monica barone - committee for economic development of

Monica BaroneChief Executive Officer

towards an ethical,

sustainable &

resilient city…..

I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting today on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you.

Today I am going to speak about how we, at the City of Sydney strive to achieve an Ethical, Sustainable and Resilient City. I will share what we have done, and what we are looking to do in the future as we commence the community engagement to move from our long standing Sustainable Sydney 2030 plan towards our new 2050 plan.

I will reflect on what we have learned along the way and offer some suggestions about what we might do differently if we are going to meet the challenges of the future.

But most importantly I will consider what it is about the way we lead and plan that means despite the many committed and intelligent people that live and work in our great city and relative wealth and resources, we are not yet convincingly tackling the issues that will make us sustainable and resilient.

/ Monica Barone, Chief Executive Officer – City of Sydney 2

We know it and our communities know it, and I am convinced many of us that are privileged to be leaders in this great city, particularly a generation of younger emerging leaders, know it and want to do better.

My approach today will be to suggest that the leadership challenge has been exacerbated because the way we govern our city is largely absent of the bookends of values and accountability, and definitely absent of a clear line of sight or narrative to connect the two.

I will explore some examples and then conclude will a short discussion about leadership and governance with an encouragement to move into what I hope will be an era of stewardship.


An economy where no one and nothing is wastedBliss Browne - Imagine Chicago

At the City of Sydney we have steadfastly adhered to a plan, an operating environment and an organisational culture that explicitly moves through the continuum from values to accountability.

We express this in many ways – but this is not one of them. This is a maxim that I have always loved, and I display it simply to underscore my personal approach to the work I do each day to achieve an ethical, sustainable and resilient city.


Sydney – A Global City

At the City of Sydney, however, the way we have expressed the continuum from values to accountability is through our Sustainable Sydney 2030 plan.

Under the leadership of Clover Moore, we developed our plan with the community. We did this by asking a very simple question – what do you value?, and then set about writing a plan that demonstrated how we would protect, maintain and enhance what people value as the city grows and changes. That is what a city plan is.

We embedded the values in the way we described what our city would be if those values were protected; we expressed how we would do this through targets, actions and our long term financial plan; and we hold our selves accountable by regularly very publicly and honestly reporting how we are going against the plan – even when we are failing.

The Sustainable Sydney 2030 narrative starts with our logo.

Our logo is a series of intertwined circle representing that to become sustainable and resilient is an iterative and continuous process where the threads of the cultural, environmental, economic and social are brought together.


But of course it also symbolise the world we all share and reminds us that we are all in this together and that ultimately the risks arising from social disharmony, economic disparity and the impacts of climate change will affect us all.

I think that if we are true to ourselves we know this. We know that we can’t be shielded from global impacts whether they be conflicts abroad, or climate change. We know we cannot use and waste more resources than we have before scarcity is felt even in our prosperous country and city, and we know that however much we try we cannot transfer the risk to others forever. Dirty water and air will eventually reach us. Climate change is now.

And perhaps most importantly we know that these underlying threats cause fear, confusion and anxiety in our community which is in turn exploited by the types of leaders that we do not want to entrust with our children’s futures.

So today I am going to spend a few minutes on just some of the things I think we should be focusing on to achieve the clear line of sight from values to accountability to create an Ethical, Sustainable and Resilient City.


Social inclusionPeople centred decision makingSustainable financeLeadership

They are:

• Social inclusion and justice

• Using resilience planning and People Centred decision making to diminish the power of ideology

• Supporting the Development of a Sustainable Finance Road map

• Nurturing a style of leadership, that supports our communities to accept and adapt to rapid change and privileges the concept of stewardship.


Resilient SydneyStrategy

Bara by Judy WatsonSocial Inclusion

So firstly to social inclusion and justice. Resources in Cities like all places that humans inhabit have always been contested. In Sydney the contest for land is the one we feel most sharply, but in time we may be in a contest for water and clean air.

Racism (with is good friends nationalism, popularism and protectionism) is generally the weapon of choice when the contest begins. When we cast groups as ‘other’ we are able to disregard their humanity and in doing so find it possible to cast aside their rights.

A respectful, inclusive and fair city is one where the citizens have the confidence and capacity to look at the world through the eyes of others, and a commitment to honour the full humanity of all.

