Inside the plan to light up the Opera House sails
This story did not begin when Alan Jones interviewed Opera House boss Louise Herron. The idea that the government was pressured into supporting Racing NSW because of comments from the radio king don’t fit the facts. The government supported the promotion all along, writes Anna Caldwell.
Opinion
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AT a time when Sydney should be taking the fight up to Melbourne, Hong Kong and even New York, this city is in a self-destructive battle with no one but itself.
That’s one fact that both sides of this Opera House debate can agree on.
But from that point on, the facts of this debate have been consistently mischaracterised in a bid to stir outrage over the idea of projecting a light show promoting a Sydney event onto the sails of the iconic Sydney Opera House.
Make no mistake. This story did not begin on Friday morning when Alan Jones interviewed Opera House boss Louise Herron.
This tale goes right back to September 20, when the NSW government was lambasted for failing to use its assets to promote this great city.
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It was that day that Racing NSW boss and NRL commissioner Peter V’landys — a highly respected marketer and businessman — made the stinging assessment on the front page of The Daily Telegraph.
“Melbourne has the smelly Yarra river, it’s got the most dreary city on Earth with the worst weather yet NSW bows and scrapes to it all the time,” he told me.
“We consume the Melbourne Cup, the AFL Grand Final, the Australian Tennis Open.
“In stark contrast Sydney has the most beautiful city in the world and without any doubt the best harbour in the world and we do nothing to drive our own assets.”
These were comments that received wide support. In fact, some of the very Twitter warriors now hysterical over an Opera House light show agreed with V’landys the day I reported his comments.
The truth was the V’landys spray was embarrassing for the government. Not because of racing or Alan Jones. But because this is a government that prides itself on tourism and the economy.
A government that wants Sydney to be a world class city with world class events that are promoted as such.
A key fact that has been missed in the Opera House debate is this: In the days after the V’landys spray, Berejiklian formed the opinion something needed to be done to better promote Sydney’s Everest.
Why shouldn’t we get behind this massive race, just as Melbourne gets behind its Melbourne Cup, she thought.
Berejiklian said nothing publicly the next day, allowing Labor leader Luke Foley to seize the momentum and pledge that if he was Premier he would have a three point plan to promote the Everest in a much stronger fashion.
Behind the scenes, Berejiklian knew the cries to promote the city’s events more effectively had merit and she contemplated what to do.
So too did her ministers, who remarked privately how humiliating the spray was for a city that should be holding itself up there with the best of them.
And so Berejiklian asked sports minister Stuart Ayres to work on a solution.
The Daily Telegraph reported the role of Ayres on Friday when it broke the story about the stoush.
He took the idea of the Opera House promotion to V’landys and then acted, along with Arts Minister Don Harwin, in a peacemaker role to make a promotion happen.
Berejiklian supported the idea, and told Ayres to sort it out.
It was known then that the Opera House had been used to promote other big sporting events like the Ashes and the World Cup. Not to mention a slew of other events. This was not an outrageous proposition. This was not without precedent.
By this point, in the government’s mind, it was just a question of how the light show would look.
Which brings us to the greatest factual mischaracterisation of this entire debate.
The idea that the government was pressured into supporting Racing NSW because of comments from radio king Alan Jones don’t fit the facts. The government supported the promotion all along.
Berejiklian directly intervened in the conversations last week when negotiations still weren’t sorted.
In fact, last Thursday night, as The Daily Telegraph prepared to break the story of the stoush with the Opera House over the plans, the government was on the brink of finalising the deal.
Reporting that the deal was at risk of collapse because the Opera House rejected key facets of it, I was told to keep my phone handy because it was hoped the promotion would be agreed upon that very night.
It wasn’t. But it was always going to be, because that was the Premier’s plan.
That final overnight delay was partly because Berejiklian, in classic Berejiklian consensus-driven style, wanted Opera House CEO Louise Herron to agree to the plan of her own volition. She did not want to force the matter. When it became clear Herron would not budge, the Premier made her direction.
This is Berejiklian to a tee. She is a consultative leader. She makes much of saying she’ll listen to everyone — and she does just that. She talks and negotiates so that in the end, everyone feels like they play a role and everyone is on board.
This makes her mostly liked by her colleagues, it means she usually makes decisions that have all stakeholders in the tent — but at times, this approach can also look weak and dithering to those watching and waiting.
This was one of those occasions, and a similar pattern was evident in the Perrottet-Williams dispute last month.
A clear misunderstanding of what was going on behind the scenes has severely marred this debate.
We are right to have a contest of ideas about how the Opera House should be used.
But it is false to suggest conspiracy theories about why this promotion came about.
Ayres in particular has been consistent in wanting Sydney to be the events capital of the world.
This is the same ethos he took to the debate over stadiums.
Ayres might take a pummelling in the public arena when people disagree with how we make Sydney the events capital of the world — and he is one minister who is happy to have that fight.
If we want politicians in our state not to have a contest of ideas because they’ll offend someone or disrupt something this city will become a backwater.
We expect our leaders to lead.
We expect them to come up with big ideas that set this city ahead and on the right path.
Let’s have a contest of ideas when they do that. But let’s get all the facts straight first.