About 40% of the population of Australia lives in the Melbourne and Sydney metros, about evenly split. So 20% of the population lives in Sydney, and 20% in Melb

About 40% of the population of Australia lives in the Melbourne and Sydney metros, about evenly split. So 20% of the population lives in Sydney, and 20% in Melbourne. By contrast, the NYC metro area has around 6% of the population of the USA. But it's also about bulk number of large cities. If the federal government wants to inject funding into a large city in Australia, they have 2 options. You can't really play politics there, especially since Sydney and Melbourne have similar political makeups.