But how can you consider the experience of others if you are not exposed to it?It is said that history is written by the victors, those with the power. In Sydney, like many cities, that history is written across the landscape through the street names and signs, the architecture, the monuments and the sculptures.

So one way that a city can contribute to social inclusion is to enable all the stories of the city to be told.


The Eora Journey, overseen by our long standing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander advisory panel, is the name given to everything the City of Sydney does to address reconciliation.

One aspect of the Eora Journey is – The Eora Journey in the Public Domain. Curated by Hetti Perkins, this program addresses the fact that this most significant aspect of our history has been erased from view.

The picture on the screen is of an artwork, not yet installed, by renowned Aboriginal artist, Judy Watson. It is one of a series of works, some already completed, that the City of Sydney is commissioning, as part of the Eora Journey in the public domain program.

Part of our commitment to our community is that we will bring the whole community on the journey, however long it takes.

We would be heartbroken if the installation of a major work led to increased disharmony and racism. So, as good city governments do, we work very hard and very patiently to ensure that every addition to the collection contributes to true reconciliation. Which is why the major Eora Journey commissions have each taken almost 10 years to realise.


This work was commissioned in response to the brief – “a monument to the Eora”. This work is inspired by the fishhooks that women made and used to sustain their families for over 60 000 years. What I love about this work is that it stands proud and strong, but is also very feminine in its circular form. To me It says “we are still here”. And importantly its location, at Tarpeian Way, places it in a conversation with Government House, a significant symbol of colonisation.

So the first point I am making is that an Ethical, Sustainable and Resilient city is one that has the maturity, confidence and ‘know how’ to enable all stories to be told, because we can’t achieve social inclusion if we don’t look through the eyes of others, and we can’t look through the eyes of others if we don’t have access to their stories.

But as leaders we also have to accept that looking through the eyes of others can be extremely unsettling. It shakes our foundations, it challenges the coherence of our identities, it causes social anxiety which of course is exploited by some leaders, - and it affects us in this way because to truthfully and humbly look through the eyes of others requires a recognition that to address injustice we have to be prepared to transfer or relinquish power. This is what it really means if you say you value inclusion. And as leaders we need to support our communities to see this as an opportunity, because great leaders value diversity and commit to policies and practices that share or transfer power.



People centred decision making

The second point I want to discuss is how we can use resilience planning to achieve values focused People Centred decision making and diminish the power of ideology.

Every day we hear people in our community express their growing dissatisfaction with the way decisions are being made by our elected representatives.

The belief that governments are being driven by ideology rather that the public interest is leading to high levels of distrust.

Sadly it is easy to point to examples where ideology or worse still vested interest has driven a decision.

What I can say that cities are doing a great job of addressing this.


For over 10 years the City of Sydney has been a member of C40, which is a global network of cities working on climate action, and more recently a member of the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities. I have had the honour of attending their conferences during this time.

When you walk into a C40 Mayors Summit, you are in the company of hundreds of Mayors and elected officials from cities from all over the world, but you will never have any idea if they are politically from the right, left, green or independent, because in this context it is unimportant.

At these conferences the only thing discussed by the leaders is what is threatening the well-being, health and prosperity of their cities, because when you are genuinely engaged in ensuring that clean water will come out of the tap, the power will not cut out, the air is clean, that children are healthy, that women are safe and that the infrastructure to get the goods to the market is resilient - there is no time for ideology.

The purpose of the C40 and 100 Resilient Cities collaboration is to support cities to find affordable solutions to the challenges of rapid urbanisation in a time of climate change.

And all the Mayors that are genuine about the future of their cities are on board.


I have to say, however that the most interesting work over the past few years has come from the Rockefeller 100 Resilience Cities. Where C40 has been focused on mitigation the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities has given us a methodology that combines values and evidence to achieve People Centred decision making and investment.


Maria Fernanda Cardoso – Where I Live I Will Grow, Green Square

This is a picture of another of our public art commissions. “While I live I will grow” is a work by Maria Fernada Cardosa that can be experienced at Green Square. It too reflects the circular nature of life, this time, through the seasons, It includes a number of boab trees that refer to the water recycling and harvesting projects that are integral to the Green Square Town Centre and remind us that nature adapts and finds ways to adjust to scarcity.

