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Episode 152 - Is Melbourne the most liveable city in the world?
40 Plays4 hours ago
Episode 152 has news for 17 March 2026 features labour hire scandals to leadership blind spots and changing work patterns. Coles Group is under scrutiny over whether it should have known a labour hire firm was underpaying security guards, new research from Robert Walters reveals a striking perception gap between men and women on leadership inequality, and fresh data from the ABS shows nearly a million Australians are now juggling multiple jobs — suggesting the way people work is quietly shifting. We also have the latest financial results from Korn Ferry and Robert Walters. Question of the Week, "is Melbourne the most liveable city in the world?" Two local residents have their say.
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Transcript
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Coles Group's Outsourcing Dilemma
00:00:39
Speaker
This is the news for the 17th of March, 2026. I'm Ross Clannett.
00:00:43
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And I'm Adele Last. Ross, Cole's group is facing serious allegations about their due diligence of labour hire firm MA Services Group, which went into liquidation after the Victorian labour hire regulator cancelled their labour licence.
00:00:58
Speaker
It seems to centre on whether Cole should have known that the security guards working in its supermarkets were being underpaid by MA Services. The Victorian Labor Hire Authority says the numbers simply didn't add up. Its head, Steve Dargabble, claims Coles signed a $50 million dollars a year contract with MA Services, knowing the guards couldn't possibly be paid their full entitlements at that price.
00:01:23
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Which Coles strongly rejects. Supermarket giant says the contract was on normal commercial terms and included requirements that all workers receive their legal entitlements.
00:01:33
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I see Coles argues it was actually misled. The company says MA Services ran what it calls a sophisticated and misleading scheme that concealed breaches of workplace laws from Coles and other clients.
00:01:46
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Yeah, Dale, the controversy really seemed to escalate after reporting by the Sydney Morning Herald late last year alleged MA Services was engaging in tax fraud and had links to criminal entities.
00:01:57
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The company collapsed soon after. And the union movement isn't holding back either. The United Workers' Union has blasted coals and governments for relying on the contractor and is calling for a broader review of the security sector.
00:02:10
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So we've got a classic accountability debate, Adele. Should large companies be responsible for what happens inside their supply chains? And regulators seem increasingly willing to say yes to that. This case could become a significant test of how much due diligence major employers must do when outsourcing labour.
Gender Perception Gap in Leadership
00:02:29
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Ross, I read your most recent blog this morning and one statistic made me choke on my cornflakes. 57% of men don't believe women are underrepresented in leadership roles, but 98% of women say they are.
00:02:44
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That's not just a difference of opinion. That's two completely different realities. Exactly. When I saw that data from the just released Robert Walters Women in the Workplace report, I had the same reaction. I had to read it twice.
00:02:57
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The gap between how men and women perceive the workplace is clearly enormous. If two-thirds of people in leadership think the problem doesn't exist, it's not surprising. Progress feels slow. It's like two people standing in the same room but describing two different buildings. Women are saying there's a ceiling here and a lot of men are saying what ceiling? Yeah, I think that's a perfect way to put it, Adele. And the rest of the stats reinforce that disconnect.
00:03:21
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More than half of men think there's strong female representation in senior leadership, but only about a third of women agree. Which suggests the people experiencing the barriers see them far more clearly than the people who aren't.
00:03:36
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That's human nature, I suppose, but it's also distorted. Former RCSA President and Global Head of Advisory at Robert Walters, Sinead Hurrigan, said something powerful at the launch of the report.
00:03:47
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The most dangerous barrier to progress is complacency. If leaders believe equality has already been achieved, they won't push for change. Yeah, right, because if you think the race is already finished, you stop running.
00:03:59
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Exactly. The data shows that structural barriers still exist. The McKinsey Women in the Workplace 2025 report highlighted that women receive less career support and fewer opportunities to advance. I noticed the part about sponsorship. Women are less likely to have sponsors too. These are people who actively advocate for their promotion. The data shows employees with sponsors are promoted nearly twice the rate of those without them.
00:04:26
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Mentorship helps, but sponsorship actually opens doors. Precisely. And interestingly, the report found entry-level women receive the least sponsorship of any group. that's ah That's significant because early career support shapes long-term trajectories.
00:04:42
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Many women observe promotion patterns and workplace expectations and begin to question whether the effort is worth it. I found the example about your lawyer friend really telling Yes, um she was on a partner track at a major law firm here in Melbourne, but the long hours and sacrifices became overwhelming and she quit.
00:05:02
Speaker
She moved to a government role with more flexibility and balance. And unfortunately, stories like that aren't unusual. Sometimes the issue is an ambition, it's sustainability. The McKinsey Research points out that women are just as committed to their careers as men, but when advancement comes with limited support and much greater personal cost, it can change how attractive that promotion looks.
