Melbourne is an absolutely amazing place to live and work – not that you’d know it the way certain commentators and media types carry on about it.
In Australia these days, and especially here in Melbourne, since Covid lockdowns it’s become very fashionable to “shitcan” the city that is my home and my birthplace, the city where I choose to bring up my family.
We’re forever being told that Melbourne’s CBD is dead – bleak, dirty, dominated by criminals and thoroughly without charm.
We’re being told that Victoria’s economy is dead, and that people are fleeing the city. That latter point was disproved by Melbourning just a couple of weeks ago.
It’s an alternate universe to the one where I live.
Just yesterday, talkback radio station 3AW, one of the champions of the “Melbourne is dead” set, questioned the price tag for New Year’s Eve fireworks in a cost of living crisis.
NYE in MEL generally draws around half a million people to come to town, spend up on food, drinks and amusements of all kinds and gather for a pyrotechnic show that has everything Sydney’s has except a harbour bridge and partisan media constantly talking it up.
Can you imagine the hue and cry from 3AW, its media allies and the Victorian public if the fireworks – an event that’s designed to draw in the punters and get people spending their money on the good things in life in the CBD – were suddenly cancelled because they’re too expensive?
Pick a lane. Do critics want more people in the CBD, or not?
The complaint industry is alive and well here in Melbourne and via other capitals.
I’ll put this as apolitically as I can.
Melbourning.com.au was established because, as we point out in our bio, rumours of Melbourne’s death are premature.
There is so much to enjoy right across Victoria from our verdant city gardens to our rolling forests and vineyards to our stunning coast and high country.
I am tired of all the so-called experts and plenty of clots from interstate telling me that my city and my state are rust buckets that are beyond salvation, that there is nothing worthwhile to do and no reason to come here.
On a recent trip to Sydney, I was horrified to discover that staff in hotels and other places who all came to Sydney from overseas and who asked where I was from, said they had been advised never to go to Melbourne because there’s nothing worth going south to see and the weather is terrible.
Melbourne is now Australia’s most populous city. It’s a thriving city. Victoria remains an economic powerhouse in Australia that, with the exception of the last financial year, has every year paid more GST revenue that it receives to prop up poorly performing states and territories. Check these stats if you don’t believe what I say about Victoria’s economic strength.
Victoria is not a basket case for business and investment. The way people use Melbourne’s CBD has changed since Covid, but visitation to the CBD is as strong as ever.
Those who want Australians to believe that Victoria is dead and that Melbourne is a bleak, crime-ridden hellhole have one goal. They want to distract us from a weak Victorian Opposition and its lack of coherent policies to reject a government that, by the November 2026 election, will be 12 years old.
It’s a government that may very well need to be tipped out, and I hope our opposition grows stronger under new leadership. But Labor, in spite of the effects of Covid and lockdowns, gained seats in 2022. That was no accident, nor was it a sign, as some suggested, that Victorians suffer Stockholm Syndrome.
If, as they say, Melbourne and Victoria are in such a hopeless position, surely those who really care about Victoria would use their positions to advocate for their city and their state rather than jockey for position to piss all over it constantly.
That’s why Melbourning is here. Melbourne and Victoria are dear to our hearts. We care about Victorians and all of the great events and activities that keep us coming back for more.
We hope you’re along with us for the ride.