Resilience planning is focused on adaptation, it uses a community risk assessment methodology to put people at the centre of decision making.

I will give one example of how using Resilience as a lens helps put people at the centre and takes the ideology out. The example is Energy Security. We all know that cities are extremely vulnerable to energy insecurity. Energy outages can imperil lives, and severely impact on livelihoods.

At the same time as achieving secure energy however we need to transition to cleaner energy.

These two objectives have to be reconciled and not presented as dichotomous.

There are three key things we have to do to reduce emissions and achieve energy security.


Demand Management, a green grid and decentralised supply.

Many, particularly those in business are working on demand management through efficiency.

The grid is greening, and of course we wish our governments could be more helpful.

But the bit in the middle however, the decentralisation of supply still needs a lot of attention in Australian cities.

In 2013 when the City of Sydney adopted its decentralised energy master plan, the drivers were, to reduce emissions by introducing decentralised cleaner energy, and offset the costs of this infrastructure by reducing the scale, and timing of the expansion of the transmission and distribution infrastructure.

But today, using a resilience lens we would introduce different criteria to influence the priority of where decentralised energy infrastructure would go.

Our earlier mapping used emissions reduction or mitigation as a key driver, today our resilience mapping would be more greatly influenced by community vulnerability and a need to achieve adaptation.


Today we are asking ourselves which communities are most vulnerable in a blackout, which critical services and infrastructure must be prioritised if restrictions are imposed.

And this thinking in turn provides an evidence base for infrastructure investment, and helps put people and not ideology at the centre.

The Sydney Resilience Office, hosted by the City of Sydney, has developed the Sydney’s first metropolitan Resilience Plan. It covers all aspects of Resilience, across the 4 pillars of sustainability, Culture, Environment, Economy and Society. In relation to the environment our wonderful Chief Resilience Officer Beck Dawson, had the wisdom to name the environmental chapter – “Live with the Climate” - which brilliantly took out the ideology and put people in the centre.

No leader, whatever their view on Climate Change, can argue with that.

No Mayor, whatever their political persuasion can deny that it is their job to help their communities through droughts, floods, heatwaves and storms.

Our Resilience Plan puts what people value at the centre, and holds us accountable to deliver against an agreed plan.


sustainable finance

This is not an artwork commissioned by the City of Sydney. This is one of my favourite novels –Howards End, which features one of my favourite literary heroines – Margaret Schlegel.

The Schlegels represent a feminised naive ‘do gooder’ socialism, the Wilcox’s a masculine, strident and unrestrained capitalism.

The Schlegels derive their inspiration from artists and philosophers, the Wilcox’s bestow their admiration on engineers and industrialists. “You certainly take the poetry out of things” says Margaret. “What could be more wonderful that a railway that creates thousands of jobs and brings prosperity to the nation” replies Henry, or words to that effect.Of course they are both right and they are both wrong.

When Margaret Schlegel marries the head of the Wilcox family the two ways of seeing the world are crashed together. It is Margaret who skilfully and courageously navigates a course that enables the union to succeed.


Of course the novel is about finding a way to bring the best of what both sides have to offer to bear on the marriage, because it is through the union that the family is sustained.

To achieve an Ethical, Sustainable and resilient city, we too need an improved union; the one between government and business.

My favourite line is when Meg, who lives off an inheritance, says to her sister - “no more will I draw my income and sneer at those who guarantee it.”

I find myself quoting this line quite a bit because I often meet with people who have marvellous ideas about how to spend money but absolutely no idea, or interest as to where that money comes from.

So the third point I want to cover is the need to support the growing commitment to achieving a sustainable finance road map.

We too know that we cannot continue ‘derive our income, turn a blind eye to how it is generated, and then sneer at those who guarantee it’.


But this can only be achieved if government and business work together.

Recently CEDA released a most interesting report. It was entitled The Economic Disconnect. This report found that in Australia after 26 years of uninterrupted economic growth only 5% of people believed they had gained a lot, whilst 31% said they found it hard to live on their incomes, 74% felt corporations had gained a lot and 79% found the gap between rich and poor to be unacceptable.

