New money-wave idea for the Viaduct

By SIMON COLLINS

The man who ran Sydney's bid for the Olympics says Auckland should consider staging an international expo at the Viaduct Basin.

Rod McGeoch told a Knowledge Wave Trust forum in Auckland yesterday that Brisbane's expo in 1988 attracted 15 million visitors, including 4 million extra overseas tourists, during its six months.

The Olympics attracted only an extra 2 million tourists to Sydney during the seven years from 1993, when the city won its bid for the games, until the event ended in 2000.

"Expos are now being seriously chased in the world," he said.

"Why isn't someone like New Zealand looking at an expo? Is there an opportunity down there at the Viaduct once the [America's Cup] races are over to keep going?"

Mr McGeoch, a director of Telecom NZ and Sky City Entertainment, was one of a top lineup on the second day of the Knowledge Wave forum.

Others included a "father" of the internet, Dr Vinton Cerf, and the director of the US National Science Foundation, Dr Rita Colwell.

Prime Minister Helen Clark, who criticised conference organisers on Wednesday for an "unspoken agenda" of right-wing economics, was in the audience for Dr Cerf and Dr Colwell, whom she hosted at a dinner last night.

But she was absent when Deutsche Bank Australasian corporate finance chief Scott Perkins, a Knowledge Wave Trust board member, hit back, repeating the trust's call for policies to lift New Zealand to the top half of the 30-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

"A commitment to faster economic growth is an explicit agenda of this organisation," he said. "Only with world-class economic growth can we acquire and sustain world-class reform and social services.

"That is another explicit agenda of this organisation.

"The challenge of getting back to where we belong in the OECD is an explicit agenda for this Government, and is an agenda we applaud."

Mr McGeoch said Sydney won the Olympics by a total commitment that included bringing all 93 International Olympic Committee voting delegates to Australia.

His organisation researched every delegate. It found, for example, that the Norwegian delegate was a prisoner of war in a particular camp during World War II.

"I found every living Australian who was in that prisoner-of-war camp with him and I said to them, 'This man is coming. Will you come for a reunion with him?"' he said.

"I think there were 17 of these Diggers. They came from all over Australia with their walking sticks and medals, the lot."

When the Norwegian arrived, all 17 stood to attention to greet him.

"He broke down and cried. He said, 'If you think so much about me, then you should have the Olympic Games'."

Answering a question, Mr McGeoch said it would be difficult for New Zealand or any Southern Hemisphere country to win the Winter Olympics because the skiing industry in the Northern Hemisphere wanted the games in its winter.

Dr Colwell told the conference that traditional scientific disciplines were merging in new fields such as nanotechnology, the science of atom-sized particles.

She said the National Science Foundation had set five research priorities - nanotechnology, mathematics, information technology, "biocomplexity" or microbiology and the environment, and the human and social impacts of change.

Stanford University professor of economics Paul Romer said science and technology were the key to boosting the "potential" growth rate of an economy - the rate at which it could grow before shortages started pushing up prices.

He gave New Zealand a full mark for economic stability and a half-mark for open markets, but a fail grade for growth because only 5.5 per cent of the country's 24-year-olds had degrees in science or engineering - one of the lowest rates in the OECD.

But another American economist, Dr Richard Florida, said scientists were only part of what really explained fast growth - "creativity".

His famous "Bohemian index" showed that cities with large numbers of gay people, artists and "oddballs" achieved the fastest rates of technological development, new company formation and economic growth.

"The three 'T's of economic growth are technology, talent and tolerance."

Herald Special Report - February 18, 2003:
Knowledge Wave 2003 - the leadership forum

Herald feature: