Sydney as a Global City

Jacquelynne Willcox is a Senior Vice President and Head of Public Affairs at Weber Shandwick – a leading public relations agency in Sydney. Jacquelynne is busy selling Sydney and can see what the problems are, from the business perspective. Andrew Low is the CEO of Redbridge Grant Samuel and has just published the Global Sydney report which lays out a strategy for Sydney to restore its place as the most liveable and competitive city in Australia and to step up to a leading position as a globally competitive hub for services, tourism, education and the arts. On Wednesday 1 August, Andrew Low and Jacquelynne Willcox addressed The Sydney Institute to discuss ways to revitalise Sydney.

SYDNEY AS A GLOBAL CITY

JACQUELYNNE WILLCOX

It may well be little more than bravery, that I – who hails from that most planned of planned cities, Adelaide – is speaking tonight about Sydney, a city metamorphosed by brash non-conformists, and whose convict chains still faintly rattle over their clinking latte cups.

And it is probably because I spent my teen and early adult years in ordered, Anglican Adelaide, that I am reminded of the words of British architect Stephen Gardiner, who said that what people want, above all, is order.  Born and bred Sydney-siders might prefer their American cousin, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who boasted that he always found plans to be useless, but planning was indispensible.

As someone who advises businesses (in a planned way),  I think I can say without offending the (Business) Chamber and other groups that admirably represent business in the City, that business welcomes certainty. Clear thinking, less zeitgeist-chasing projects, safe and attractive streets, functioning traffic (without the need for a bike helmet), support for purchasing freely in whichever month one chooses, and some decent rubbish collection would be a start. I also add that decent sign posting is most welcome.

So a few basics to get right. Then we can move on to the lofty recommendations that Andrew’s very thorough report digs into and discusses.

Andrew will blush and deny it, but it seems people have taken notice. As you have heard, his many recommendations include “Citizens Juries”. I noticed that NSW Planning Minister Brad Hazzard will now introduce “local committees” into the planning process.  So, Andrew, they are listening. Or at least they’re on the same page.

When I moved to Sydney, I was perversely impressed with our appalling traffic flows. Back then, congestion meant big city success to a “small-towner” like me.  I sucked it up. Now as a local, I know that Sydney’s traffic issues cost the NSW economy dearly. The most recent estimate by Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian is $8 billion by 2020. The price of those ubiquitous traffic jams in our city could end up costing almost $70 billion.

What this means for those of us who have to conduct business in the city is extra planning just to get about. The NRMA says 50 per cent of businesses have changed their operations to cope with traffic congestion. A lot of businesses now resort to not scheduling meetings for early in the morning – wiping out at least the first two hours of a working day. Staff, even the most junior, have smart phones so they can at least do some work when they are stuck on the bus. And it is not just about getting work done, it is also ensuring they are safe and able to be contacted during commuting mishaps and delays.

Cynics would note that Sydney has a mountain of those useless plans Eisenhower referred to, but not much of his indispensable planning. Andrew Low has called the current planning process “dysfunctional”.

His report takes the best bits from a mountain of planning reports and adds to it with his valuable insights. The telling part for me, that is to say, someone who must consider business imperatives, is his financial insight.

I don’t particularly care where the art and technology precincts are, how many festivals or displays we have or even how high the buildings climb – just that we have them. For me it is important that we have order, clever, unique designs, and events that bring the city alive – and that we can afford along with the other necessities of a sophisticated, functioning, global city.

Andrew’s report details the considerable reserves that the Council has accumulated. He says, for example, that the Council could pay for light rail and not notice a dent in available funds. Again, Andrew will blush. But his comments regarding Council spending on urgently needed infra structure have been noted. Last month, the media revealed plans to ensure councils actually spend that rate revenue on important infra structure projects – including repairing the footpaths and pot holes that have tripped a fair few of us.

I recall this pedestrian-like stuff being a gripe of ratepayers in the City about a decade ago. I was working as an adviser to then Independent Lord Mayor Frank Sartor and his running mates, Lucy Turnbull and Dixie Coultan, during their election campaign.

These were big thinkers. They understood what it meant to take the city with them as they put their ideas in place. Frank will agree that Lucy and Dixie were much more diplomatic. He got things done and didn’t particularly care how. It worked. He was on the building sites after hours and also weekends – sometimes dragging me around with him while he badgered builders and demanded action.

Door-knocking residents and businesses revealed that even then high on the list of concerns were safety and accessibility. These were followed closely by spending on roads, footpaths and lighting.  Not much changes.

What was also of interest to me, as a strategist, was that Frank Sartor chose to continue with a very intrusive, and often disruptive, program of paving footpaths across the CBD – in the middle of the election campaign. I thought it electoral madness. But Frank pushed on. And while a number of businesses were pretty cross about the blocking of access to their premises, as well as the dust and noise, they were realistic about what paving the streets involved. It was a pain they were stoically bearing, as though they were all in it together for the better of their city.

I suspect that it helped that Frank lived in the city and walked to work each day. On his way, he would check in on the businesses, hold meetings in the cafes and buy his lunch and coffee at different outlets, listening as the owners let off steam about how dearly his paving was costing them.

