How could anybody struggle to sell Sydney?

THERE are branding problems and branding problems.

The former rugby union great John O'Neill, who has been given the task of re-branding Sydney for tourists, is not the same John O'Neill who recently departed the job of executive director and general manager of Tourism NSW. Two John O'Neills, both with tourism connections but just one brand that desperately needs sorting out. As it has since the Sydney Olympics. Successive NSW governments have treated tourism as a joke. Though the Sydney Olympics are universally recognised to have been the best in the IOC's grubby history, successive NSW premiers have squandered the opportunity they presented. Second-string ministers such as Sandra Nori have wasted diminished budgets and the state's market share has dwindled as other states, notably Victoria, have attracted business that should have come here. Selling Australia, and Sydney of all places, should be simple but the egoistic idiots in the marketing business cannot help themselves as they compete to stuff it up. A couple of years ago I was sitting in front of a television in a hotel foyer in Prague, idly waiting to check out. A commercial showing restaurants and art galleries set against a musical background was playing. The punchline said it had to do with Australia. Seeing Australia In a Different Light, appeared to be the theme. It could have been a question in a trivia competition. There was nothing identifiably Australian about any part of it that I can recall. Too clever by miles. Australia, whether the overpaid and largely over-educated smarties who make advertisements want to acknowledge it or not, has its unique selling points. The problem is that they make the advertising elites cringe. Just as the current production of Gallipoli which is being staged at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's sometimes best-friend Cate Blanchett's Sydney Theatre Company had to be re-written to include politically correct parts for women (inclusive Cate, inclusive Kev), so too do advertising gurus want to write out parts of Australia that they consider are too Australian. Here's a tip John (rugby union) O'Neill: foreign tourists want to see koalas, kangaroos, the Opera House and the Barrier Reef. I know you'd be prepared to spend a few million on a global survey for that sort of information, but I'm prepared to let you have it for a lot less. I spend a lot of time with tourists (I always ask people studying maps if they're lost), and I have a family member in the business. Like one recent tourist, Pope Benedict, they seem most captivated by our animals. During his visit, he spent 40 minutes inspecting Taronga Zoo's Australian animals, delightedly touching a number of beasts including a koala named Darwin, a red-necked wallaby joey named Tammy Faye, a 2m carpet snake and a baby crocodile. And why not? There's nowhere else in the world he could have seen and stroked a koala, wallaby, carpet snake and croc in the same afternoon. The Opera House is an iconic building. People want to have their photo taken with it, the same as the Harbour Bridge. Barangaroo though, forget it, it's a humbug name pulled out of the past by the politically correct. The Hungry Mile has a certain ring to it however and is a name that tourists won't forget. Just don't let the State Government and the developers freeze out the public space and it could become one of the great urban harbour walks of the world. That old "throw a shrimp on the barbie" advertisement appealed to Americans and while it may have been lost on people of other cultures, it clicked with our Seppo mates because it drove home to them the closeness but separateness of our cultures. The sort of thing that had Americans loving the Boxing Kangaroo when Australia II brought home the America's Cup. Which by the way happened 25 years ago on September 26 - is a one-off tourism campaign being planned around that anniversary? There's been a big launch of a campaign based around Baz Luhrmann's yet-to-be-released Australia but, let's be realistic, there is nothing in the Outback for most tourists to do, indigenous tourism is a non-starter at this point (which way up do you hang a dot painting?), and the rest is too hard to get to, too expensive, and there's not much there when you finally arrive. The Sydney Exhibition is too small and too inflexible a space for many conventions and exhibitions, and anyway the national body, Tourism Australia, actually forgot to make the booking needed for the national Australian Tourism Exhibition to be held there this year. That sounds like better people are needed at all levels of the industry. Tourism brings about $23.5 billion to NSW annually, a bit more than a quarter of that from international visitors. More than 90 per cent of the tourism businesses are small - 90 per cent employ fewer than 20 people, 60 per cent employ less than four. One tourism experience I recall vividly was shared with the late singer and songwriter Harry Nilsson. We had lunched over at Fairy Bower near Manly and rode the ferry back to Circular Quay, sipping brandy we had bought at the pub by the wharf. The sun was setting, sending long shafts of light down the Harbour, summer boaters were slowly going home and Harry was trying to write a song to capture this vision before we docked. Bottle those images, find those words, and you'll be beating back tourists with a stick.