The Sydney Power 100: The 100 most powerful people in Sydney 40-21
A former Australian cricket captain, factional politicians and a surprisingly influential figure at the ABC make up our penultimate edition of the The Sydney Power 100 list. We only have 40 names to go. Can you guess who makes number one?
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A former Australian cricket captain, factional politicians and a surprisingly influential figure at the ABC make up our penultimate edition of the Power 100 list.
We only have 40 names to go.
Can you guess who makes number one?
40. Margaret Cunneen, SC — Barrister
As a tough-talking champion of sexual assault victims, Margaret Cunneen SC not only made the public realise the deep trauma of being raped, she inspired a generation of women to take up law.
One work experience student described spending the week with her as “pure gold”.
As someone who believes everyone deserves a fair trial, it was ironically with her back up against the wall as she fought against the unfairness of an NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption investigation that Cunneen, then a deputy senior crown prosecutor, unwittingly became one of the most powerful people in the state.
Wrongly accused of telling the then girlfriend of her eldest son to fake chest pains to avoid a breath test after a car crash, Cunneen fought back.
The girl’s blood test was negative to alcohol and no one involved in the crash was interviewed.
Cunneen took on the ICAC and destroyed it, winning in the Court of Appeal and the High Court.
The Solicitor-General found no wrongdoing by Cunneen or any of her family.
After 42 years in the public service, Cunneen moved to the private bar at the end of January.
Power, she says, is “having the wherewithal to help others and influence society in a positive way”.
39. Patrick Delany — Foxtel and Fox Sports CEO
Patrick Delany dramatically changed the way the nation’s most-loved sport was consumed when he secured a landmark $1.2 billion cricket broadcast rights deal in 2018.
As the boss of Australia’s biggest subscription television service, Delany is responsible for the greatest suite of sports on home screens in the country, and last year launched sports streaming service Kayo — which clocked up 115,000 subscribers in the first two months of launching.
Under his watch, Foxtel has also launched a new set-top box, the iQ4, and Australia’s first 4K broadcast channel.
This is giving Foxtel growing reach into the nation’s households, augmenting its existing 2.9 million pay television subscriber base.
Under the leadership of Foxtel boss of television Brian Walsh — the legendary television creative who drove the success of Neighbours, brought the award-winning reality show Gogglebox to Australia and gave viewers the internationally acclaimed prison drama Wentworth — Foxtel is also making more of its own content.
Foxtel has movie and drama streaming services FoxFlicks and FoxShowcase, which also launched under Delaney’s leadership.
38. Tim Reardon — Secretary of the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet
He earns nearly double what the Premier makes, holds the careers of every NSW public servant in his hands and can redirect millions in government finances with a flick of his pen — but you wouldn’t know the extent of Tim Reardon’s power from his ego.
In November 2017 Reardon was appointed Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, a high-stakes job that put him right alongside Premier Gladys Berejiklian as one of her key advisers.
The pair had previously worked together in the transport cluster — she as Minister and he as Secretary.
Reardon’s promotion to the Premier and Cabinet role was a captain’s call by Berejiklian.
How he fares if Berejiklian loses the next election remains to be seen.
Insiders say the pair have a similarly strong work ethic and the Premier appreciates her secretary’s “very practical, no-nonsense” attitude to the job.
Those close to Reardon say that for all of the power his position entails, he carries out his duties with a remarkable lack of ego.
His aim in meetings, they say, is always to find solutions, not to provide a thesis-worthy monologue on issues.
37. Melanie Perkins — Canva CEO
Canva co-founder Melanie Perkins may be only 31 but she leads one of the fastest growing start-ups in Australia.
The Sydney-based graphic design business eclipsed $US1 billion ($1.4 billion) in value last year and is set to more than double its headcount this year to 700 employees.
The company, which Ms Perkins founded with Cliff Obrecht in 2014, serves 15 million people in 190 countries and keeps growing thanks largely to its ambitious founder.
“From our very early days we had intended Canva to be built in such a way
that it could scale to millions of people,” Perkins told The Daily Telegraph.
