Economist.com Cities Guide: Sydney Briefing - January 2006

News this month

Swimming with sharks

The first days of summer usher in all sorts of annual traditions, such as swimmers flocking to the city's beaches, and warnings of potential shark attacks. Sydneysiders, usually relaxed about the prospect of a “Jaws”-style savaging (sharks have killed only 60 people off the coast of Australia in the last 50 years), were more on edge than usual in early January after the death of a 21-year-old woman, mauled by three sharks at a beach 1,000km north of Sydney. Closer to home, lifeguards cleared swimmers from the surf at Tamarama Beach, near Bondi, after a shark was spotted on January 10th.

These incidents reignited a perennial wrangle over whether stronger measures are needed to protect Sydney’s 34 surfing beaches. The New South Wales state government is reviewing the situation, following calls to restore aerial anti-shark patrols. Since 1950, a system of underwater nets has caught almost 12,000 sharks; yet 40% of those have been snared on the inland side, meaning sharks are easily breaching the mesh. Critics complain that the nets are also killing whales, dolphins and other non-predatory creatures.

Packer's last throw

Kerry Packer, one of the most imposing business figures in a city of lively characters, died on Boxing Day, aged 68. Mr Packer controlled Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL), which owns Channel Nine, Australia’s biggest and most successful commercial television network, and its largest magazine stable. With personal wealth estimated at A$7 billion ($5.25 billion), he died Australia’s richest man.

Mr Packer, a consummate high-roller, was a gambler to the end—just three days before he died, PBL bid A$780m for five-year television rights to the Australian Football League (AFL) competition, the highest-rated sport on local television. But on January 5th, the AFL awarded the rights to a rival television consortium of Channels Seven and Ten, which had matched the PBL offer, itself a record for Australian sports rights. Analysts reckon the price will limit the winners' capacity to compete with Channel Nine—precisely the outcome Mr Packer is suspected to have had in mind when he upped the bid stakes.

Fuelling the fire

As Sydneysiders braved a sweltering January, the city played host to an Asia-Pacific regional conference on climate change. The “Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate”, as the talkfest was grandly titled, comprised ministers from the United States, Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea, six countries responsible for almost half the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Alas, the event ended on January 12th without a plan for addressing the problem, with participants arguing that fossil fuels “underpin our economies”, and that industry should be left to set its own emissions-reduction goals.

Regional industry leaders welcomed the outcome, but WWF Australia, an environmental group, said the conference’s approach could mean a big rise in average global temperatures. In Sydney, the heat is on already—the New South Wales (NSW) Bureau of Meteorology announced that 2005 saw Sydney’s sunniest and second-hottest December on record. As bushfires raged in parts of NSW on January 1st, the temperature soared to 44ºC in Sydney’s centre, another record.

Road of death

Every January, thousands of Sydneysiders desert the city for summer holidays in seaside resorts along the Pacific Highway, the main road from Sydney to Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, almost 1,000km north. Astonishingly, the route between two of Australia’s leading cities remains one of the country’s worst death traps, killing up to 50 motorists a year. Much of the road is a decrepit single carriageway in each direction; about 85% of fatal accidents happen on these narrow sections.

An end to the carnage may be in sight, however. In late December, the federal and NSW state governments jointly announced a task force to examine turning the highway into a privately run freeway. This is not the first time the government has planned to rebuild the Pacific Highway as a dual-carriage expressway, but never has there been co-operation between the federal officials and the state. With the speedy completion of privately funded road tunnels in Sydney as a model, the scheme would charge motorists tolls to fund the reconstruction. But the plan is controversial—motoring organisations have long argued that the Pacific Highway should be classified as a national road, which would qualify it for an upgrade using public funds.

Back on track

Clover Moore, Sydney’s Lord Mayor, is stepping up her campaign to tackle Sydney’s transport problems by reintroducing light rail to the city centre. Ms Moore has seized on a report recommending that the New South Wales state government build a loop of trams linking Central railway station and Circular Quay, two transport hubs, along either George Street or Castlereagh Street. Although the state government originally commissioned the report, it kept it secret, but the Sydney Morning Herald reported its findings on January 9th.

The report said a light-rail system could deal with central Sydney's expected growth far better than the existing system of buses and underground trains. If built, the system would recall Sydney's extensive tram network, closed down in the 1960s to make room for more cars. A tentative revival started a few years ago, with a privately run tram system linking Central with the Sydney Fish Markets and inner western suburbs, to a warm public response.

See our guide to getting around Sydney.

Catch if you can

January 2006

Sydney Festival 2006

Until February 19th 2006

After 30 years, the Sydney Festival has grown to become Australia’s largest annual celebration of music, drama, dance and visual arts, with the city's parks and gardens working as inventive venues alongside theatres and galleries. The Domain, on the edge of the city centre, offers “Gershwin’s World”, a free outdoor concert of George Gershwin’s music with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. For “Back Home”, a play about suburban men facing up to their lives, the audience must seek out the unlikely stage of a backyard in Blacktown, a western suburb.

Indoors, highlights include “About An Hour”, a series of short performances of drama, dance and music introduced by Fergus Linehan, an Irish writer who became the festival’s artistic director last year. Elvis Costello, a veteran British rocker, will perform three separate concerts: one with Steve Nieve, a long-time collaborator; another with the Brodsky Quartet, a chamber music group; and finally with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.

To book, tel: +61 (02) 9266 4890. See the festival website for bookings, full programme and venues, and to register for a daily e-mail update.

More from the Sydney cultural calendar