“An extraordinary councillor”: Rohan Leppert calls time at the City of Melbourne

Few figures are respected and admired right across the political spectrum, but outgoing Greens councillor Rohan Leppert leaves behind one such legacy at the City of Melbourne after 12 years of dedicated community service. 

And, as such, after three consecutive terms, Cr Leppert also leaves behind a gaping hole on the next council, one which will be impossible to fill, given the unparalleled standards he set for the role of councillor. 

In so many ways, he has epitomised what it means to be a local politician. Talk to those who have worked with him over the years, or the many in the community who he’s engaged with, and similar themes will emerge. 

“The ultimate political professional” was how one former colleague best described him. Another said, “the highest integrity of anyone I’ve ever met” with a “commitment to safety, community and governance” that was “second to none”. 

Another perhaps summarised Cr Leppert's legacy best; put simply, he is “an extraordinary councillor”. 

But to the many Melburnians who don’t follow council affairs too closely, they’re unlikely to know just how lucky they are to have had someone of his calibre serving their city, which is so much richer for his contribution.

North West City News caught up with Cr Leppert one last time as councillor to reflect on his incredible journey at the City of Melbourne while capturing him at his absolute “favourite place” in Royal Park. 

The city’s largest park is symbolic to him for many reasons. Namely, he said it represented the place where his “public life in politics starts and ends” having first campaigned to protect it from the former Liberal state government’s East West Link proposal. 

And coming full circle at what was his final Future Melbourne Committee meeting on September 10, he endorsed the new Royal Park Master Plan for public consultation as chair of planning – the portfolio he has championed for much of his time on council. 

While Cr Leppert's “mission to make the city greener” had remained a constant, he told North West City News his knowledge base and ability to understand how the “puzzle pieces that made a city fit together” had “radically changed” over the years. 

It’s that curiosity for what makes a city function combined with an incredible intellect and a unique ability to articulate complex information that saw him transform into somewhat of a planning master. Or as he modestly put it, “the planning wonk”. 

“Over time, I’ve found a bit of a niche on council as the planning wonk, and I confess I’m very happy with my niche!” Rohan said.   

“I’ve obviously learned to love planning as a profession and the concepts that underpin a well-planned city and environment,” adding that as “weird as it might sound, I genuinely enjoy reading council reports, and I think most people find it a tedious chore.” 

“The reason I enjoy it is I love understanding all of the complex systems that make up the city, and then considering the report in the context of those systems,” he said.

So, I’m not reading a report as a piece of prose from beginning to end and going ‘what do I think about this?’. I approach it as a bit more of a challenge about how this piece of the puzzle fits into the bigger picture, and that’s actually enjoyable.

With Cr Leppert originally moving to Melbourne from Canberra in 2003, North West City News asked him whether hailing from the nation’s capital had any bearing on his career in politics. His answer: “not at all”. 

But as he explained, his upbringing in the city that he had grown up “resenting”, did ironically provide some of the makings for the politician he would turn out to be …

“In Canberra, I learned to resent politics because it was a politicians' town,” he said. “I also learned to resent planning because growing up in Canberra on the outskirts without a car is a pretty difficult way to live. There was no critical density; no middle.”

“It took me a long time to overcome my rejection of Canberra as a concept. It’s quite a nice place to visit these days … I think I can find the middle now, more or less. But as a planned city, I grew up resenting it and put it over there in the failed projects basket along with town planning generally.” 

Hence, it might not be unreasonable to say that Melbourne owes some gratitude to Canberra for giving us Rohan Leppert complete with a template of how not to do politics and planning.

First running for council unsuccessfully in 2008, he would eventually win election in 2012 at the age of 27. At the time, he said his prime motivation was largely driven by seeing an under-representation of residents on council.

He said that he “immediately” developed a passion for planning during his first term through this lens, when he wanted to rewrite a council policy to “democratise resident access to planning decisions.” 

“Basically, it was about when are drawings and assessments publicly disclosed and when are they not,” he said. “I wanted to move the dial a bit in favour of disclosure, and I realised immediately that I was in over my head and the system was about 100 times more complicated than I realised in my overconfidence as a 27-year-old.”

“So, I was learning right from the get-go. I hate to think of some of the questions and proposals I put on the table back then and what the seasoned planners in the council thought about them at the time.” 

“But the role of councillor is like any other job in that there is an element of learning as you go – you can’t be taught everything.” 

