This asset has climbed 38pc in real terms to $11b over 10 years
Here’s how the true value of the Sydney Opera House – a national icon that inspired 90 per cent of Chinese tourists to visit the city – was calculated.
My father’s favourite aphorism was an Oscar Wilde gem that might have been written by a Sydneysider. “He knows the price of everything,” Dad would scoff, “and the value of nothing.”
That tension between price and value has stayed with me ever since. As an adolescent in 1973, I watched the fireworks and regal pomp of the Sydney Opera House’s opening ceremony, vaguely aware of the raging debate over what cynics of the time described as Australia’s great white elephant.