00:05:23
Speaker
So the question becomes, is the system unintentionally pushing talented women out of leadership tracks? Well, as I said in my blog, my own experience contrasts this. I was incredibly fortunate early in my career to be shaped by a succession of women leaders. In my first six years in recruitment, four different female leaders mentored me, believed in me and pushed me forward.
00:05:45
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Without doubt, their respective leadership laid the foundation for whatever success I've achieved over the past 38 years in the industry. Which makes it ironic, doesn't You had a career shaped by strong female leadership and yet decades later, was it's still not the norm in most workplaces.
00:06:01
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that's what struck me when I was writing this blog, Adele. Nearly 40 years later, my experience still seems more like the exception than the rule. Well, maybe the first step to fixing that is simply recognising the gap in perception Perhaps if people don't see the problem, they won't solve it.
00:06:18
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Absolutely. Progress starts with understanding reality. And right now, men and women are clearly seeing the workplace very
Rise of Multi-Job Holding in Australia
00:06:26
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differently. And until those views start aligning, the ceiling many women see probably isn't going anywhere.
00:06:34
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And on to results. Executive search firm Korn Ferry reported fee income 7.3% to million dollars and net income rose to million us dollars in its fiscal third quarter January In Corn Ferry's largest segment, executive search fee revenue rose 13.4%, driven by increases in both the number of engagements billed and the weighted average fee per engagement.
00:07:06
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APAC executive search fee income was up 10% in constant currency to $24.07 million. us dollars Robert Walters PLC reported full-year operating loss of £14.9 million pounds in compared to a million pound operating profit as net fee income in declined to million.
00:07:35
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average group headcount declined fifteen percent year over year net cash halved to twenty six point two million pounds at year end compared to twenty twenty four Net fee income in Australia declined by 11% and Robert Walters New Zealand reported a 19% decline in net fee income.
00:07:56
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Ross, the latest ABS data on multiple job holders is interesting. Nearly a million Australians had more than one job in December 2025 compared to about 14 million single job holders.
00:08:08
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Yes, what stood out to me in last week's data release is that the number rose slightly from 972,000 in September. i mean, it's only about a half a percent increase, but it reinforces a broader trend we've seen since the pandemic.
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Historically, from 1994 to 2019, between 5% and 6% of the workforce held more than one job. But after that sharp drop during COVID in 2020, the rate rebounded and has stayed at record highs.
00:08:36
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between 6.4% and 6.7% since mid-2022. This suggests there might be a more structural reason than a temporary reason for this trend.
00:08:48
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Some people may simply be building portfolio careers or combining part-time roles. Possibly, although demographics seem to matter here. Young workers aged 20 to 24 were the most likely to hold multiple jobs at a rate of 10.5%.
00:09:02
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And that makes sense. Early career workers often combine casual or part-time roles, especially in sectors like hospitality, retail or in care work. And speaking of sectors, agriculture, forestry and fishing had the highest multiple job holding rate at 8.9%. while electricity, gas, water and waste services had the lowest at 3.4%.
00:09:25
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Occupational differences are even clearer. Community and personal service workers had a 10.7% multiple job holding rate, whereas machinery operators and drivers were among the least likely at 3.9%.
00:09:38
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Another notable point is gender. are Women are 22% more likely to hold a second job compared to men. That could reflect the industries women are more likely to work in, sectors where part-time roles are more common and combining jobs is easier or sometimes necessary.
00:09:54
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And turning to average weekly hours, multiple job holders worked 30.3 hours in their main job and about 8.5 hours in their second job. So roughly 38.8 hours a week in total, which is more than single job holders who actually average only 35 hours a week.
00:10:11
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Finally, geography plays a role. Regional areas had a slightly higher multiple job holding rate, 6.8% compared to 6.5% in capital cities. That might reflect smaller labour markets in regional areas. People may need to combine roles across industries to get the hours or income they want. Or maybe it's just easier to commute to a second job in a less populated area.
00:10:34
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Overall, it paints a picture of a labour market where holding more than one job is becoming more common and perhaps more normalised than it used to be. The key question now is whether it's driven more by choice, opportunity or necessity.
Melbourne's Liveability and Cultural Appeal
00:10:48
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And that's your news up to date for the 17th of March, 2026. Stay tuned now for question of the week.
00:11:02
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Our question this week, Is Melbourne the most liveable city in the world? Of course it is, Adele. What a great question. I knew you would say that, Ross, but this is a recent survey result.
00:11:14
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It is. Time out. surveyed more than 24,000 locals in 42 languages about where they live. Questions covered topics such as food, nightlife, culture, affordability, happiness, and the overall city vibe. This was combined with 100 timeout city experts putting their view forward. All the data was put together from 44 different criteria. And for the first time ever, Melbourne came out on top. We were second in 2016. We beat out this year Shanghai at two, Edinburgh at three, London four and New York at number five. That's a pretty good top five to be top of. What do you reckon?