“When you’re growing this fast, you need the entire team focusing on things that matter — and that’s delivering value to our community and making their lives easier and better.”
The graphic design tool is now available in more than 100 languages, with a big technical challenge overcome last year being the ability to design in right to left languages such as Arabic, Urdu and Hebrew.
“We also launched Canva China, with a completely localised experience featuring local fonts, local templates and a local team based in Beijing,” Perkins says.
“I love living and working in Sydney. It feels like we’ve been able to get the best of both worlds — we have been able to recruit an amazing team from across Australia and the globe and also to tap into the expertise and knowledge of our investors.”
36. Matt Moran and Bruce Solomon — Celebrity Chef and Solotel Founder
From Willoughby to Paddington and Parramatta, Matt Moran and Bruce Solomon have the hospitality bases covered across Sydney.
This used to be a one-horse town when it came to hospitality, with the Hemmes family business Merivale the main player in the market.
But having merged his restaurant businesses with Solomon’s Solotel Group in 2016, Moran and his business partner are a major driving force in the Sydney and Brisbane food scenes.
Chef Moran is behind brands including ARIA and Chiswick while, as a group, they have eateries including Chophouse at Parramatta and Sydney CBD and numerous hotel properties.
In land holdings, the pair are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars with a portfolio of 26 properties in Sydney alone.
Their expansion will continue this year with the Abercrombie Hotel at Broadway and the Albion Hotel at Parramatta set to open.
They own pub venues including the Clock Hotel in Surry Hills, Courthouse Hotel in Newtown, Bank Hotel in Newtown and the Paddo Inn in Paddington, as well as harbourside tourist hot spot Opera Bar and the newer Barangaroo House.
Having conquered the palates of the Emerald City the group has also marched north, opening several venues in Brisbane — Little Big House, Riverbar & Kitchen and ARIA Brisbane.
35. Hugh Marks — Nine CEO
“Everyone says media is dead but it’s far from true. More people are consuming more media than ever before. But you’ve got to change your business model and quite dramatically,” Nine boss Hugh Marks says.
Marks sure has changed his business model, swallowing Fairfax Media in $4 billion deal that gives him an audience reach of 15 million Australians, similar to that of Facebook. “We may not have as much volume of traffic as Facebook but our quality of audience is so much better because on Facebook you are in a scrolling environment but when you are consuming our content, you are engaged, you’re there.”
To advertisers an engaged audience is gold, he says.
To Marks, the future is about using every media platform across print, free-to-air television, streaming, mobile, magazines and digital sites to allow a single piece of content to reach the biggest audience possible.
“Quality content will always have a good strong audience and in fact in this world that audience grows … and if you can get audience growth you can grow your revenue.”
Married At First Sight is great example of how it’s done at Nine — rating almost as much live on free-to-air as the next night on demand, as well as getting good traction on social media and digital publishing sites such as 9Honey.
“It’s a reasonably expensive piece of content … but all of a sudden you’re looking at it and going, ‘well I’m spending money but you’ve also got revenue growth on that content’.”
In the future Marks expects new media such as streaming service Stan and online real estate engine Domain to earn more of the company’s revenue, growing from 30-35 per cent now to 65-70 per cent of revenue in the next three to five years.
“That’s not a pipedream, that’s just doing what we need to do to deliver on the plans that we already have.
“We don’t need a lot of other assets to do that. We’ve got all of the things at our disposal to be able to execute on that vision and if we achieve that, this business will be regarded very differently to what it is today.”
34. Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar — Atlassian co-CEOs
Jira. Confluence. Bitbucket. Not exactly household names, but the software products
built by Aussie wunderkinds Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar are a behind-the screens success story on a global scale.
Their company Atlassian has an origin story straight from the Silicon Valley playbook: tech-minded uni friends who decided they didn’t want a boss launched a backyard business with a $10,000 credit card debt and an idea that was the software equivalent of building a better mousetrap.
Seventeen years on, the pair are long past the amazeballs start-up phase and Atlassian has 125,000 customers for its collaboration and project management software, nine offices in six countries and 2500 employees.
