Why are there so many Australians working for Saudi Arabia’s controversial megacity?

NEOM, the planned city set to form the crown jewel of Saudi Arabian prince Mohammed bin Salman’s megaproject Vision 2030, has received a lot of help from an unusual source: Australia.

Australians appear to be flocking to the Middle Eastern kingdom, with the allure of well-paid, tax-free jobs key to the sales pitch from Saudi Arabia. The Financial Review reports estimates from the Australian Saudi Business Council that more than 10,000 Australians now live in Saudi Arabia, with the figures rising rapidly over recent years.

NEOM will be home to a planned 170km long, 500m high and 200m wide mirrored skyscraper which will house a self-sufficient “linear city” dubbed The Line, a planned urban utopia made up of modular communities.

As Saudi Arabia’s influence has grown, Australian willingness to criticise the nation for its human rights abuses and conservative practices has waned.

Australian Sports Minister Anika Wells, who in 2015 called for the Saudis to be ostracised from world sport, describing a “gender apartheid” in place in the country, happily turned up to the Adelaide edition of the Saudi-bankrolled LIV Golf tournament in April (itself run by none other than two-time major winner, Australian Greg Norman).

It’s not just gender relations where Saudi Arabia sits out of step with much of the rest of the world. Dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was dismembered with a bone saw in the country’s Türkiye consulate, while Human Rights Watch says the nation targets activists and public intellectuals, enforces arbitrary and disproportionate prison terms, and undertakes mass executions. The country remains reliant on migrant workers, often from South Asia, who The Guardian reports are “used, abused and deported”.

Despite all of this, Australian talent is in strong supply in the kingdom. Chief among them is high-profile recruit Wyatt Roy, former Turnbull government minister, as NEOM’s head of innovation. The now 34-year-old Roy became the youngest minister in the history of the Parliament when Turnbull appointed him assistant minister for innovation in 2015, aged just 25.

He’s not the only political figure to head over to Tabuk. Former chief of staff to current Home Affairs and Arts Minister Tony Burke, Sean Halse, took a role in July 2023 with NEOM in external affairs.

Former New South Wales deputy premier Andrew Stoner joined NEOM’s advisory board in 2019 (departing in 2021), while spinner Emma Clarey, who worked for 13 years in various Queensland government ministries, is now NEOM’s press office senior manager. Tara McCarthy, a former deputy secretary at Transport for NSW and chair at Sydney’s Rosebank College, joined NEOM in April 2023 as commissioner of mobility, and since October 2023 has served as head of infrastructure and roads.

It’s not just public sector workers involved, however. A number of high-profile private sector workers have made the trip, too. Laing O’Rouke’s former head of technology and innovation, Georgina North, is now NEOM’s director of robotics and automation, while hotshot Australian lawyer Mohamed Khairat joined as legal manager in March 2022, just two months after leaving a secondment as legal consultant for Equality Australia.

Former Telstra communications manager and SBS executive producer Jehad Dabab joined NEOM in December 2022 as head of international communications, while former Deloitte executive Lily Hodder joined as strategy and operations manager in May 2023. Twitter’s former Australian head of brand strategy, Ben Campbell, joined NEOM as head of creative for Oxagon, the industrial city associated with NEOM.

Former Gender Equity Victoria chair Entsar Hamid joined NEOM in November 2022 while still on the board of the former organisation, taking a role as executive director of the NEOM land department. University of Sydney lecturer Matt Swan joined NEOM’s program management office in December 2022, while Tech Council of Australia founder Alex McCauley has been NEOM’s director of technology and investment since March 2024.

The most high-profile private sector Australian to be involved with NEOM, however, is former Fox Studios Australia managing director Wayne Borg. The Wall Street Journal recently reported allegations Borg, who ran NEOM’s media division, had called “a female subordinate, who is Black, a ‘Black shit’”, and that he later allegedly referred to the subsequent meetings with human resources as “that fucking episode I had with that Black bitch”. The Wall Street Journal also reported that Borg allegedly referred to women from the Arabian Gulf in heavily transphobic terms. Borg did not respond to Crikey’s requests for comment.

Borg has since been replaced in his role by another Australian, Michael Lynch. Lynch is a former Sydney Opera House CEO and ABC director.