Sister cities build more than a cultural bond

Updated November 5 2012 - 11:33am, first published October 17 2004 - 11:48am

In recent years, council-funded overseas trips to Japan and East Timor have raised the ire of some ratepayers.
Goodwill tours to our sister city of Inagawa in Japan, and our friendship region of Ainaro in East Timor have been branded as wasteful, unnecessary and outside council's core business.
Some ratepayers have argued that the money would have been better spent on local roads and rubbish collection, rather than on airfares to and from accommodation in far-away lands.
Those opponents of such trips would have been horrified to learn that the City of Ballarat is now hoping to forge further sister city relationships, this time with the teeming metropolis of Bangalore in India.
However, arguments that such relationships are frivolous and outside council's core business are short-sighted and fallible.
Rather, the opposite is the case.
Ballarat's sister city relationship with Inagawa has brought enormous benefits to Ballarat, as evidenced by the construction of the Hakubaku noodle factory and invaluable, ongoing promotion of the city to millions of potential Japanese tourists.
While the friendship relationship with Ainaro is yet to reap such riches, hope abounds that today's investment will pay off in years to come as East Timor grows.
Surely, rather than being outside council's core business, promoting Ballarat as an ideal destination to a worldwide business and tourism audience should be regarded as one of the most important things the council can do.
That's why any City of Ballarat expedition to India, the world's second most populous nation, and the one with the largest middle class, can only reap positives.
At first glance Bangalore, population of more than three million, and Ballarat, population of less than 100,000, would seem to have little in common.
However, rather than worrying about the differences between the two cities, the City of Ballarat, with the backing of the State Government, is focusing on the similarities.
Like Ballarat, Bangalore is seen as a leader in IT, is home to a major IBM facility and is an ideal city for film production.
These three similarities offer enormous potential for cross-continental co-operation between the two cities and could provide the starting block for even greater riches in the future.
Already, the City of Ballarat is hoping that the coming tour to India will result in the Indian Commonwealth Games team choosing Ballarat as its home base ahead of the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games.
That would provide an enormous financial and promotional boost to Ballarat, potentially resulting in the city being beamed into nearly one billion Indian homes.
Even if that doesn't eventuate, any link the City of Ballarat can make with Bangalore provides a foothold into one of the world's biggest marketplaces and should be supported wholeheartedly by the majority of Ballarat ratepayers.

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