Dismay over council’s e-scooter backflip

Last month council made the surprise decision to cancel the contracts of the two e-scooter operators, Neuron and Lime.

It also took Southbank Residents’ Association (SRA) by surprise. In fact, we felt we were blindsided.

As usual, the council releases the agenda for the upcoming Future Melbourne Committee meeting (where such items are considered) the Thursday prior. 

In that agenda there was an item on the e-scooter trial where the council officers were making further suggestions on potential improvements to the trial within the City of Melbourne. 

There was no suggestion there was consideration to cancel the trial. As such, SRA made its submission to this agenda item based on the considerations being suggested by the council officers.

There were in excess of 600 items of correspondence received by the council on this issue. It showed how important shared e-scooters are to the community, whether you love them or loathe them.

When the item came to being considered by councillors, Lord Mayor Nick Reece moved an alternative motion to cancel the trial for the two operators. Sadly, we learnt of this likely alternative motion through a leak to the media the day prior to the meeting. 

In my 10-plus years of attending council meetings, I have never seen a media leak of this magnitude and significance. A troubling sign which the Lord Mayor needs to reign in.

This motion was passed with six councillors voting in favour, and four against.

The arguments put forward by Cr Rohan Leppert in objecting to the alternative motion were, in our opinion, sound. We believe the motion should never have been moved as the community wasn’t consulted on whether a ban was being considered.

Only the week prior to this meeting, the presidents of residents’ groups met with the Lord Mayor and suggested a deliberative democratic process, i.e. engage the people by way of a people’s panel, citizens jury or something similar, to review the e-scooter trial and decide if the trial should continue. SRA was certainly a supporter of this idea. 

While e-scooters have been a hot issue for the city, both public and privately-owned, the operators in the trial have come a long way with their management of the scooters with continual improvements over that time.

 We feel to prematurely cancel the trial in the city was unfair to the operators, especially for it to come from left field as it did. They too were taken by surprise – it was procedurally unfair. 

During the debate there was no discussion on how to address the same problems being highlighted by public e-scooters, which were the underlying reasons for the trial cancellation, for the privately-owned e-scooters.

Whether you are for or against e-scooters, such undemocratic processes in our council need to be called out. This council has a strong record of democracy and community engagement of which SRA actively partakes in frequently. 

At the start of the meeting the Lord Mayor highlighted the importance of our democratic process when advising that in excess of 600 submissions had been received regarding this item. 

This was not a good reflection on the Lord Mayor, Nicholas Reece. He should have shown leadership and insisted the council officers amend the agenda to at least include cancelling the trial would be considered.

Having observed all this, Cr Reece has been a strong supporter and advocate of the e-scooter trial, and we were certainly surprised with his about-face on this. There is a council election looming, and many would say he is the front-runner … perhaps he saw there were votes in cancelling the trial? But judging by the fallout post this decision, it may actually cost him more votes than won. 

However, Nicholas has recently assured me the e-scooters will be considered again by the city at the end of the trial through a renewed tender process and that this motion was a “reset”. If so, then what’s the purpose of a trial if one isn’t prepared to let it run its course before renewing contracts? Something doesn’t look right to us. 

It is that time of year again when many owners’ corporations (OC) are holding their AGMs. After a successful information session last year, we have decided to run our “join your OC committee” event again this year with Strata Community Association (Vic). It will be held at Boyd Community Hub on September 25 at 6.30pm. Come along and find out what’s involved with joining your OC committee.

As always, without members our advocacy voice is ineffective. If you are a supporter of our work, we would be delighted if you showed this by way of joining. It’s only $15 per year. 

You can sign-up at southbankresidents.org.au. •