John So retires as Lord Mayor of Melbourne next month. He will not stand again for the office he has held these past eight years. With Council elections and the separate election of Lord Mayor the City will have a new first citizen. What then is to be said about So’s eight years in office?
He was always the achievement rather than anything he did. Popular, well-dressed and smiling, always ready to greet a visiting dignitary, talk up the city or promote some new promotional initiative, people liked him. Melburnians were pleased a Chinese immigrant community figurehead and prominent hospitality businessman should occupy the office. John So was a good image. He was not so good at politics or civic leadership. Politics involves solving problems, engaging with different groups and issues and laying down a vision for the future. Politics is work. Being a public figure means being accountable. John So was not available to discuss the city’s budget handed down last August or to enter into debate on Melbourne’s traffic and public transport problems. He was certainly let off lightly by the media. One wonders if he knew much at all about the issues involved. Many people thought he was good at promoting the city. But his way involved lots of media advisors and advertising expense because he was not actually much good at talking. But like the tongue-tied former Labor Premier, Steve Bracks, the public liked him for it and saw him as genuine.
John So’s amiable front over eight years saw the Council and the State government acquiescing in the central and inner city high-rise property boom that has done so much to transform the inner city and make a new class of builder developer capitalists rich. At the same time saddling many a baby boomer with dubious property investment debts but about which the long term benefits are still uncertain. What we do now know is that the city’s much vaunted liveability is under threat due to lack of creative city planning, increased traffic congestion and a grossly overburdened public transport system. You could hardly blame the City Council. Most of the powers to shape or direct city affairs have been taken from it. But we could have seen more innovation or even a raising of issues from a central public body that at the beginning of So’s reign in 2001 was blessed with an abundant surplus, a capable bureaucracy and the capacity to lead Greater Melbourne’s thirty-odd other municipalities forward. The Council’s showpiece, the environmentally friendly and innovative building Council House 2 is nothing more than that: a showpiece that stands in marked contrast to the legion of environmentally unfriendly structures that have sprung up in and around the city.
In the long lost golden days of the 1950s and 60s Melbourne’s Lord Mayors all seemed rich and influential city businessmen who wanted to “give something back” to the community. They were well connected to conservative politics and represented the “ big end of town” in property, retailing and finance especially. Among the best known and most effective was Sir Maurice Nathan who was Lord Mayor for two terms in 1961-63. As a councilor Nathan chaired the committee that got Melbourne ready for the 1956 Olympic Games. He argued for an international jetport at Tullamarine and the Melbourne underground railway loop (both of which we got). He cleverly defused political passions when, following a change of heart, he persuaded the Council to drop a controversial by-law banning the distribution of leaflets at the time of the anti-Vietnam war protests in the 1960s. Nathan was an energetic and talented businessman of the type that despite all the efforts successive Liberal and Labor administration have made to sweeten the path for them no longer covet the top job at Swanston Street.
John So appeared to fit the mould as a conservative self-made businessman prepared to serve the community, seemingly at his own expense. Maybe these city plutocrats lost interest when knighthoods ceased to be an automatic return for being Lord Mayor sometime in the 1960s. But the royal road to the Council robes really came unstuck in the 1970s and 80s when sordid politics entered the Council Chamber once ruled absolutely by the Civic Group. This was the behind the scenes political party that each year decided which well-heeled member’s turn it was to be Lord Mayor. Action by residents groups in the 1970s especially in wards based on North Melbourne and Carlton especially saw a new breed of councillor that challenged the civic plutocrats and Melbourne’s untrammeled developer ethos and produced the city’s first avowedly conservationist and women Lord Mayors in the 1980s. Conservative State government administrations watched on in dismay.
In one of its least impressive and last acts the Hamer Liberal government sacked the Council in 1979. It had served continuously since 1842. The Cain Labor government reinstated “democracy” in 1983 but the voters were unimpressed when ALP back room boys tried unsuccessfully to stack the Council with party hacks. The Cain Labor government introduced the Commonwealth electoral roll as the basis for voting, effectively disenfranchising many absentee property owners. Conservative property interests vowed revenge and got it when the Kennett government returned to power in 1993.The territory of the council was reduced, the Council again sacked and the electoral franchise fiddled with endlessly to make the MCC safe for business and absentee property owning interests. Council assets were sold off and its departments down-sized. Whole functions were contracted out.
Inner city residential areas like North Carlton (where the streets are named after former city councilors) were hived off to other municipalities like the City of Yarra. Those of the emerging Docklands area were denied a vote altogether, until this election. The expensive and cumbersome system of postal voting was introduced along with a Senate-like field of candidates (but areduced number of councilors) across the entire council area. Wards were done away with progressively making it impossible for resident activist councilors to get elected on a cheap campaign. The Labor Party when it gained office in 1999 kept the changes and introduced the separate election of Lord Mayor. Formerly, the Lord Mayor was chosen by the Council. Governing by a slender margin from 1999 Labor wanted as few opponents as possible and was happy to go along with the conservative agenda on inner-city politics. The job of the Council in new-think corporate governance of the 1990s was defined as “steering not rowing”.
Only slowly have residents like some in North Melbourne and Flemington been brought back into the voting fold. They may make a difference at this election along with increased numbers of residents in central city apartments, if they vote. Commuters who spend most of their working lives in the CBD and care about it but live in the suburbs are denied a vote. Yet even as the State Government gutted the MCC and rendered it ineffective with the perpetual threat of dismissal now and again it made waves. Greens and maverick conservative councilors were not happy with John So blowing the City’s $300 million plus budget on junkets, self-promotion and development projects of dubious worth to the ratepayers like the new business serving World Trade Centre.
But John So remained popular with Spring Street. Importantly, he never questioned State Government policy (or the lack of it in urban affairs) or raised disturbing issues for the citizens. Yet he infuriated Council colleagues with his non-attendance at committees and lackof interest in administration and urban affairs. The development of new planning policies and a vision for Melbourne was something for others.
Maybe that’s what the citizens and certainly the government wanted. Local Labor Federal member Lindsay Tanner and State member Bronwyn Pike are on record at the time of the last elections in 2004 as saying the Council it must be doing a good job if you don’t hear much about it. But with metropolitan planning and transport emerging as battleground issues for the forthcoming State election in 2010 the MCC elections could be a test of influence for the Green opposition, even given the extent to which the cards are stacked against them with the electoral system and the franchise.
With candidates still weighing their options and preference deals the focus is still on John So. If he leaves any legacy or example it is perhaps one of smiling inactivity and spin as issues of conservation, environmental challenge, financial accountability and public amenity that would have hit the headlines in previous years were swept under the carpet or simply aside. In the coming weeks Melburnians may consider whether the Lord Mayor’s position is just a ribbon cutting role? Or, does the incumbent need to have something to say about the future of our city, about public transport, about the arts and heritage, about the environment and planning for the future and the health and well-being of the city? Perhaps in the coming weeks we shall hear something from the candidates. Perhaps we will discover whether we are entering into a new post-John So era for the City Council with an articulate and engaged Lord Mayor or whether it is business as usual.
©David Dunstan