Do we like them?

Do we like Sally Capp?

Our score: 6 out of 10. Nothing harmful found and a decent public-service record, but too little we could read in full to score her higher.

Sally Capp came to Melbourne's top civic job from business, not from a party machine. She was a businesswoman when she ran in the 2018 by-election, which was called after Robert Doyle resigned as Lord Mayor. She won, and she was re-elected in 2020.

She stayed to the end of her second term but chose not to run for a third. She announced in March 2024 that she would stand aside, and her deputy Nicholas Reece took over from her. It was a tidy exit with no scandal attached that we could find.

On the harm test, the honest answer is that nothing turned up. We found no anti-LGBTQ+ campaigning, no culture-war grievance and no conspiracy talk from her. We also found no run of work with people who push harm. Her career since office has been in property and construction, which says nothing either way about her values.

The main knock we found is a lockdown-era comment. In November 2022 she was criticised for saying COVID lockdowns had been good for the City of Melbourne. That reads as clumsy and tone-deaf to traders who were hurting, not as harm to anyone.

Her latest move is the Hickory job, a strategy role at a Melbourne builder and developer. It is a normal step for a former Lord Mayor with a business background, and nothing in the coverage we saw raised any concern about the company or her part in it.

The gap in all this is detail. We couldn't open the full council-era reporting, so we can't give you a line-by-line account of her votes on housing, homelessness or climate. Judge her on what's here: a clean record so far and a quiet exit, with a thin file behind it.