Steve Price: Why the Melbourne-Sydney rivalry is stronger than ever

If you need any convincing that Melbourne and Sydney are polar opposites, just ask Victorians what they think of Tony Abbott.

Crossing the border from Victoria into New South Wales seven hours after it opened on Monday this week, I realised I hadn’t been in Sydney for eight months.

The COVID-19 virus plus a move south in March meant what had been a weekly commute between Australia’s two biggest cities had ended.

Arriving back in inner city Sydney this week I also realised that Melbourne doesn’t really get Sydney and Sydney certainly doesn’t get Melbourne.

The two-city rivalry is now worse than ever and whatever you believe, don’t believe that Sydney people don’t think about which city is the better place to live.

Sydney versus Melbourne and the differences between the two places has only been sharpened by lockdown, isolation, hotel quarantine and the whole virus experience.

Victorians, but Melburnians in particular, have been shunned by other states.

Victorians have been locked out, locked down and looked down on by everyone else in Australia, but especially by Sydney people.

After inflicting virus-carrying passengers from the Ruby Princess Cruise ship on the rest of the country by simply letting them disembark to all corners of the nation, Sydney quickly stamped COVID-19 out and got on with living.

Masks were never a thing and forget about being locked up at home — it never happened in Sydney.

Victorians, and Melburnians in particular, were seen as virus carrying outcasts and banned from every state in Australia.

As Melbourne suffered 819 tragic deaths and the collapse of Melbourne’s vibrant major events and hospitality industry, with everything from the March Formula 1 Grand Prix to an entire AFL season, and a Melbourne Cup with no crowd, Sydney just got on with life.

For me it again raises the question of how two reasonably close Australian cities — geographically — can be so different.

Why is the Melbourne-Sydney rivalry so strong, and at times so bitter?

Having lived and worked in both — Sydney for two eight-year stints between 2002 and 2009 and again between 2012 and 2019, and Melbourne from 1980 to 2002, and now back again — I reckon I know.

Take talkback radio, an industry I have a fair bit of knowledge about having presented the Drive and Night-Time shows in Melbourne, and Breakfast, Morning, Afternoon, Drive and Nights in Sydney.

Radio 3AW has been the dominant station in Melbourne since the early nineties. Leading personalities Ross Stevenson and Neil Mitchell are untouchable and seen as the voices of their town.

I am friendly and have worked with both. Neither would work for the Sydney audience and Neil, in particular, has a distaste for anything and anyone north of the Murray River.

He labels Sydney people and Sydney media people in particular as “spivs”.

Ross is a little more forgiving but often refers to “well known Sydney racing identities.”

In Sydney the two stations I worked for — 2UE and 2GB — featured larger than life personalities Alan Jones, now on Sky TV, and John Laws. As successful and talented as both are, they wouldn’t and haven’t worked on radio in Melbourne.

Melbourne audiences just won’t cop the bombastic hectoring from Jones, or the country and western-tinged schtick from Laws.

Politics between the two cities brings an even starker contrast.

Politics between the two cities brings a starker contrast. Picture: Joel Carrett

Premier Dan versus the Armenian migrant daughter Gladys. Andrews, compared with Berejiklian, is a control freak.

The NSW Premier gets on with the job picks competent people — like Police Commissioner Mick Fuller who fixed the cruise ship disaster — and lets them run things.

Her Liberal/National administration has been efficiently building infrastructure upgrades for years, including a network of road tunnels, new heavy rail projects, a light rail system and sports stadium upgrades.

The Andrews Victorian Labor Government talks the talk and has started significant projects, but have wasted years talking and planning, but not building.

Despite this Victorians would, according to all published polls, re-elect Dan Andrews in a canter. Victoria and especially suburban Melbourne is the national success story for the ALP.

New South Wales, by contrast, is blue Liberal delivering Scott Morrison, a Sydney boy from the Sutherland Shire, into the Lodge.

As history shows the last four Australian Liberal Prime Ministers — John Howard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and now Morrison — are from Sydney.

And if you needed any more convincing that Melbourne and Sydney people are like black and white, ask Victorians what they thought of Tony Abbott.

The fact Abbott was a volunteer firefighter and lifeguard only bought derision, not respect.

In 2002 when I first went to Sydney to take over from Alan Jones on 2UE’s breakfast shift, Sydney was still being run by a Labor Government. The then premier Bob Carr, who had copped a fair belting on air from Jones, was keen to make contact.

A few weeks in he rang out of the blue and asked me to join him for lunch in the Premier’s suite in Macquarie Towers. Feeling quite important I turned up on time and had a very pleasant lunch where the most powerful man in NSW wanted me to rate his ministry and the job his ministers were doing.

I must have gone OK because again out of the blue the phone rang this time a dinner appointment with Bob and his whip-smart wife Helena.

AFL is what holds Melbourne together. Picture: Jason Edwards

When my ratings at breakfast didn’t soar, and Alan Jones switched stations very successfully, the invitations from Premier Carr dried up – very Sydney.

It was an insight though into how Sydney does business so very differently to Melbourne.

Sydney is a tougher town to work in than Melbourne and Sydney people don’t take easily to Victorians taking on jobs normally reserved for Sydneysiders.

Just ask Eddie McGuire who was a left field choice to run the Nine Network — a job he would have carried out brilliantly. He was virtually run out of town by hostile media coverage of his efforts.

People ask me which of the two cities I would prefer to live in and I always answer that both are great places to live. I describe Melbourne as a village held together by the glue of AFL.

Sydney in contrast is about six different villages all throwing rocks at one another while never actually visiting. Try getting an Eastern suburbs resident in Sydney to cross the harbour bridge — it doesn’t happen.

One would hope the COVID emergency would bring Australia’s two great capitals together more, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Just take the Tourism Australia campaign featuring Hamish Blake and his wife Zoe Foster-Blake. Victorians like its quirky take on travel resuming — my Sydney friends reckon it’s lame.

Sydney is more your Lara Bingle “where the bloody hell are you” types, a travel advertisement by the way, cooked up by that Sydney bloke Scott Morrison, the current PM.

With the borders between our two great states now open can I suggest a two-way exchange with Sydney people taking in COVID-19 free Melburnians, and vice versa.

My Wednesday night sail on board a racing yacht tuning up for the Sydney to Hobart made me realise what a spectacular place Sydney is, but I can’t wait to get back to my reserved seats at the MCG to watch the Tigers in 2021.

Originally published as Steve Price: Why the Melbourne-Sydney rivalry is stronger than ever