Worth an estimated $8.8 billion apiece, Farquhar and Cannon-Brookes are the hipster-bearded faces of Australian entrepreneurship in the internet age.
33. Chris Bowen — Federal Shadow Treasurer
He’s not even treasurer yet and Chris Bowen is already moving markets.
His risky policies that tamper with tax benefits on shares and property assets will change the way we invest, with many savvy investors already restructuring their portfolio to mitigate the costs.
His policy on dumping tax breaks for dividends which retirees use to fund their retirement have them running scared.
Big listed companies are also trying to insure their shareholders against the risk of losses by issuing early special dividends before the likelihood that Labor takes power at the next election and Bowen blows it up in government.
Likewise his proposed changes to negative gearing have some investors choosing other assets to park their money in and others rushing into the property market to seal in the grandfathered tax break before he takes it away.
Bowen is married to former union lawyer Rebecca Mifsud and is a heavy-hitting factional player from the right who makes or breaks careers, especially in his home turf of Western Sydney.
He honed his skills at Fairfield Council and his ambition cannot be underestimated.
32. Chris Waller and Winx — Trainer and unbeatable thoroughbred
They are racing’s ultimate power couple — a man and horse who have conquered the world together.
Trainer Chris Waller was not doing too badly when the owners of a $230,000 one-year-old filly called Winx sent her to his stables for training.
But what happened next was history-making and has made both of them megastars.
Winx has now earned more than $19 million in prizemoney in a remarkable run of 30 consecutive wins, all but two with jockey Hugh Bowman in the saddle.
She is the racing equivalent of a rock idol, dragging crowds back to the racecourse in huge numbers, many of them full of people under 30.
The bay mare was named Longines World’s Best Racehorse for the second year running at a lavish ceremony in London in January.
The citation said: “Winx has been in the (world’s) Top 10 since 2015 and has been the highest rated filly/mare in the world since 2016. In 2018, she claimed overall top honours during a season that culminated in her becoming the only horse in history to win the Ladbrokes Cox Plate four times.”
For Waller, who had two maxed out credit cards and a few empty horse boxes at Rosehill when he arrived from New Zealand in 2000, Winx has been the icing on the cake in a glowing career.
He has trained the winners of nearly 2500 races including 92 at Group 1 level and his horses have earned a staggering $221 million.
There have been eight consecutive Sydney training premierships — and Waller will win a ninth this season — including an all-time season record of 189 city wins in 2017-18.
He’s already in Australian Racing’s Hall of Fame.
Waller and Winx have taken Sydney racing and put it on the world stage.
The special alchemy between master trainer and superhorse has attracted a new generation to embrace the sport of kings … and equine queens.
31. ABC empty chair — ABC Chairman and Managing Director
This empty chair in the boardroom at the ABC has steered the public broadcaster through turbulent times.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week appointed media veteran Ita Buttrose to the top job, but the previously empty chair successfully managed to avoid a major row with the chair in the next room and has not gone behind that chair’s back to create discontent among the ABC board.
It is six months since the chair’s previous incumbent, Justin Milne, sacked ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie, who was sitting in the other chair.
As their relationship imploded Guthrie and Milne fired off explosive allegations of political interference, pressure to fire star journalists and even inappropriate touching.
Guthrie is suing the ABC for unfair dismissal and to be reinstated to the job and paid compensation.
By contrast, the two empty chairs have behaved impeccably.
There has been no suggestion of inappropriate touching between the chairs or any political pressure or backstabbing.
An ABC insider said: “Those chairs have really calmed things down and put us back on an even keel. Whoever ends up sitting in them will have big castors to fill.”
Time will tell whether Ms Buttrose will move this position further up the list in next year’s Sydney Power 100.
30. Brad Banducci — Woolworths CEO
Brad Banducci is sometimes mistaken for just another guy in the aisles when he pays one of his signature visits to a local Woolies supermarket. And he likes it that way.
“There’s nothing I like better when I go into a store and someone says, ‘so who are you?’, and I say ‘I am a fellow Woolworths team member’,” he says.
