Two colleagues from different cultural backgrounds from mine have reminded me of the different cultural values we bring to big projects we see going up around us, changing our physical and cultural landscape. What’s over-tall, opulent and crass to some is great business to others and a source of collective pride.

In two recent conversations with Abdullah, a mature-aged Saudi student in Melbourne and Ronald, a Dubai-based Indian who had worked some time in Melbourne, we puzzled over the meaning of Melbourne’s low-scale casino and luxury hotel scene and billionaire MP Clive Palmer’s planned Titanic replica (now already a bit of a distant memory). Abdullah thought that Melbourne was grossly underselling itself with its paltry Crown Casino, timorous riverside flame jets and inconsequential sprinkling of four-plus star hotels. Melbourne, he concluded, had excellent potential for the luxury hotel scene. And as a hospitality student, he had some grand designs of his own.

I was secretly dying to tell Abdullah that he’d better revise his vision quick smart. ‘Abdullah’, I wanted to say, ‘Australia is not the place to go looking for oil-rich billionaires, top-down over-the-top magnificence and stratified patronage. And you’re going to be looking a loooong time for an investment climate that encourages the kind of vulgar opulence I think you have in mind.’

Instead, and of course with infinite cultural sensitivity, I politely explained that Melbourne – and to varying degrees, Australian cities generally – didn’t really provide the market for that kind of development and spectacle. And Australians themselves would resist it. ‘It depends on who you are, of course,’ I said. ’ But Australians prefer things a bit more low key and modest. You know – spread the wealth, keep it democratic. We’d get a bit uncomfortable with stuff like that.’

‘Yeah, I kind of noticed,’ said Abdullah. ‘Pity…’

Ronald, for his part, was enthusing over Clive Palmer’s wonderful Titanic replica.

‘I think it’s fantastic – you guys should make more’.

‘You have got to be joking,’ I said. ‘That ship is so crass and vulgar – why would you want more?’

‘Why not?’ said Ronald. ‘I thought Australians would have been really proud of him. I mean, wow! An Australian making a ship like that, and giving lots of pleasure and employment and stuff like that.’

Ronald had a point, although not about Australians’ pride in our Very Own cruiseship sultan. We’d so much rather scoff. But to be brutally honest with myself, it would be kind of fun going on a pretend Titanic and of course plenty of Aussies would be thinking the same. And…hmm. Had I thought of Titanic Mark II as a great employment and tourism opportunity instead of just a floating embarrassment? I’m slightly ashamed to say that I hadn’t.

‘I don’t deny what you’re saying,’ I said, ‘but [cultural stereotype alert!] Australians don’t really like the idea of some kind of paternalistic rich guy throwing bread and circuses at us. You know, the whole equality thing…who is he to tell us what’s good for us?’

But looking at Titanic Mark II through Ronald’s eyes made me pause a moment to think of how quick I’d been to condemn an initiative that, through different cultural lenses, was a legitimate matter for national pride, good fun and much-needed tourism industry employment opportunities.

I’d also been quick to use negative terms like ‘vulgar’ and ‘paternalistic’ for styles – whether architectural or managerial – that don’t fit into my own cultural preferences and values but are perfectly normal and desirable to others.

Allowing for our Big Pineapples and Big Bananas and so on, and allowing for individual preferences and our rich ethnic mix – the latter of which is starting to change the face of our built environment – Australians are not generally into the gilded and the magnificent. Not in Australia, that is. We’re happy to get our fill of it elsewhere. Nowhere is this better reflected than in our fairly modest urban landscapes and the shock to the eye of ornamented temples and shrines emerging slowly like storybook fantasies on Melbourne’s basalt plains and industrial parklands, as our demographic profile gradually changes. Over time, though, and as aescetic influences shift and merge, these buildings are gradually finding expression in Australian vernacular style.

Tall buildings, vulgar opulence and business opportunities

Heavenly Queen Temple Footscray before and after – transforming Melbourne’s blighted industrial lands along the Maribynong River.

Nowhere is the popular distaste for the top-down, grand gesture better reflected than in our tendency in Australia to risk aversion, not only in architecture but in corporate culture in Australia. You offend fewer people with a more modest presentation and a more careful, ‘punching above our weight’ vision.

And the human value of achieving group harmony is played out, in Australia, in our collective dislike of the grand gesture. It ensures a more even approach, in one sense. On the other, it can reinforce ordinariness and discourage excellence and boldness of vision.

While Australia is no slouch in the global stakes when it comes to entrepreneurial innovation, our undeniably entrepreneurial spirit is dampened by this common keep-it-even, egalitarian, let’s-make-sure-all-the-rules-are-covered-off characteristic.

It’s not a moral failing, athough we bewail it as though it were: ‘Beware! Australia’s going to fall behind if we don’t start being more innovative like [insert country, say South Korea or Sweden]’.

Rather, it is what it is, evolved over time by a gradual, relentless convergence of multiple, complex circumstances and contextualised choices. Even as I write this, the place of the ‘grand gesture’ in Australia has already shifted. Across our changing demographics and in some social groups, gestures of display and comfort with display are becoming more apparent. Abdullah, Ronald and I will do well if our business approaches and cultural behaviours are grounded in an understanding of these realities.