Future Sydney Bradfield Oration: Visions and dreams for our city revealed
A minister appointed to oversee Sydney's growth and more investment in arts and tourism to revive the CBD are among big ideas heard at The Bradfield Oration. See the highlight reel of the event here.
NSW
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A bold vision for a single Sydney supremo dedicated to sweeping away red tape and the “advancement and wellbeing of Australia’s greatest city” has received backing from both sides of politics and business.
It comes after The Daily Telegraph Editor Ben English used his opening address at The Telegraph’s Bradfield Oration to call for a specialist Minister for Sydney to be appointed.
Mr English made the call saying a new state government minister “could be a new metropolitan tsar empowered to override petty disputes or a supreme diplomat, able to bring warring departments, agencies and councils to consensus”.
“Even the Greater Sydney Commission, another brainchild of our first Bradfield Oration, has proved unequal to the task of cutting through our city’s impenetrable matrix of NIMBY councils, government agencies and sweet political deals,” Mr English told the crowd assembled at Crown Sydney.
“So now is the time for a Minister for Sydney. Someone wholly devoted to the advancement and wellbeing of Australia’s greatest and only global city.”
The idea received immediate backing from Premier Dominic Perrottet and Labor leader Chris Minns who both gave keynote speechesat the ninth Bradfield Oration outlining their views for the future of what they both agreed is “the world’s greatest city”.
Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello, who has previously delivered the oration, said a Sydney supremo was “a great idea,as long as they are not a toothless tiger.
“A dedicated minister works as long as he or she has the machinery of government behind them so they can make decisions thatmake a positive impact on the city,” he said.
“This would be a big picture thinker with the intelligence and political nous to break down the various bureaucratic silos and stratified layers of government in order to deliver world’s best outcomes.”
Among those in the room at the Oration were Premier Dominic Perrottet and Opposition leader Chris Minns, federal infrastructure Minister Catherine King representing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after he was struck down with Covid-19, and leading business and community leaders from across Sydney.
Sydney must rethink its CBD with more investment in arts, tourism and Aboriginal affairs, the country’s leading entertainment minds say.
Carnival Australia president Marguerite Fitzgerald said the city needed to be much more than a business district to attract workers that abandoned the region after the onset of remote working.
“The really vibrant cities in the world are not known for being business districts…they are known as great places to see entertainment, to eat, to meet people,” she said.
Crown Resorts chief executive Ciaran Carruthers said Sydney was up there with the “Paris and New Yorks” of the world but urgent investment was needed to ensure we had staff to keep the city alive.
“We need to start with people that are in school and convince them that hospitality… is a fantastic career,” he said.
“Covid has entirely changed people’s perception of what that (hospitality) means.”
It comes as NSW is lagging behind in its post-Covid tourism boom – with every other state in Australia beating its pre-pandemic domestic tourism numbers, the Bradfield Oration has heard from the all-star panel.
Ms Fitzgerald said NSW was still sitting 10 per cent below domestic tourism levels recorded in 2019.
She said the figures “laid out (the) challenges” NSW and Sydney still faced, despite our bounceback from Covid-19.
Panel member Geoff Jones, the CEO of TEG, echoed her calls, saying NSW has “got to be a bit more innovative.
“We’re probably a little bit complacent,” he said.
He added we needed to be “creating more big things that are repeatable”, like his company has attempted to do by bringing world-renowned music, gaming and culture conference South by South West to Sydney.
‘TIME FOR SYDNEY TO SCRAP POST-COVID COMPLACENCY’
Bradfield Board of Governors chair Tony Shepherd has said Sydney now needs to look forward to avoid a post-pandemic malaise.
“Coming out of that pandemic, Sydney has definitely slowed, and complacency is definitely a problem,” he said.
“We have had that investment in infrastructure…which are transforming our city fantastically…but we do need to think about the attractions, the jobs, the experiences (on offer).”
He said new mega-projects – coined from a grand vision - like Crown tower heralded the way forward for the city.
“My heart always beats a bit stronger when I look across (and see the tower),” he said.
DOM AND MINNS FACE OFF OVER SYDNEY’S FUTURE
It comes as Dominic Perrottet and Chris Minns went head to head on their visions for Sydney’s future at The Daily Telegraph’s Bradfield Oration.
Labor Leader Mr Minns has used his keynote address at the Daily Telegraph’s Bradfield Oration to slam the state government’s planning for failure- criticising the growing disparity between Sydney’s east and west.
“We are now locating the most people in the areas with the least public transport - and the least people in the areas with the most public transport. That is not planning to succeed, it is planning to fail,” Mr Minns said.
“This skewed plan for Sydney’s growth is even more stark when you consider where the public transport investment is being made.”
As revealed by the Telegraph, an elected Labor government will force the Greater Cities Commission to rebalance the distribution of new housing and push the affordable housing target to 30 per cent.
“We know some of the great cities in the world have higher affordable housing targets – London, for example, aims for 50 per cent on public land,” he said.
“But in NSW, we have historically celebrated targets of between five or 10 per cent.”
Mr Minns also hit out against local councils that were refusing to meet their housing targets while lapping up billions in public funds.
“There are some who insist on virtually no increase in the number of people in their communities – while accepting billions of public funds to build new transport infrastructure,” he said.
“Quarantining one part of Sydney from growth comes at the expense of communities in Sydney’s west who are struggling to build a political consensus against a massive population increase without the infrastructure to support it.”
Premier Dominic Perrottet used the Bradfield Oration to paint his party’s legacy – and future – as one with massive visions, in what is the unofficial starting gun on the NSW election campaign.
Mr Perrottet used his oration to detail a list of mega infrastructure project accomplishments, as well as more recent achievements like the introduction of a land tax, introduced last month.
It’ll give first homebuyers to pay an annual land tax instead of an upfront stamp duty, which Mr Perrottet called “A stamp on a piece of paper that stops a generation of home ownership”.
He also touched on the major infrastructure projects undertaken by the NSW Coalition in the last decade.
“There has been opposition to almost every project that we have built, from the North West Metro to NorthConnex, the Sydney Football Stadium to the Sydney Modern, the Light Rail to the Powerhouse,” he said.
He also outlined his pitch to build a new primary school and a new selective high school in Western Sydney, co-located in the Westmead Health and Innovation District.
“Alongside major hospitals, medical research institutes and university campuses - teaming up our brightest minds to support the next generation of leaders,” he said.
He added he wanted more schools located alongside research facilities and universities – saying the western Sydney move could be the start of the new model.
“This concept is the first of its kind in Australia,” he said.
“This is just the start and I want to see this new way of learning rolled out across the state.”
‘TIME FOR A MINISTER FOR SYDNEY’
WEST IS BEST FOR SYDNEY’S GROWTH
Ms King has dubbed Sydney’s west an economic powerhouse driving national growth but cautioned that planning rules and high standards cannot be forgotten when building new infrastructure projects.
Ms King said the Prime Minister and the Labor government were determined to be a strong “partner” for the states in creating sustainable and smart new cities.
“None of this is about dictating outcomes or handing out central planning decisions from Canberra,” she said.
Ms King said the new Sydney airport precinct was the prime example of the sort of infrastructure the Commonwealth wanted to support.
“When it opens, Western Sydney airport will be a powerful catalyst for economic activity...And for the first time we won’t be looking in but looking out to the west,” she said.
“The Western Parklands City and the Aerotropolis will be home for new opportunities... building the right surrounding infrastructure and public transport and freight link is absolutely crucial.”
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