The Woolworths chief executive’s modesty belies his influence.
His company has about one third of the country’s groceries market and stocks the pantries and fridges of the nation, fills its eskys and supplies everything from kids’ clothes to soft furnishings.
The numbers tell the story. Woolworths reported $56.7 billion in revenue last financial year, and it has 201,000 employees and 29 million customers a week.
If there was any doubt about how close to home Woolworths comes to many Australians, consider this statistic: More than 90 per cent of Australians live within walking distance of one of its stores.
Its supermarket shelves are stocked with 35,000 products, while Dan Murphy’s and its other liquor outlets have 20,000 more, and the Big W chain offers 120,000 general merchandise items.
It has more than 10,000 suppliers, meaning its market muscle influences the financial fate of everyone in the supply chain from farmers to breweries to transport companies.
South African-born Banducci came to the top job in 2016, just in time to oversee the company’s humiliating capitulation to Bunnings in its battle over the home hardware market and the closure of the Masters chain, which he says costs the company $3 billion.
With the backing of chairman Gordon Cairns, Banducci led the company through those dark days, and other rough waters including last year’s unpopular plastic bag ban, to post a 12.5 per cent rise in profit last year to $1.72 billion.
29. Steve Smith — Former Australian Cricket Captain
The stain on Steve Smith’s clean-cut reputation from last year’s ball tampering scandal may never be fully removed but Australians love nothing better than a comeback.
The former Australian cricket skipper was the world’s best batsman but his influence has hit pause since he was banned for 12 months following his admissions in the South African debacle.
His importance has been underlined because the team’s poor results without him show just how valuable he is to Australian cricket, and by extension, national pride.
With a World Cup and Ashes series on the horizon, Smith has never been more needed than he is right now so expect the public and corporate sponsors to quickly forgive and forget his transgressions, especially when the runs flow and the ratings go through the roof.
No-one has come close to replicating his feats with the bat so he will resume his status as Australia’s premier batsman the moment he returns.
And although he won’t resume the captaincy after his comeback, there’s no doubt he’ll be the heartbeat of the team.
Every player in the Australian side has vouched for him and there’s still a widespread feeling that he was punished too harshly.
28. Marina Go — Businesswoman
On any given day you may find Marina Go introducing the Prime Minister at a charity breakfast, taking on the might of the NRL or at a roundtable discussion on ways to make Uber safe for women.
It’s the sheer diversity of her numerous roles and the opportunity to bring knowledge and contacts from one sphere to another that make her a mover and shaker.
Synergy is where the interaction or co-operation of two or more things combine to have an effect greater than the sum of their parts — Go is the living definition of that.
“There are lots of synergies at the top level of companies,” she says.
Go is on the boards of Energy Australia, luxury car dealer Autosports Group, 7-Eleven and environmentally focused packaging company Pro-Pac.
“They may seem like very different companies but there are common elements, for example the use of clean energy, that are relevant to them all.”
Go, who was editor of Dolly magazine at just 23 and went on to head Bauer Media, is still passionate about journalism.
“The media sector and the craft of journalism is still very important to me. That’s why I am a trustee of the Walkley Foundation, which is focused on encouraging and elevating quality journalism,” Go says.
She’s also chair of the advisory board for the Centre for Media Transition at UTS.
She chairs a string of charities and is passionate about finding a cure for ovarian cancer, which kills three women a day in Australia.
Her championing of women led to a role on PwC’s diversity board, and she is one of a few women in a high-profile position within the NRL.
In her spare time the married mother of two adult sons puts time into mentoring other women.
27. Anthony Albanese — Federal Labor Left powerbroker
The popularity of the man known universally as Albo is an annoying thorn in the side of Bill Shorten.
Anthony Albanese is among the most powerful figures in Labor’s left faction and only narrowly lost the 2013 leadership battle to Mr Shorten, who commands the right.
He has since fallen into line as a loyal foot soldier in the Opposition Leader’s inner circle and is the party’s spokesman for infrastructure and transport.
