Perth’s new Lord Mayor knows the expectations are high after inheriting a council recovering from years of political tension and personality-driven leadership.
Bruce Reynolds was elected mayor on October 18, after acting in the role for seven months following his predecessor Basil Zempilas’ departure to state politics.
Bruce Reynolds is the new Perth Lord Mayor.
Reynolds said he and Zempilas, who is now the WA Liberal Party leader, shared a similar work ethic and family values, but their ambitions differ.
“Basil’s an amazing communicator,” Reynolds said. “If he’s a nine out of ten, I’m probably a two. My job is to get to a seven.”
His predecessor famously pivoted the role into a launchpad for state politics and found himself in regular clashes with the Labor government.
WA Premier Roger Cook even once admitted to avoiding the legally required meetings with Zempilas.
“I can control working harder than anyone.”
Bruce Reynolds
But Reynolds said he was here to rebuild trust and focus on the job at hand.
“You couldn’t get worse than where it was…the only way was up,” Reynolds said.
The immediate past president of the Perth Liberal branch, Reynolds, resigned from the party when he became deputy lord mayor, saying the role should be “a-political”.
He won the top job with 1918 votes, narrowly beating fellow councillor Catherine Lezer after preferences. His term runs until October 2027, and he hopes to serve at least six years.
One of Reynolds’ first priorities was to repair the city’s fractured relationship with the state government.
“The first thing I had to do was make sure we started talking again,” he said.
“[Premier Cook and I] text…he gave me a call yesterday. I love being around him. He was the first person to message me when I won.”
Raised in state housing, moving schools more than a dozen times and unable to read until he was nine, Reynolds’ story is one of persistence. He said he found his confidence in football.
“I fell in love with AFL and the stats,” he said. “If I could remember all the stats from the weekend, I could learn anything.”
His upbringing, he said, taught him resilience and a mindset he now applied to running the city.
“I’m not the smartest person in the room, but I can control doing the right thing,” Reynolds said.
“And I can control working harder than anyone.”
Reynolds’ main priority was to make Perth “the safest city in Australia”.
“If someone Googles ‘safest city in Australia’ and Perth comes up, that changes everything. Businesses invest. Tourists come,” he said.
He doesn’t know how to get there, but said it was an achievable goal within three years, if all levels of government committed to the cause.
The plan that most excites him is transforming Perth’s identity from the “City of Light” to the “City of Bright”, by attracting international university campuses into the CBD.
He said this would help deal with empty shopfronts and make the city come alive.
“If we can fill a space like David Jones with students, imagine the energy of the city,” Reynolds said.
“Retail as we knew it is gone, but if you fill the city with young people, it can come alive.”
Asked what success would look like, Reynolds said: “History will be the judge”.
“If I end up being the mayor who made Perth the safest city, or the one who helped the homeless, or even if no one remembers me at all, that’s fine,” he said.
“As long as I can look in the mirror every morning and know I’ve done the right thing then that’s enough. I’m not perfect. I’ll make mistakes. But I want to be a decent person.”
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