00:12:06
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I know you're pretty excited about this, Ross. Tell us why you agree that Melbourne is the most livable city. Well, I think I've got a pretty good sample size. I grew up in Hobart. I lived in London for a couple of years. i lived in Suva in Fiji for a couple of years. i lived in Adelaide for a couple of years. i lived in Sydney for eight years. So I reckon my sample size is pretty solid and I'm very happy to be a resident. Well, technically I'm a resident of Mornington, not Melbourne, but certainly I get to experience the Melbourne CBD vibe
00:12:43
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pretty pretty frequently and I love it. What are your top picks then for Melbourne CBD? Well, hang on, hang on. Before we get onto that, like you're a born andred me bernie and you're sounding not quite as excited as me and I'm and i'm a sort of ring Yeah, look, I think these types of surveys are interesting. I think it's a bit of fun. ah to be perfectly honest, I don't spend a lot of time in downtown CBD. So that's probably why I'm a bit hesitant. I live about 30 kilometres out of the city. I have, you know, family. I'm a bit more of a mum life kind of environment. But look, I don't disagree um with many elements of this. You know, I do love living in Melbourne. I don't want to live in any other city in Australia. But and yeah, I'm taking this on with, a you know, a grain of salt.
00:13:31
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Well, okay. I'll give some recommendations and you can tell me whether you've got any views on those. Have you got anything to add? So eating out, look, i I don't think you can beat for a great Melbourne experience going to Cookie on Swanston Street, sort of modern Asian. It's got a bar. It's just got a really good vibe. It's well-priced. The staff are are are always attentive. ah Prices, I think, are reasonable. So I think that's a dead set. You can't go wrong.
00:13:58
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Experience. I love going to the sporting events. So whether you're going to footy at Docklands or the MCG or the Australian Open, I'm not really a moto sport person. So I've never been to Albert Park to the ah Formula One. So, know, if you're into that sort of thing, great. ah The cricket's always great.
00:14:20
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Great cultural institutions like the Melbourne Museum is fantastic. The Immigration Museum on Flinders Street is very underrated, free to get in. Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Fed Square. That's absolutely fantastic. um I mean, there's just and so many different venues for for live music. i mean, I've been to so so many different venues around Melbourne.
00:14:46
Speaker
So, this just, you know, what whatever your interest, there's something for everyone, Adele. You're doing a great job for Tourism Victoria here, Ross. But, you know, let's let's bring this back to topic for our podcast, which is more about work life, more about recruitment work life specifically. So, let's overlay the results of this survey with our own opinions, I suppose, around you know, is Melbourne the most workable city? What is it like to work in Melbourne, not just live here and socialise? Okay, well, why don't you start there? Because as you said, you're a, suburbanite and you live in a part of Melbourne that's pretty historically pretty shit for public transport, let's say ah So what's your assessment there in terms of a place to work? Yeah, look, we have had a train a line promised to my suburb for a good 30 years, I think, and it's never going to happen necessarily in my lifetime. But look, I am very car-reliant, heavily car-reliant, and I drive most most places.
00:15:46
Speaker
Look, I still think our transport's pretty good. Like it is accessible. I'm not far from train stations. Downtown, obviously, you've got trams and other modes of transport as well. But I think it's easy to get in and out of, certainly out of the city. You know, i have been to places like New York. I've been to others that are on the list. I've been to, you know, large Asian cities and, you know, you can easily spend two or three hours in a car just in one direction. And That's pretty rare in Melbourne, right? Even on a really busy day, you're probably topping out at an hour um in any direction and any location. Yeah, broadly. I mean, I think generally the public transport's pretty good in Melbourne. You've got the free tram in the city circle area. Even for me in Mornington, I can drive to Frankston Station and get a train straight in. Peak hour, it's about 50 minutes. So, I mean, clearly there are places in um greater Melbourne that are less well-serviced and the missing North East link is certainly going to help from a...
00:16:47
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a travel point of view in terms of vehicles. So yeah I think yeah certainly having lived in Sydney, Sydney is lot more challenging and it certainly depends very heavily where you live as to how good it it is. i think Melbourne is generally more even in in terms of transport compared to Sydney or transport accessibility.
00:17:13
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Yeah, and it looks like getting into the city, if you're working downtown CBD, ah you've got lots of, as we've mentioned, things like restaurants and access to to lots of things in a really close proximity.
00:17:25
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I think from a workplace perspective, there's a really wide variety of industries and jobs in Melbourne as well. I think that's really apparent. I've got some data actually, so some labour market data.
00:17:38
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Metropolitan Melbourne, unemployment rate 4.3%, Victoria as a whole 4.2%, Australia as a whole 4.1%. So slightly ah above, youth unemployment, Metropolitan Melbourne 10.2%. Victoria, 10.6.
