Go West
The rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne has given us decades of civic enmity and jealousy; hours of round-the-BBQ discussion about the supposed coarseness of Sydneysiders as compared with the supposed cultured refinement of Melburnians; and then, of course, there is Canberra, the âcompromise capitalâ which lies pretty much equidistant between the two.
Iâm not going to revisit the debate about which city is best - although you can, of course - other than to say that many of your comments on the Lucky City chime with an interesting piece from the .
In it, he talks about the âSydney paradoxâ: the curious fact that the city continues to top the polls as a tourist destination, as it did earlier in the month, but is dropping down the league tables when it comes to places to live. The most recent poll suggested 20% of the people who live here are considering leaving town. Itâs almost as if there are two distinct places: âGlobal Sydneyâ and âLocal Sydneyâ.
But itâs his comments about people leaving town and heading westward that caught my eye, and may ultimately force us to rethink Australiaâs great geographic rivalry. In the future, the battle will no longer be so much between Sydney and Melbourne as east against west.
Tim Harcourt calls this the âGilly Effectâ, a reference to Australiaâs retiring cricket legend, Adam Gilchrist, who began his career in his native New South Wales but found much more success when he moved to Perth and started to play for Western Australia. Tens of thousands have followed his lead.
The âGilly Effectâ is borne out by a swathe of recently-released statistics. They show that Western Australia has clocked the fastest population growth of any state in Australia - 2.3% compared with a rather lackluster 1.1% for New South Wales. Western Australia also has the highest birthrate of any state in mainland Australia, with 1.98 births per woman. Despite its geographic remoteness, the population of Perth, its capital, is expected to grow by 43% by 2031.
Much of this is explained, of course, by the resources boom and the manpower needs of companies like BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. As trade links with China and India strengthen, Perth is also well placed to benefit from its obvious geographic advantages over rivals like Sydney and Melbourne. No wonder, then, that a Western Australian, resources magnate Andrew Forrest, has just become Australiaâs richest man - the first time in more than 20 years that a member of the Sydney-based Packer family has not sat atop the rich list.
To sustain the boom, Western Australiaâs government is already targeting members of what demographers call âthe creative classâ, the nationâs and the worldâs smartest workers, to help fuel its growth. State officials recently visited seven Indian cities in seven days in the hope of attracting the cream of the new immigrants.
As the population of Western Australia grows, so too will its political influence and, ultimately, its number of parliamentary representatives. Perhaps Kevin Rudd, the master of the symbolic gesture, was mindful of this long-term trend when he decided to convene his first Cabinet meeting of the year not in Canberra but Perth. The Mandarin-speaking leader understands both the domestic political geography and shift in geopolitics, as he recalibrates Australian foreign policy to reflect the rise of China and, to a lesser extent, India.
Iâd love to hear what else explains the lure of the west? Are you thinking of becoming part of the eastern exodus? Have you moved already? Has Perth got what it takes to rival Sydney or Melbourne?
There have been times - admittedly, usually on long-haul flights - when Iâve thought it would be great if we could swivel Australia 180 degrees, so that Sydney was on the west coast rather than the east. Flights home would be a lot cheaper, the time difference with London wouldnât be so anti-social and we could watch the sun set over the ocean. Even without such a mighty tectonic shift, perhaps something similar is already underway.
PS Iâm heading west myself â Sri Lanka to get married. See you after the honeymoon.