the last years with the fastest growth coming on the weekends:

The Bourke St mall is up 7% on weekdays and 21% on weekends. Melbourne Central and the State Library combined are up 11% on weekdays and 24% on weekends.

In a nutshell, we now have a pedestrian economy. We know that 86% of all trips in the CBD are on foot. That's not only good for health and wellbeing, it has a huge economic uplift too as visitors linger, wonder, explore and spend.

Aligned with this is a focus on safety. Council's CCTV numbers have tripled over the past 7 years, we have safe city taxi ranks, work closely with organizations such as Victoria Police and the Salvation Army as we take a full spectrum approach.

The outcome: our night time economy is booming. It is worth $2.6 billion within the city, growing by 8% per year over the past 5 years. Interestingly out food lead businesses have enjoyed strong growth, but alcohol sales are down 11% over the past 5 years as this diversification has brought a different demographic into the city.


And with alcohol sales down, overall crime in the city is also down by 12% over the past two years. This is turn has boosted the reputation of our city which helps bring more visitors and international students. Importantly, 42% of our residents are students as Melbourne emerges as one of the world's great university towns. The University of Melbourne anticipates hosting 20,000 international students at its Parkville campus by 2020, the most of any single campus in the world. As industries like car manufacturing close, new opportunities emerge in service sectors like Education.

Melbourne is blessed with a central, core city that brings together commerce, education, health, sport, cultural and residential areas, all of which can be accessed by foot, by bike, in cars or public transport. It is characterised by vibrancy - brimming with people and great public and private spaces that support our social, cultural, sporting and economic life.

- VIBRANT CITIES ARE GREAT CITIES. AND I HAVE LEARNED ONE SIMPLE DICTUM FROM PROF ROB ADAMS ABOUT THE ANSWER TO THAT BURNING QUESTION: WHAT MAKES A GREAT, VIBRANT CITY?

- THE ANSWER IS: CREATE GREAT STREETS, INVEST IN THE PUBLIC REALM, WORK WITH KEY INDUSTRY SECTORS ….AND ALL THE REST WILL FOLLOW. GREAT STREETS MAKE GREAT CITIES.

However, it is also true that wider Melbourne's streets are now too clogged with traffic. The single most important policy change to preserve Melbourne's famed liveability is reduced car use.

And with close to 500ha of urban renewal land available across Fisherman's Bend, Arden Macauley, Docklands and Egate, we should be able to keep accommodating 100,000 extra people a year without further expensive and anti-social urban sprawl.

However, this will require substantial public transport infrastructure investment, plus social change with modal switching to bikes – which is up from 6% to 18% of trips into the city over the past 7 years – along with greater use of car share, plus demand pricing on cars using the roads.

But that's a whole new topic again and I'm already well over time. Thanks gain to the PIA for the honour of presenting the Kemsley Oration and, time permitting, I'm happy to answer any questions you'd like to pose.

Copyright © 2024 The Mayne Report. All rights reserved

• share
  Share
  • 
    Facebook
  • 
    Twitter
  • email
    Email
  • print
    Print
  • link
    Copy Link
  • cancel
    Cancel