“There’s nothing quite like being at the middle of the City of Melbourne, which has by far the most complicated planning system of any of the [other] 78 [Victorian local] councils. I had to learn very quickly and I just soaked up that information.” 

That desire to learn, coupled with an extraordinary work ethic, has won him many admirers. Talk to just about anyone who’s tuned into a council meeting during the past 12 years, and they’ll agree the most intelligent, well-informed and clearly articulated explanations and speeches were so often delivered by Cr Leppert. 

His ability to absorb complex information and present it in a way that is digestible to the community has been an asset on council, and he said that he hoped to have had some influence in improving access to decision-making. 

“Planners have to learn their own language in a way and the thing I still struggle with the most has been trying to translate that complexity into something that is able to be grappled with at a democratic level … not that it's understood by anyone but that it can be argued about by members of the public,” he said. 

The accessibility of these massively consequential decisions about the future of the places that people live in is critical. Government has to find a way of presenting information that can be argued about by residents. But that gets harder and harder because the system gets more and more complicated.

"This state government has given up on that – their reforms to the system are all about cutting out any attempt to democratise or disclose or translate any complexity into something that can be understood by a great mass of people.” 

“I think that’s a great failure of democracy, because the city is going to grow up to nine million people by 2051 apparently, and Melburnians should have a genuine say over how we can do that well," Cr Leppert said.

“I do hope I’ve had a bit of influence at the council level to try to resist that trend and to genuinely bring members of the public inside the municipality into the conversation about the future of our city.” 

While his passion for planning will forever remain a hallmark of his legacy, his time on council wasn’t without its share of challenges, all of which shaped him as a councillor equally as significantly.  

In 2018, he ran for Lord Mayor in a byelection triggered by the resignation of Robert Doyle, and despite being widely considered the most qualified, he would finish a distant third to Sally Capp who pipped Labor’s parachuted candidate Jennifer Yang. 

The result would unleash a rather less filtered Cr Leppert, who was never afraid to speak openly about what he considered to be an undemocratic and gerrymandered electoral system that continues to favour business interests over residents.  

But despite holding his share of frustrations, it would never dull his drive to make Town Hall a fairer and more democratically accessible place. 

Renowned throughout his career for going well beyond the part-time commitments expected by a councillor, Cr Leppert would eventually go full-time in 2020 when the COVID pandemic struck.

While the job had “suddenly shifted to one of direct support” with businesses closing their doors across the city, he said the doubling workload that came with it was “a genie that the council hadn’t quite put back in the bottle yet.”

“We do need to find a way to make the role of councillor more manageable and hopefully the start of the next council will present an opportunity to reset that,” he said. “We haven’t quire reversed back from that position.” 

While 12 years comprises too many achievements to pack into one article, Cr Leppert said that among his proudest were being part of making the City of Melbourne a “park-building machine” and serving as the council’s representative on the Municipal Association of Victoria. 

As a Kensington resident, he’s also proud to have played a central role in planning for urban renewal in Macaulay, as well as serving across the environment and arts and culture portfolios. 

His work on the heritage portfolio will also be remembered as some of his finest, having helped to deliver more heritage reviews across the municipality than what had been undertaken in more than a generation. 

“Robert Doyle's mantra at the time was ‘we've protected the best, now we'll develop the rest.’ And if something rhymes, then it must be true, right?” Cr Leppert said. 

“Almost all the previous heritage reviews were from early ‘80s. So, it took much of my first term to shake loose the idea that had set in that council had already done all the work it needed to.” 

“That's been a mountain of work and getting our house in order is something I’ve loved.”

As he bows out, he said one of the things he would miss the most about being a councillor was working with the city’s “deeply passionate” planning team, made up of professionals and experts he described as “absolutely extraordinary”. 

And while he hasn’t quite figured out his next career move yet, he doesn’t think he’ll “be too far away from the Victorian planning system” having somehow managed to recently complete a master’s degree in planning and environment. 

But despite feeling a “little melancholy” after 12 years, he said he was feeling optimistic about his future – the very least he deserves after an exemplary innings as one of the best councillors this city has ever seen. 

“This is a privilege and an opportunity that demands your full attention and passion, and so I do this job at 110 per cent, and not the most sustainable way to be a councillor of the City of Melbourne,” Cr Leppert said. 

“I think three terms is reasonable. But at the same time, I’m already missing it.” •