Investment banker John Wylie honoured: ‘I am immensely optimistic about the future of Australia’

John Wylie, the Melbourne investment banker awarded the Companion in the Order of Australia, says Australians worry too much about their shortcomings.

Past president of the Library Board of Victoria John Wylie in the LaTrobe Reading Room. Picture: David Caird

John Wylie says he is optimistic about the future despite the constant challenges of the pandemic.

Wylie, the Melbourne investment banker and philanthropist, who has been awarded the highest honour of AC in the Australia Day honours, said he felt Australians worried too much about their shortcomings and what other people around the world thought of them.

“I am immensely optimistic about the future of Australia,” he said. “As a nation we tend to dwell on the negatives.

“We have seen some of the challenges in the way our federation works over the last two years … the decades ahead are a time of immense opportunity.”

Wylie, a Rhodes scholar, worked for some of Wall Street’s top deal-makers – Bruce Wasserstein and Joseph Perella – before coming back to Australia and founding the Tanarra Group, which manages some $2.5bn in funds. He said Australia was a country many people around the world wanted to move to.

“We are going to have a growing society in a world where the population in some countries is shrinking,” he said. “We are ­blessed with all sorts of natural ­resources.” He said Australian business was in the best shape it had been in his 30 year-plus working career. “The digital revolution has broken down a lot of the tyranny of distance that made it hard for Australian companies to expand internationally and take on global markets,” he said.

“Now you are seeing the rise of companies like Atlassian, Afterpay and Canva. We have a new generation of fearless young business leaders coming through.”

Wylie, a former chairman of the Australian Sports Commission and Melbourne Cricket Ground Trust, said the stresses of recent years had reinforced the importance of sport in the community.

“There is nothing like sport, which connects Australians,” he said. “It is not just something which gives us inspiration and happiness, it is an unparalleled force for social change.”

He said he was proud of the emergence of women’s sport in Australia as well as the increasing attention to paralympic sport.

“The rise of the paralympic sport movement is one of the greatest forces for good in the last 30 years,” he said.

Wylie, who is a past president of the Library Board of Victoria, said the social pressures of the pandemic had highlighted the importance of arts and culture in the social fabric of Australia.