Crime, Cash, Cars and the Cold…Why Sydney will always be more popular than Melbourne

IF FURTHER proof were needed that the ABS data is flawed, it’s the suggestion that people would rather live in Melbourne than Sydney, writes James Morrow.

• CENSUS 2016: Sydney is now more Asian than European
• CENSUS 2016: What you don’t know about your country

IF ANY further were proof needed that the data from last year’s innovative, agile and thoroughly cooked census collection should be treated with as much caution as one of those “Hillary will romp it” polls out of the US last year, here it is:

According to numbers dropped by the Australian Bureau of Statistics today, Melbourne is growing faster than Sydney, with an average of 1,859 people setting up in the Victorian capital every week from overseas or interstate versus 1,656 people moving here.

Perhaps, but it seems unlikely that so many people would give up the delights of the Harbour City in favour of Hipsterville-by-the-Sea.

Because when it comes to Sydney versus Melbourne, it all comes down to the five Cs: Crime, Cash, Cars, Cold … and Coffee.

The Harbour City in Summer, a sight to behold. Picture: Destination NSW

First the crime.

One of the first things anyone looking at a potential place to live will ask is, “Is it safe?”

On any measure, Melbourne fails compared to Sydney.

Google “Melbourne crime” and you’ll see one horror story after another.

Victorian Premier Dan Andrews thank his lucky stars for bank-taxing, blackout-having South Australia right next door as a point of comparison.

Serial youth offenders being bailed again and again. Jewellery stores robbed in broad daylight. Suburban carjackings. Rioting Sudanese youths busting up the Moomba Festival. And on and on.

Here in Sydney, however, the story is entirely different with BOCSAR statistics showing most major crime categories falling or, at worst, remaining stable.

Violence flares at the Moomba Festival in Melbourne, Picture Yuri Kouzmin

But what if you want to take your chances simply because of the second C, cash?

After all, the median house price in Sydney is around $1.15 million; down in Dodge City-on-the-Yarra, it’s around $826,000. Cheap, right?

Well, maybe. But keep in mind that some of those apparent savings are distorted by Melbourne’s market for cheap, tiny apartments: Three quarters of new one-bedders being built in Tiny-town-by-the-Bay are under 50 square metres, or about seven by seven metres big.

Point of comparison: the national minimum standard for a prison cell is 12.75 metres, though those units have an entirely different definition of “en suite”.

And to come back to crime, what you save on a deposit you’d better put towards window bars, security cameras, and his-and-hers Louisville Sluggers to keep by the bedside. In March, the Victorian government released statistics showing aggravated burglaries climbing 40 per cent over the previous year.

Cars? Again, it’s a no-brainer if you like to live in a city you can get around.

Sydney is awash with the construction of new motorway projects to cut congestion.

While the NSW government is going great guns building congestion-clearing road projects like NorthConnex and WestConnex, in Victoria, the local left-wing Labor government is spending over $1 billion — that’s billion with a B — to cancel the East West Link.

It’s the sort of behaviour that must make Victorian Premier Dan Andrews thank his lucky stars for bank-taxing, blackout-having South Australia right next door as a point of comparison.

And then there’s the cold.

Sydneysiders, did you enjoy that winter, all three weeks of it?

While here throwing on a scarf and a beanie when the mercury drops below 15 is nothing more than a fashion statement, in Melbourne, people actually have to rug up against winds that have only made the briefest of stops in Tasmania on their way up from the South Pole.

As I type these words, it’s a brisk 14 degrees in Sydney. In Melbourne, a bone-chilling 8.

Finally, there’s the coffee.

When it comes to coffee, well … yeah, Melbourne’s got us there.

But unless the Census managed to capture some particularly high proportion of new Melburnians whose sole goal in life is to be authentically caffeinated, I reckon these numbers deserve a second look.

OK, Melbourne has us on the coffee. Picture: Sarah Matray