A mayor on a mission nominates crime crackdown as biggest achievement of his first year

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Over lunch at Marmelo, Lord Mayor Nick Reece weighs in on Zohran Mamdani’s historic win to become mayor of New York.

“I think it was very exciting,” Reece says. “I think he ran an incredible campaign, certainly in terms of his social media campaign, I think it’s the best campaign I’ve ever seen.”

I feel like Reece is missing the point.

I want to know whether Mamdani’s policies on universal childcare, rent freezes and free buses have resonated with Reece, a Labor Party member who is proud of his progressive background but who ran as an independent with a Liberal deputy in his election to Town Hall last year.

Lord Mayor Nick Reece weighs up his first year in office over lunch at Marmelo.

“What about his agenda?” I ask.

“I will be watching with great interest,” Reece says, moving on to his own agenda. “I went to the people of Melbourne with a very big and inspiring agenda. I’m in the reform game. I’m not here for the title and the chains. I’m here because I want to make a difference, and I’m a mayor on a mission.”

It’s one year since Reece was elected as lord mayor and to mark the occasion we are having lunch at Marmelo, a hatted restaurant in this year’s Good Food Guide and one of the finalists for best new restaurant.

The hotel is located in the ground floor of luxury hotel Hyde Melbourne Place and the dining room with its large glass windows looks out onto a graffiti-covered laneway filled with wheelie bins.

You couldn’t get much more Melbourne.

Reece has been to Marmelo before and is enthusiastic about the menu. We start with the anchovies, two single salty slivers doused in oil and laid across the plate, which are delicious in their simplicity.

“Those anchovies are next level,” Reece says.

It’s the first of many superlatives he uses to describe our meal, that include ‘delicious’, ‘absolutely sublime’ and ‘a culinary revelation’.

It’s typical of Reece, at times he is so enthusiastic it’s almost infectious.

His enthusiasm is a quality he brings to his work as lord mayor, a role he describes as “the greatest honour of my life” and one where he deploys his expertise in networking and lobbying.

We both order a glass of chardonnay and Reece tells me about moving to Australia as a child from the United Kingdom and growing up in a “churchy” family with a strong emphasis on community service.

His dad still volunteers at St Vincent de Paul and regularly calls him to take his son to task on various policies.

Reece is married to Felicity Pantelidis, the deputy chief executive of Labor law firm Maurice Blackburn, and started his career there as a lawyer before becoming an adviser to then-prime minister Julia Gillard and more recently a public policy fellow at the University of Melbourne.

I ask Reece what his major achievements have been in his first year as mayor and he nominates cracking down on crime and safety in the city.

“There still are people who are surprised I went so hard on that,” he says. “I also have a very strong view that a great city begins with being a safe city, and there’s no getting around what the crime data was telling us and what I was hearing out there in the community as well. It’s not only about being a safe city, it’s that people feel safe as well.”

Reece points to the 11 council security guards who now patrol Melbourne’s streets and his push to double the number of CCTV cameras in the city.

Crime and safety have dominated the agenda at the City of Melbourne’s council meetings and at a recent meeting, the council heard from dozens of people experiencing homelessness along with community legal services about how vulnerable people are targeted by the security guards and moved on.

Celeraic Portuguese tarts topped with spanner crab.

Reece has personal experience of homelessness and addiction in his own family after his brother-in-law, Evan, was badly injured in a bike accident, and through the pain management became a heroin addict.

“We were all close and lived through the downward spiral,” Reece says. “It caused a lot of heartache and a lot of pain in our family.”

Reece says the experience has stayed with him and shapes how he approaches issues like safe-injecting rooms, homelessness and street support services.

He voted against the majority of his fellow councillors recently in backing a safe-injecting room in the CBD.

“I am a strong supporter of active outreach, of saying, ‘I’m sorry you can’t stay there, that’s not good for you, it’s not good for the city, you need support’,” he says.

Reece approves of the Allan government’s move to try children as young as 14 as adults if they are accused of violent crime.

