Which are the greatest cities on earth and how connected is -Australia to these cities? Does the tyranny of distance still shape the Australian destiny?
The biggest city on earth is Tokyo with 38 million residents. The city with the most corporate head offices is Beijing with 51 (state-owned enterprises) followed by New York with 17. Washington controls the most fearsome arsenal ever assembled. The greatest city in history is Rome, which for 20 successive generations or 500 years to 450AD was the -largest and most powerful city on earth.
But in our time, in the early -decades of the 21st century, there is one measure that defines city power and that is the ability to raise capital. And by this measure there is no city that compares with New York, which is home to both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq. The combined market capitalisation of these two stockmarkets within New York's Wall Street is $US24,760 billion ($35,000bn) as of late   January. The market capitalisation of the two stockmarkets in the Hong Kong-Shenzhen conurbation is $US5880bn. 
New York is four times the size of its largest rival. Rome had three times the population of its rival -Alexandria (now Cairo). Even if China's third stockmarket based in Shanghai was relocated and added to the facilities at Hong Kong-Shenzhen the combined economic might would equate to $US8600bn or about one-third of New York. If you are in the financial services industry there is no place that compares with New York.
After Hong Kong-Shenzhen comes Tokyo, London, Shanghai, Paris, Frankfurt, Toronto, Zurich and Mumbai with market capitalisations ranging from $US4800bn to $US1360bn. Sydney and the ASX with $US1140bn ranks 12th behind Seoul and ahead of Taipei, Stockholm and Madrid.
How well connected is Australia, is Sydney, into the cohort of cites that effectively control the largest flows of money on the -planet? And by "connected" I mean how easy and fluid is travel between the most important business cities? For example, from New York's JFK airport it is possible to travel in a single non-stop flight to Hong Kong, Tokyo, London, Shanghai, Paris, Frankfurt, Toronto, Zurich and Mumbai. It is not possible to travel between New York and Sydney in a non-stop flight.
The tyranny of distance encapsulated by historian Geoffrey Blainey in his 1966 book of the same name still holds. Distance from European and North American markets has defined Australia both before and after European settlement.
But more to the point is the fact that with the exception of Mumbai, all of the world's most important business centres as measured by capital-raising capacity are -interlinked. For some reason there are no direct flights between Mumbai and Toronto and -between Mumbai and Zurich. Mumbai is not quite as globally connected as are other cities of similar economic might.
Sydney offers single-flight access to Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Shanghai and in the past also to Mumbai. It is not yet possible to travel in a single flight from Sydney to New York, London, Paris, Frankfurt, Toronto or Zurich.
This raises an interesting question. How far short of single-flight accessibility is Sydney from connecting with the most important business centres in the world? This can be measured via a concept known as the Dallas Line (see map). The Qantas flight between Sydney and Dallas (QF7) is currently the world's longest commercial flight. It covers 14,000km in 17 hours. Configure the Dallas flight-line as the radius to a circle centred on Sydney and you have the limits of Australia's single-flight reachability. If there was to be a single flight between Sydney and New York the flight-path would pass over Dallas however, based on current aviation technology, it wouldn't extend much -further than Memphis or Nashville. Not sure of the demand for a Sydney-Nashville route.
Based on the Dallas Line it is technically possible to offer direct flights between Sydney and Lima, Mexico City, Anchorage, Ulaanbaatar, Kabul, Baghdad, Khartoum, Harare and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The farthest major cities from Sydney are Lisbon and Marrakesh. If the world's capital-raising headquarters were to move from Wall Street to Marrakesh, Australia would be in deep trouble.
The next wave of aviation -development may extend the Dallas Line from 17 hours to 20 hours, which could bring a Sydney-New York flight into play. Such a flight might be possible by the late 2020s. (Sydney-Newark would be 50km shorter than Sydney-JFK.) But even if such a flight were possible London, Paris, Frankfurt and Zurich would still remain beyond the reach of single-flight accessibility from Sydney.
However, if the ASX and Sydney's entire financial community were prepared to relocate to -Broome on the northwest shelf, it would be possible to travel from Australia to London, Paris, Frankfurt, Zurich, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Tokyo and Mumbai in a single flight today. Broome is better positioned geographically than Sydney to be Australia's portal to the global capital-raising markets. I haven't raised this issue with the mayor of Broome but I am sure that he (I have checked, it is a he) would be prepared to discuss the idea with the ASX.
Whichever way you look at it, the Australian continent is not well placed to participate in the inter-linkages that connect the world's most important business centres. It's almost as if the Dallas Line, slowly expanding though it may be, marks the edge of the -Australian world. For beyond this line lies a forbidden land - die verbotene welt - that is difficult for Australians to get to and for others to get to Australia. The tyranny of distance still prevails in Sydney and along the eastern seaboard although perhaps less so Broome.Bernard Salt heads KPMG Demographics and is an adjunct professor at Curtin University Business School; research by Simon Kuestenmacher; see new website www.bernardsalt.com.au;bsalt@kpmg.com.au