His authenticity appeals to die-hard ALP members, who backed him 60-40 over Shorten in the 2013 ballot.
Shorten prevailed thanks to higher caucus support.
26. Andrew Bogut — Sydney Kings star shooter
Andrew Bogut single-handedly put basketball back on the map in Australia with his signing to the Sydney Kings.
The former NBA champion’s return to Australia resulted in historic performances and record crowds.
The 34-year-old big man, who started playing in the NBA for the Milwaukee Bucks in 2005, is equally influential off the court.
Part of Bogut’s Kings’ contract includes ownership after his playing career ends but the former No. 1 NBA draft pick is already heavily involved.
He regularly takes charge of team and front office meetings and helps with marketing and corporate roles.
Bogut is also on the board of players advocate group the Australian Basketball Association, playing a powerful role in making key decisions for the sport.
Bogut, who won an NBA championship with the Golden State Warriors in 2015-16, topped Australian sport’s young rich list for 2018 and was 30th of stars aged under-40 with a wealth of $81 million.
25. Lucy McCallum — NSW Court of Appeal judge
Lucy McCallum believes there is more power in ideas and intellectual freedom than there is in wealth and knowing the right people.
McCallum started as a volunteer at Redfern Legal Centre while doing her law degree and is now the latest appointment to the influential NSW Court of Appeal.
“I don’t think you need to be rich to be powerful in Sydney,” Justice McCallum, 55, says.
On the way to the appeal court, the five-time marathon runner whose nickname is the Energiser Bunny has worked in commercial law, been a Commonwealth and Queensland prosecutor, helped expose James Hardie’s asbestos compensation fund and presided over the trial of Simon Gittany, who threw his girlfriend Lisa Harnum from his 15th floor balcony.
Throughout, she has lived by the belief that the law should serve the underprivileged — at one stage she did so much pro bono work her mother Anne was said to be concerned she would earn no income.
McCallum is widely tipped for a future on the High Court.
She likes to test people’s preconceptions that the law is black and white.
“What is satisfying about being a judge is that there is a lot of intellectual freedom,” she said.
One of her famous judicial remarks came during a sexual harassment case involving the law firm Clayton Utz and referred to emails sent by one of their then-lawyers, who she called “evidently no feminist”.
“In one of the emails, (the lawyer) speaks of ‘crazy single female chicks’ who ‘just need a good **** to get them back to normal’,” she wrote.
“It is difficult to decide whether it is more surprising that the remarks were made at all (after over a century of feminism) or that a lawyer recorded them in an email (after over seven centuries of subpoenas).”
24. Greg Combet — Chairman of Industry Super Australia and IFM Investors
He’s bookish, whippet thin and dressed smart casual in an open-collar shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
You’d never guess this quietly spoken, Rooty Hill born former Labor minister just became the most powerful Sydneysider in the $2.8 trillion superannuation sector.
Combet’s dual appointments late last year to chairman of Industry Super Australia — the peak lobby group representing the nation’s most powerful industry superannuation funds — and chairman of IFM investors — the gigantic investment vehicle underwritten by 27 of these funds — puts him in pole position to protect and/or reform this highly contested, extremely politicised and economically vital sector.
Combet’s ISA appointment means the former climate change minister is representing the interests of five million members of super funds including Australian Super, Hesta, Cbus and Hostplus.
That’s a lot of clout in parliament — and about $400 billion in the retirement savings of Australians.
And if the polls prove correct and a Labor government is elected, Combet’s influence only swells.
The former ACTU secretary goes way back with Bill Shorten and is close to Penny Wong, Tanya Plibersek, Chris Bowen, Bob Hawke, ACTU boss Sally McManus and Paul Keating.
If Shorten gets the keys to the Lodge, Combet’s number one priority of having workers’ superannuation contributions default only to the best performing funds — read industry funds — is a whole lot more likely to succeed than it would under a Scott Morrison government.
But with public opinion on the industry funds’ side after a clean bill of health from royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne, and potentially political friends in power, will Combet be an agent of change or chief protector of the current state of affairs.
