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In these troubled times, we could all do with a good laugh. Well, here’s a real knee-slapper for you:
Melbourne has been crowned the best city in the world for 2026 by a global lifestyle media brand for its diversity, liveliness and vibrant cultural scene.
What on earth were they comparing it to? Invercargill? Kabul?
Even some Victorians aren’t buying it.
Even as a sixth-generation Victorian, I had never imagined the Exhibition Buildings outshone the Elysee Palace in Paris. Let alone that today’s grimy, grotty monument to imagined greatness by the Yarra would beat the rest of the planet […]
This unlikely triumph of Melbourne is so embarrassingly implausible it would make a depraved real estate agent blush. Do we really believe Melbourne is cooler than Rio, more culinary than Paris, more cosmopolitan than New York? Tragically, in the be-sandalled terraces of Fitzroy, they probably do.
In fact, it’s the arrogantly deluded self-regard of Melbournians that’s the key to understanding this clearly ludicrous award. This is not, as you’d imagine, the dispassionate judgement of a panel of experts at least trying to be objective. Far from it.
But the methodology of this ranking does accidentally reveal something profound about Melburnians. The way it worked was that over a thousand citizens of each city were invited to give it a ranking of niceness. Could there be any doubt that the uniform self-regard of our southern cousins would carry them across the line? […]
One terrifying finding was that Melbourne’s stellar position was driven by the ideologically impeccable but perennially grasping Gen Z. Victoria can look forward to hipster governments focused on the philosophical works of Greta Thunberg and ever more inventive ways to confiscate the assets of their Boomer parents.
This is the same city, remember, that’s resolutely self-flagellated by voting in 25 years of Labor government. That, just 30 years after the previous Labor government near-bankrupted the place.
If, like some sadistic archaeologist, you want to find an exemplar of a failed city-state, why go to Pompei. Melbourne is a theme park of failure.
The Allan government is a desperately unsuccessful spin-off from Daniel Andrews Inc. It is not so much that it is doomed to preside over the fatal financial collapse of its state. It is the fact that it knows it and has no idea what to do. It looks at you with the dull-eyed hopelessness of some wounded creature saying “Please kill me now”.
The worst bit is that Melbourne has been here only 30 years ago with the debt-laden capsize of the Cain-Kirner government.
Still, you can’t deny that Melbourne isn’t without its own brands of excitement.
Thrill! as you get your hand hacked off at the wrist by a gang of African teenagers who’ve taken a fancy to your phone. Marvel! at the daily Running of the Machetes in the vast, soulless glass-and-concrete arenas of Melbourne’s shopping centres. Gasp! as junkies collapse in piles of faeces outside the heroin injecting rooms (located conveniently near public transport and primary schools). Cheer! as you watch elderly people slowly expire over a course of days on a trolley in the hospital car-park.
Apparently, the city’s coolest suburb is East Brunswick. As a student and young academic, I lived in Brunswick over 12 years. I rejoice in the fact that it then focused on its historic industries: brickmaking, oven manufacturing and gangland murders.
As a young man, I, too, lived in Brunswick. I lasted six months, before a literal invasion of termites drove me screaming out of Melbourne. The termites in Brunswick these days are even bigger and uglier than ever. Once upon a time, Chopper Read was chased down Sydney Rd, Brunswick’s main thoroughfare, by a knife-wielding girlfriend.
The greatest danger in Sydney Rd these days is being skittled on the footpath by an abusive pansexual riding an electric bike bedecked with a Palestinian flag and a climate sticker.
I’d rather take my chances with Uncy Chop-chop.
