‘Yachts at the top’: power, privacy and privilege in the world of Australian superyachts

theguardian.com:

Visible from the footpath at the water’s edge, the superyachts berthed at Melbourne City Marina bob gently up and down, their sleek and shiny exteriors reflecting the placid waters below.

For me, and most people on this planet, this is about as close as we are likely to get to a superyacht. In Australia, that’s a pleasurecraft longer than 24 metres. Internationally, the starting length is 30 metres. The City of Melbourne recently spent $1.97m upgrading Victoria Harbour, including its four superyacht berths, to fit vessels up to 67 metres long. But for the tiny portion of the world’s ultra wealthy for whom superyacht size is a matter of concern, 67 metres is fairly moderate. The longest privately owned superyacht in the world is the 180-metre Azzam, reportedly built for the former president of the United Arab Emirates, the late Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Superyachts are markers of power and extravagance. They are floating, transportable six-star hotels, capable of including everything from nail parlours to gyms, helipads and boardrooms, marble bathrooms and priceless art, as well as what the industry calls “toys” – from jet skis worth the equivalent of the average Australian worker’s salary to private submarines worth millions.

In a recent memoir, the longtime Australian seafarer and superyacht captain Brendan O’Shannassy writes: “Until space travel becomes a commercial reality, [superyachts] are the greatest display of wealth on the planet.”

For all their capacity to allow long-distance travel in extreme luxury, though, superyachts aren’t frequent visitors to Australian waters. The local industry has been lobbying to change that, and state and federal governments have made superyacht-friendly moves,hitching millions