Melbourne Is World’s Third Best City: Poll

Despite worldwide negative publicity following increase in attacks on foreign students, Australian cities occupy five of the top 20 places in a British survey conducted to find out the “most liveable cities” among the 140 cities in the world.

Melbourne (photo above), which recently catapulted into news as an “unsafe” place for Indian students, ranked third in the world, behind Vancouver (in Canada) and the Austrian city of Vienna in The Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2009 Liveability survey.

A string of US cities fill the rankings from 30th to 50th position – Washington DC in 35th place, Los Angeles in 48th – followed by another smattering of European conurbations: London is in 51st spot, Rome 52nd while Athens has western Europe’s lowest showing in 63rd spot, on 81.2 per cent, reports ABC News.

There is an interesting saying about certain Australian cities that I heard during my visit Down Under last year. Sydney: If you’ve got money and like glitz. Melbourne: If you’ve got class and like culture. Adelaide: If you wish to lead a laidback and relaxed life. In recent times Melbourne’s great reputation suffered owing to the chinks in its policing armour.

The Economist‘s liveability poll ranks cities on five factors: health-care, stability, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.

Perth was equal fifth with Calgary in Canada, with Sydney sharing ninth place with Zurich in Switzerland, Adelaide in 11th place and Brisbane 16th on the list. More here…

Meanwhile The Australian quotes different sources to highlight the need for better policing in Australian cities. “The controversy over attacks on Indian students has highlighted Australia’s acceptance that areas of its cities are unsafe for anyone at certain times.

“Andrew McIntosh, the Opposition police spokesman in Victoria – who raised his concerns about the attacks ahead of the recent furore – said yesterday: ‘Under no circumstances should a certain level of crime be considered acceptable in any part of the state.’

“He said that he was ‘appalled to hear a senior police officer saying that people who live near a hotel have to accept an amount of bad behaviour’.

” ‘This, to me, means just surrendering the streets to the bad guys. We may as well put up signs saying these are no-go areas, that we enter at our peril. We should not tolerate any level of violence.’

“He says the violence against Indian students and the broader community requires a major campaign on the lines of the campaigns run successfully against bad behaviour on the roads, including drink driving and road deaths. ‘And we need to put more police on the beat. It’s just a bloody disgrace,’ he says.

“He says he attended last Sunday’s rally in Melbourne by Indian students to listen to their concerns. ‘To dismiss them as soft targets because they travel alone on public transport late at night is simply not acceptable,’ he says. ‘They need to be protected, like all of us, by our Government. It’s all part of the same problem.’

“One of Australia’s leading experts on race hate attacks, Sydney based Jeremy Jones, a former executive president of the Australian Council of Jewry, says that most of the attacks are probably by ‘idiotic thugs’ rather than by people driven by an ideology of racial hatred.

“But, he adds: ‘It doesn’t make people in the Indian community feel any better even if it’s only a tiny minority of Australians who have racist views about them, if they hold those views and act on them – especially if the community feels it doesn’t have proper protection or recourse.’

“He says that the best protection comes from political leaders speaking out unambiguously and frequently against racism. ‘It has to be repeated, because you have to get through some thick skulls’.” More here…

In Sydney, hunderds of Indian students and their sympathisers marched yesterday demanding an end to racist violence and calling on the federal government to stop treating them like “cash cows.”

“There was a heavy police presence throughout the march – in the early stages, police almost outnumbered the protesters, with eight police horses, several vans and dozens of riot squad and public order officers.

“The strong police presence followed last weekend’s march in Melbourne, where 18 protesters were detained when they protested over a series of recent attacks on Indians, including two stabbings.

“Community leader Moninder Singh from the United Indian Associations said attacks on Indian students were almost a daily occurrence. ‘We strongly believe it is not a racial issue, but a question of law and order,’ he said. ‘Police have to take a more active position’.” More here…