00:17:55
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ten point six Australia as a whole, nine and a half. So doesn't score so well. In terms of looking for a job, professional, scientific and technical services is the largest employing sector. That is the third largest in Australia, but easily the largest in Melbourne. So in other words, if you're a an accountant or a lawyer or an engineer or a management consultant, Melbourne's a pretty good place to get a job. Healthcare and social assistance, the number one employing sector nationally, but number two in metropolitan Melbourne. And then third is education and training. So if you're a a teacher or in the education sector, much better. Construction is much smaller compared to
00:18:38
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or certainly relative to other sectors, because construction is in the top three for the national ah workforce, but is in fact number seven in metropolitan Melbourne at around 6% of the workforce.
00:18:57
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So there you If you're a professional, you're probably going to do very well metropolitan Melbourne. Which recruitment probably fits into that category as well, right? Yes. Our recruitment industry fits into that category itself. Yes, yes, exactly. And we are just talking more about inner Melbourne. So the Melbourne CBD and then Yarra, Port Phillip, Darabin, Glenira, those sort of areas rather than further out.
00:19:20
Speaker
you City of Monash? I am City of Monash and yeah I have, yeah, the Monash University within my um area. so you know, there's big universities here and so the education sector that you mentioned um features heavily that makes sense as well.
00:19:35
Speaker
Right. You've got Melbourne as well, Melbourne Uni. So the other thing I think mentioning here about diversity ah from from a, you know, workplace perspective, both um gender diversity, cultural diversity, age diversity, I think is really well spread in Melbourne. I think that's something that's quite notable and would be picked up by a lot of these kind of survey respondents.
00:19:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. i'd I'd say you've got a sort of fairly strong weighting in the southeast and out to the west in terms of migrant worker communities because of the more industrial sectors that that are that are based there.
00:20:14
Speaker
um and i know I mean, I haven't been going into the CBD five days a week, for more than 20 years. So I'm always cautious about drawing generalizations when I'm in the CBD maybe three days a month and looking at people walking around the streets. It certainly does seem pretty diverse. And when I'm there on the weekends, boy, it's certainly buzzing. And I was there the other Saturday night to go to the theater and it was the weekend of the Grand Prix and it's certainly buzzing and certainly saw a lot of ethnic diversity. I mean, I went to a Japanese restaurant and
00:20:48
Speaker
Michelle and I were the ethnic minority there. So I think probably showing the fact that there are a lot of out-of-town and probably out-of-country visitors in Melbourne for that event.
00:21:00
Speaker
And then I think that's what's really interesting about these kind of surveys is that they're measuring feeling, they're measuring a vibe or a pulse or a heartbeat. You know, they're not basing this on stats and figures They're not basing these things on, you know, crime rates and employment data that we've quoted. It's people's opinions. Yeah.
00:21:19
Speaker
And really, you can see why Melbourne ranks highly in that sense because it does have a feeling. It has a vibe. And I've noticed this in in travelling and people might agree or disagree with me, but, you know, even having recently ah passed through China and I note that Shanghai is number two on the list. I didn't go to Shanghai. i went to other Chinese cities.
00:21:41
Speaker
but they lack that feeling and that heartbeat. It's kind of a bit manufactured in some of these other cities, whereas Melbourne feels very authentic. It feels real and it feels like it's not trying. It's not trying to be cool. It's not trying to be edgy. It just is. It's just itself and as a result has that vibe about it. And I can see why these kind of surveys bring us, you know, very high to the top and then finally to number one.
00:22:11
Speaker
Well, certainly specifically, the survey said ah Melbourne ranked particularly high in local responses to statements, including my city makes me happy and I find joy in the everyday experiences where I live.
00:22:30
Speaker
Locals also rated it very highly for criteria, including diversity, liveliness, cultural activities, affordability of going out and how well it caters to Gen Z. So I do think that data speaks to what you were just saying.
00:22:45
Speaker
And look, I know there's people screaming, um listening to this going, but what about the weather? You know, like, okay, we ah sit we in Melbourne, we don't care about the weather. We don't even talk about the weather unless it's to somebody from interstate. But, you know, clearly maybe this survey was done in the middle of summer. And so it's very easy to forget the depths of winter then. And as you mentioned, they may be targeted perhaps perhaps to Gen Z people. But Adele, there's no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing.
00:23:15
Speaker
you know, if you're well-dressed. It's unpreparedness, you reckon. That's right. That's really what kills you, you know. a bald man like i as long as I have my beanie and my scarf and my jacket, then I'm fine in winter. All right. So that's where you get a fine roast down at Cookie on Lonsdale Street with his beanie on.
00:23:34
Speaker
That's right. And um plenty of other great places. Please let us know, do you agree or disagree with Time Out? And what are your own personal Recommendations if you love Melbourne.