Skewers of garfish at Marmelo are doused in vinho verde vinegar.

“I certainly welcome the direction that they have taken, and I do think the underlying principle that there needs to be consequences for violent and illegal behaviour is a very important one.”

I point to my own children and Reece’s three teenagers and ask whether he thinks a 14-year-old’s brain is fully developed and they should cop the adult consequences of jail.

“Well if your kid was pulling out a machete and walking through a shopping centre threatening people, then yes,” Reece says.

Reece says all levels of government have a role to play in safety.

“As mayor I was certainly ahead of the curve on this issue,” he says. “And now you see the state government taking action as well.”

We are now juggling a trio of small plates on our table: large chunks of house made bread, curls of silvery garfish neatly skewered and a savoury take on Portuguese tarts. Made with celeriac and topped with picked spanner crab, it’s an unexpected flavour combination that really works.

“I would have never ever have come up with that in my wildest dreams,” Reece says approvingly as he takes a bite.

I ask Reece how his relationship is going with the Allan government given that the Liberal-dominated City of Melbourne council has given the government a bit of a kicking.

In recent weeks, the council has opposed Allan’s congestion charge and work-from-home policy, and last year Reece pulled hire scooters off the CBD’s streets.

“I think Jacinta Allan is a good person, a very good person, and I get on really well with her,” he says. “We’ve got a great professional working relationship. I wish her and her government all the best because if Victoria’s government is doing well, then Victoria is doing well.”

Although his background is with labor, Reece says his decision-making is based on what is best for Melbourne.

“I mean the mayor of Melbourne, voting for working from home is like a turkey voting for Christmas,” he laughs. “Christmas ain’t a great time of year for turkeys.”

Otway pork with rhubarb and burnt orange at Marmelo.

Turkey is not on the menu for us at Marmelo, but the Otway pork is cooked until it is blushing pink and teamed with stalks of tart rhubarb.

We eat cabbage cooked with a smoky char and rice in a rich tomato broth.

Over our main courses I pull out a list in my notebook of Reece’s extensive election commitments and put each one to him giving a tick or a cross depending on whether there has been any progress.

He is good-natured about this impromptu assessment and there is some debate with Reece peering over my shoulder to try to convince me that some of his promises should be given a tick when I have marked them with a cross or a dash to denote partial delivery.

One of his key election promises was to freeze rates and on-street parking fees, which I’ve marked with a dash as Reece raised the rates and gave ratepayers the cash back, meaning it’s not technically a rates freeze as next year the council could hike rates further.

“It was a rates rebate which was an effective freeze,” Reece says pointing at my notebook. “So tick and tick there.”

“We beg to differ,” I reply.

“You’re not going to get negative and technical on me,” Reece says.

It seems I already have as Reece complains The Age has been “very unfair” in coverage of some of his election promises, including reporting a “backflip” on his promise of 50,000 free swimming lessons, a number Reece says was just an estimate by him.

“The election promise was free swimming lessons for any Melburnian who wanted it,” he says. “And that’s what we have delivered. That’s the key point. And we did 2000 in the first year. We’re going to do 3000 this year.”

Of the 24 promises Reece made in his election campaign, by my calculations he has delivered on two in his first year, partially delivered eight, abandoned one and has not made any progress on 13.

Reece’s calculations are, of course, quite different.

Receipt from lunch at Marmelo with Lord Mayor Nick Reece.

However, he does seem frustrated at times by a council which on some days appears to be almost in open revolt against him.

We pass on dessert and order coffees instead: a long macchiato for Reece and a latte for me.

“It’s an interesting council,” he offers. “I really enjoy this council group. I think they’re a really good bunch of people. They’re very passionate about Melbourne, and while we have diverse political views, I do think we work well together as a group.”

Much as he may not like The Age’s tally of his election promises, Reece says he wants to be judged on what he delivers for Melbourne.

“I’m in the reform game, I’m here to make a difference,” he says.

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