Week 10: Emerging Leadership and Hard Truths
Joining a program for young Southeast Asian leaders, and facing some public transport realities in Sydney
This past week I’ve been involved in a project funded by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) called the Southeast Asia Emerging Leaders Program. DFAT have identified a number of brilliant young (ish) people from across the region, and from a number of different fields, and brought them Australia to participate in a series of workshops and events. I was invited along as a way of having some local input into these workshops, but also, as someone who DFAT thinks is kinda cool, to build relationships with the regional leaders of tomorrow.
The program began in Melbourne, and alongside a number of workshops included briefings from DFAT’s Melbourne office (an office required as most things of importance in Australia happen outside of Canberra), and from Global Victoria. The latter being the Victorian state government’s way of skirting around the federal government’s role of being responsible for foreign affairs (occasionally much to the dismay of Canberra).
Given that part of the program is also a cultural experience for the participants from Southeast Asia, we took a visit to the Ian Potter Centre – the National Gallery of Victoria’s gallery for Australian art. It has been several years since I’d been to this gallery, and after a recent re-formatting it tells an incredibly informative history of Australia and Melbourne through the art works. As someone who is usually very unimpressed by Australia due to its familiarity, this was very impressive and informative. I highly recommend it.
On Friday we had an incredible day-long workshop with the National Security College’s Futures Hub. This workshop aimed to get us to scrutinise how we think about global trends, how different trends intersect and compound, and how to think about policy outside of institutional silos. It was a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable day. Especially focusing on how global trends effect Southeast Asia as a region, as well as each individual country. The different expertise and nationalities of the group made for a range of keen insights, and perspectives I’d never considered.
Over the weekend we’ve have shifted location to Sydney where we will continue with various workshops and activities. During the week we will also be attending a formal event at the New South Wales Parliament House celebrating 50 years of ASEAN-NSW relations. Although as a building that looks like little more than a country pub I find it difficult to imagine it hosting anything formal at all.
Of course, being in Sydney the culture shock is stark. I’ve never sipped champagne on a yacht or thrown a frisbee on a beach, so I’m not quite sure how to blend in. Yet, for all my superior sniping at Sydney, yesterday I was confronted by something that shocked me deeply – the shape, colour scheme, and seat cover designs of Sydney’s trams are vastly superior to Melbourne’s.
This is incredibly difficult to admit, but as a public transport enthusiast I have to be honest about what I find in cities around the world. Even if this means giving credit to a city who we Melburnians have a long-standing animosity towards. Tensions can only be reduced between our two peoples with the acknowledgement of certain truths.
The design of Melbourne’s trams have been enduring irritant to me (and the trains are even worse). Melbourne has a huge soft power asset in the world’s largest tram network, but fails utilise this in a way that would boost the city’s reputation. As much as having Instagrammable assets in a city can seem gauche, it is the reality of how cities are now promoted, and how they can advance their influence.
Melbourne is the only city in Australia capable of having a “cool” reputation, like, say, Berlin or Copenhagen. Granted, this is a very low bar to clear. Australians are, in general, too sunfucked to think seriously about culture. You only need to put on a pair of trousers and closed-toe shoes to be deemed to have sophisticated taste.
Unfortunately, the Victorian government is staffed by a bunch of dingleberries who don’t really understand this, or understand what to do with it. It is incredibly low hanging fruit for the government to invest in compelling tram designs. To take design seriously and think about how the city should project itself to the world. Without the physical beauty of Sydney, Melbourne needs to be a city of ideas. Yet, when it comes to public transport, the city is being incredibly complacent. And, as embarrassing as it is to admit, Melbourne is being beaten by a beach resort masquerading as an urban environment.
In honour of my new Indonesian friends, here is some gamelan – Indonesia’s traditional percussive orchestras (and one of the great indigenous music of the world).