Now, I am not a town planner – or even a town planning watcher. But I do have a working association with brands and brand protection. I actually care about the image of Sydney. And I care very much that it remains one of the world’s great cities. But, as Andrew’s report highlights, this can’t be assured without some action.

We have been very loud with mock outrage that Brisbane – of all cities – beat Sydney to host one of the financial world’s global meetings, the G20. Minister Brad Hazzard thundered that Sydney is Australia’s only global city and should have got it on that merit alone. Sydney is, as Andrew points out, the gateway to Australia. He also says that complacency is a risk.

Former PM Paul Keating once famously drew on the words of a governor of New York – Thomas Dewey – when he said that if you are not in Sydney, you are camping out. It’s that sort of endearing brashness that helps make Sydneysiders who we are. But it also leads to the type of smugness that Andrew warns us against.

As we hold mirrors up to our harbour, Brisbanites, Melburnians, and even my Methodist Adelaide aunts, would claim that Sydney relies on its looks. Their cities, they chorus, have more interesting personalities. Or at least functioning traffic, airports and sign posts.

A few years ago, I was advising an American defence company. I had to spend a lot of time with defence administration in Canberra. You might not be surprised to know that they were telling me then that Sydney was “up itself”. (They meant it in a kind way.) Consequently, they said, we were being overtaken by more interesting, upstart, albeit dowdy, cities with no harbor, like Adelaide – in attracting business. Particularly defence business.

Adelaide had, at that time, stunned the bureaucrats when it approached the department to host the annual Defence and Industry Conference. This event attracts global defence companies, journalists, defence departments and other assorted gun runners (like me).

Canberra had hosted the conference since it began, but its convention centre was being renovated and would not be available that year. Adelaide seized the moment. The fair-minded Defence Department decided they could not just hand this huge business opportunity to the hungry Adelaideians. In true Canberra style, a competition was called for. Well, Adelaide’s representative personally presented a mile-high submission. Melbourne faxed their application. And Sydney?  After the Department called wondering where our application was, I am told that a bureaucrat answered: “If you want to run a conference in Sydney, just go to our website.”

Adelaide has been hosting the conference ever since.

It has also stolen some Defence company operations, competes effectively for large Defence contracts and even organised some of its tertiary education sector around the industry. Sydney has only just woken up to the missed opportunity and is busy, I am assured, developing strategies to remedy that. Andrew, has similar stories of this sort of “relying on our looks” complacency.

But it is not all dire. Barry Humphries, a man with a design pedigree, said last month that despite some of the horrors that have beset Sydney (from an architectural viewpoint), it is still a “pretty nice place to live”. We would all agree. (After all, I don’t live in Adelaide any more.) But is Sydney a nice place to work or run a business?

For bus commuters, stuck on the Harbour Bridge each morning in what is a ridiculous queue, jostling for room along the city’s arterial streets, the answer is not so equivocal. Regardless of the cute, underused bike lanes, those bus queues are not getting any shorter and the streets are not less congested. At the end of the business day, footpaths are often impassable with lengthy, sometimes double, lanes of commuters waiting for their crowded bus to take them to the suburbs.   One bus commuter wrote to a newspaper recently that it had taken her an hour to travel from Central to Wynyard. Congestion may be the price of success, but we know other cities that have more people – and move them around better than we do.

It was a relief then to learn that the head of Sydney’s traffic and transport committee has had to veto some recent ideas in a bid to bring “some sort of sensible planning” to the city.  Personally I would have thought that the term “sensible planning” a tautology. Those closer to these things assure me that is ambitious.

We need only to point to the gobsmackingly silly idea of the Council to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a campaign encouraging shoppers not to purchase anything new for a whole month. It is more than silly. It is insulting to the retailers and service industries that bring life to this city. They struggle to pay wages, rents and council costs just to operate in this precinct. In return they get their Council supporting a campaign that will stall their cash flow. All this from a Council flush with funds that Andrew suggests would allow them to invest in no end of projects to make the City even more attractive to big spenders.  (All after something “new”.)

What would be “new” is if business received a freeze on rates while the Council indulges in another whacky, elitist social experiment. What next? A campaign against full-fat milk? A ban on purchasing Darrell Lea chocolate? This assault on trading has resonated with the public. It may well become a defining moment as far as perception of the Council goes.

Indeed, when my team at Weber Shandwick tested the Council online talk in early July, the “buy nothing new” month created the most discussion.

What is surprising is that at that time – the thirty days preceding 10 July – only two pieces of mainstream media related to the Council campaign. However a significant amount of Twitter conversation was devoted to it. It was a predominantly negative conversation that noted the already existing difficult retail climate (and this was before the tragic Darrell Lea news).

Andrew has noted that our region is rich with cashed-up middle classes and wealthy people who are prepared to pay a premium for services, shopping and entertainment we expect to find in all the great cities. He points out that our competitor cities in the region have been preparing for this population change, and that Sydney must grab the opportunity to beat them. Or at least compete effectively.

As Andrew says, it requires action that connects specific and considered initiatives and mobilises all the stakeholders. I would add that it doesn’t require pandering to ideologues with naïve initiatives that are the antithesis of a functioning, solvent, vibrant and sophisticated global trading city.