Sydney innovative? … pah-lease. Why 20-somethings give up.

By Christopher Hire On May 25th, 2007

I cannot understand the hubris and arrogance of the Sydney-centric universe in Australia. First, yesterday Iemma (state leader) said Sydney was Australia’s only global city. (Pity the trains don’t run, citizens can’t afford a house, food poisoning is a common occurence, and the police do nothing if you are burgled, green spaces are being ‘developed’. By global innovation standards Sydney is as backward as it gets. Of course it was not always so.)

Now those Masters of the Universe at Macquarie (Sydney’s MUM) who already own the airport, tollroads and one former premier have been trying to run the bid to buy Qantas, another national business to be driven for profit at citizens expense under Macquarie rein.

I know why Sydney is so over-priced, dirty, crowded and architecturally bland… they are copying London. This is where all the Investment Bankers spend most of their time, and as it’s the main English-speaking city in Europe, this is where all the Aussie ex-pats in b0anking end-up. and a little bit of New York too. (and not the good bits, as I love NYC).

I was particularly struck with the observation on the way to the airport, driving along the M1 and M5 expressways from Parramatta, past all the concrete, the bars, the brick and the unimaginative architecture. Past all the heavy industry, and the wasteland corridor of the soul, as all you see is brick, tar, asphalt and steel, with other vehicles playing dodgem cars, ducking and weaving out of traffic, in the mad dash elsewhere.

Are we GOING MAD? Where are we going in such a hurry? and Why are so many people disconnected and unhappy (as our global research has in preparing the Global Innovation Review 2007 has shown)

Social Disconnection is the key theme for the coming decade. Technology is a tool for mankind, a tool that is now operating man, rather than man using the tool.

I feel like I am in a vacuous corridor of the soul, a tunnel of concrete, steel and glass shaped by property developers, unimaginative government and investment bankers. A prison for the creative where the people eat each other alive for a few dollars, and everyone is getting a promotion climbing a steel and concrete monument to conceit, arrogance and greed, woven from a concrete and blood fabric of inequality.

I see ABSOLUTELY no artistic or redeeming beauty in Sydney on this drive, and THIS is the Sydney MOST people see, NOT the harbour city. Bricks, concrete, steel, industry, asphalt and cars, cars, cars. We are slowly strangling our world in SMOG, for what benefit? A USD $30,000 increase in house prices, so we can buy more over-priced meals, and YET more expensive houses, and YET more expensive cars. Really??

It’s inane and ridiculous and pointless. People are rearranging deckchairs, but not noticing they are on the Titanic. This is serious folks. We need to change our ways. We could start by getting rid of all the unneccessary plastic cr*p we buy. And we could stop driving everywhere, and the government at a state level could do something novel, adn TAKE RESPONSIBILITY for infrastructure like public transport.

Of course, the public have bought the frriiiieeedd chicken that ‘nothing can be done’. Oh really? Oh you mean the State govt’s bureaucrats do NOT want to take responsibility. OK. tell the truth, I know your dirty little secrets. State govt in Australia is an exercise in dodging responsibility and transferring it onto consultants.

Anyway none of this will change. And this is WHY the 20-something and uni generations are hedonistic, as they know they have NO real power to change. All the State governments will do is announce is an enquiry then wait for it to die down.

So what’s the point, but we’d better WISE UP. Because if it’s every man to the lifeboats, then we’d better be sure they are still on the boat, and it’s not an Investment Bank charging a toll on the lifeboats, before outsourcing delivery of said ‘lifeboat rescue function’ to the lowest bidder, and taking a huge service fee before the iceberg.

It stinks, and that is why the young generation have given up on politics. And I can’t say I blame them, democracy gives you the illusion of power.

Get yourself a lifeboat!
Christopher-the-Entertainment-Director-onboard

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Speaker. Author. Editor-In-Chief. Executive Director of Innovation, 2thinknow.