“I’ve never just been a protector of the status quo in any role I’ve had,” Combet says.
“I will fight to protect what I believe is in the best interests of Australian working people, so safeguarding and being a custodian of the industry funds I take very seriously because they are demonstrably immensely important to working people.”
23. Matt Bekier — The Star Entertainment Group CEO
Not surprisingly for a casino tsar, Matt Bekier’s power and influence can be measured by the numbers.
The Star Sydney, the flagship of his Star Entertainment Group, employs more than half of its 9000 Australian employees and hosts 11 million visitors a year.
A quarter of all tourists to Sydney visit The Star at least once.
“We try to amplify what is important in Sydney,” Bekier says. “We make a difference to the community that we operate in because of our size.”
The Star’s event for the Super Bowl, which was played on a Monday morning Sydney time, attracted a whopping 50,000 people over the course of the day.
“That’s what we do, we can amplify these events,” he says. “We are seamlessly moving from the Lunar New Year, which is a big event in the Asian calendar, to the Mardi Gras.”
The Star Entertainment Group has seven hotels in Australia with five more under construction and another five on the drawing board, including a deluxe Ritz-Carlton in Sydney.
Bekier wants to provide Sydney with badly needed hotel rooms to ensure we can cope with the number of tourists who want to visit.
The Star is a sponsor of The Everest and pumps cash into attracting high-end Chinese visitors to come to the race and spend their time and money in Sydney.
“Australia has not grown its share of China tourism,” the Swiss born casino boss says.
“Switzerland gets the same number of Chinese visitors as Australia, which is ridiculous because it’s more expensive and further away.”
Building the hotel beds to accommodate those tourists and providing the promotions and incentives for them to come here is key to how Bekier believes he can use his power and influence to create more winners in the Australian economy.
22. Monica Barone — City of Sydney CEO
Once quoted as saying “If only I didn’t have to sleep, because then we could get so much more done,” Monica Barone works hard, with the confidence to achieve exactly what she wants.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore may be the face of the City of Sydney but Barone is the powerhouse behind her.
As the influential CEO of the City of Sydney Council since 2006, she has forged the city’s path to being both global and green.
She manages a workforce of about 3000 staff and contractors with an annual budget about $880 million and about $12 billion dollars of net assets including the council’s commercial property portfolio.
Under her leadership, the City of Sydney was the first Australian council to be certified as “carbon neutral”.
Last year, the council processed more than $3.5 billion of new development, unashamedly promoting the troubled light-rail project in the CBD and the $13 billion Green Square urban renewal site, housing 63,000 residents.
Behind the scenes, women now fill 47 per cent of all management positions at the council.
The holder of a masters in creative arts, theatre and performance, she spent 14 years performing and running a theatre company with her former husband before moving into local government at Warringah Council and then South Sydney.
As well as being a mother, her future involves overseeing a capital works program of $1.8 billion over the next 10 years and implementing the vision of Sustainable Sydney 2030.
What did she say about needing more hours in the day?
21. Ivan and Nathan Cleary — Penrith Panthers’ star player and coach
A new father-son combination will give the NRL one of its biggest storylines this year when Ivan Cleary returns to coach the Penrith Panthers.
Waiting for him will be son Nathan, at 21, the current NSW State of Origin halfback and one of the game’s most promising stars.
His dad’s decision at the end of last year to ditch the Wests Tigers with two years to run on his contract created controversy, given Ivan had been sacked by the Panthers in 2015. There is now pressure on both father and son to perform.
Ivan has built his reputation on his ability to rebuild clubs from the ground up.
Now his challenge is to turn Penrith’s massive potential into a premiership win.
► FRIDAY: Sydney’s Power 100 — 20 to 1
— Additional reporting: Matthew Benns, Janet Fife-Yeomans, Rose Brennan, Jonathon Moran, Anna Caldwell, Fatima Kdouh, Edward Boyd, Sheradyn Holderhead, Danielle Le Messurier, Jonathan Chancellor, Mark Morri, Julian Linden, Fiona Wingett, Lydia Pedrana and Paul Crawley.
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