As CEDA points out in this report – the time has really come for a new compact between business and the community. This is being explored by groups such as the Australian Business Roundtable, and all the business that are seriously looking at the Sustainable Development goals.

Last year as part of the launch of the Sydney Resilience plan, the United Nations Sustainable Finance initiative held is first ever meeting in Australia – and Australia committed to developing a Sustainable Finance Road Map.


The EU and a number of other countries already have one.

Two weeks ago 200 insurers gathered in Munich at an international conference entitled Insuring for Sustainable Development; Raising the Industries Ambition and just two days ago the Deputy Governor of our Reserve Bank delivered a speech entitled Climate Change and the Economy.

Government, Business and Community must work together to support the move towards sustainable finance.


“A Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they shall never sit in”Greek proverb

‘Earth vs Sky’ Glebe - Allan Giddy

leadership

This artwork is another City of Sydney Commission by Allan Giddy, powered by a wind turbine, it too refers to nature, the rhythm of the day and the turning of the seasons. It reminds me that cities are continuously made and remade over centuries and true leaders look to the future, even if they won’t be here to see the fruits of their efforts.

My final point is that an Ethical, Sustainable and Resilient city needs leaders that engender social harmony and inclusion whilst acting as stewards of our environment and economy

I have referred to the role of government and business, but a third pillar of successful democracies is pluralism- or the ability for two or more ways of seeing to coexist.

One of Australia’s greatest successes and strengths is its multiculturalism. We understand that the policy of multiculturalism essentially expresses that although we have a national language and system of law, our cultural differences such as community languages, customs and so forth will be protected and even celebrated.


Of course this does sometimes lead to conflict, when some feel that the customs of others impinge on them, but for the most part we have maintained a peaceful and very productive multiculturalism society.

When we speak about the benefits of multiculturalism we mention food and celebrations and the benefits for business in a global economy, but what I want to talk about is what kind of people we become when we embrace multiculturalism and suggest that this leads to the attributes that we need in our leaders.

To live successfully in a pluralistic, multiculturalism world you need the skills to navigate multiple believe systems.

Anyone who has organised a coming of age, wedding or funeral in a mixed culture background family will know what I mean. I grew up catholic. When someone died the funeral process was prescribed. I didn’t need to add the stress of trying to organise a ceremony that wouldn’t offend anyone, to my grief.

But today my family is Italian, Irish, Scottish, Persian and Aboriginal. Try explaining why the wedding incudes a smoking ceremony to Nonno.


Mature leaders have the skill and confidence to do this with humility and joy. It is the skill of revealing what the underlying values are in any community and focusing on our commonalities whilst respecting and celebrating what makes us different and unique.

It is the skill of finding an honest, but coherent narrative in a world where everything feels fluid, insecure and constantly changing. A narrative that celebrates and makes a virtue of our ability to adapt, a virtue of our resilience.

And I think it is an essential leadership skill, because, incoherence leads to anxiety, anxiety to fear and fear can be exploited by poor leaders. The fear of decarbonisation, (loss of jobs) the fear of refugees (competing for scarce resources), the fear of Mexicans (loss of cultural dominance).

True leaders understand the concept of stewardship. That they are there to achieve sustainable and resilient families, communities, companies into the future. And they understand that looking after the planet is a pre requisite to achieving all else.


An economy where no one and nothing is wasted

And so my argument comes full circle - if government does not protect the community by protecting the public interest – which is just another way of saying – protecting what people value; and business does not act as part of the community we will not have a just transition and then people’s fears will be founded and the attendant consequences will eventuate.

So to close.

At the City of Sydney we address the continuum from values to accountability by asking the community what they value and then enshrining this in a city plan that demonstrates how we will protect or enhance those values as the city grows and changes.

We embed this in everything we do from the artworks to the planning controls, from the programs to the services. We hold our selves accountable by having targets; and cultural, environmental, economic, social and overarching well-being indicators that we publicly report against.

But there is one thing last thing that I would like to suggest and that is that I think it’s time that values were converted to duties and duties become legislated and assigned to leaders such as ministers who are in turn required to report back to us all on how they are going about protecting what we value and therefore achieving improved accountability.


Thank you.

monica barone - committee for economic development of

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