Committee for Sydney packs a punch as a leading influencer on the policy stage. A quick look at its membership underscores why – it’s where the big end of town clusters.

Its policy guru, Jeremy Gill, therefore has a big responsibility to get the economic and business analysis right and to explain to the committee’s members how they can position themselves for the opportunities they need to thrive.

And then to create policy agendas that hope to influence the city, the state and also the nation, because where Sydney goes, so too does much of the rest of the country.

In a world destabilised by global ructions, that’s never been more important.

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Already Australia is starting to shake off fear of those early chainsaw wielding days in the Trump’s second US administration. The leaders realise that this country might just be one of the best placed countries in the world to reap the rewards of its natural assets and the ones we can ourselves create to fill the leadership gap left by the US.

In our briefing for Show Me the Green Money, Gill pointed out the shifting sands beneath our feet that are even bigger megatrends than Trump.

“In 2023 NSW exported $150 billion worth of goods,” he said. Around half of that was coal, with 36 per cent of that going to Japan. “But Japan is rapidly decarbonising its economy, and so New South Wales, and Australia need to look towards what the industries of the future will be, rather than the industries of the past.”

What’s interesting is that it’s in the cities that the necessary complexities and economic activity will occur.

Sydney already accounts for over 20 per cent of Australia’s economic activity, Gill said.

“What we also have is a network of innovation districts and innovation clusters, which is globally competitive. We can present to the world as an innovation city and use that to target talent, investment and industry around priority sectors.”

And among these are a lot of green industries. He nominates financial services and fintech, net zero business, clean energy, bio-med life sciences, digital technologies and advanced manufacturing.

Renewable energy is too narrow a focus, he said.  You need to think about the professional services firms that provide the technical advice for delivering renewable energy projects, the businesses that are investing in green technologies and advanced manufacturing.

In the major work that he authored late last year, Transforming Sydney’s Economy, Gill identified the strong backbones that can take Sydney into the next decade and beyond and with it big swathes of Australia.

So forget the coal mines, come along on Tuesday lunchtime and help us mine the way more exciting store of knowledge in Jeremy’s mind.