I've always based my business and my life in Melbourne. I have had homes and offices in Sydney and around Australia and New Zealand, but there was something about Melbourne that grew on me from the moment I arrived in the city with one set of clothes, $10 in my pocket and a job in advertising.

Don't get me wrong, I love Sydney and many other places around the country, but in my book you can only have one true home - and it's Melbourne and Victoria for me.

Victoria's economy now has the fastest growth rate in the country at 3.3 per cent, which is significantly above the national average of 2.7 per cent. Take out Victoria and the rest of the country's jobs grew a miserable 0.6 per cent to March. Victoria created 60 per cent of all the new jobs.

I was pondering these figures as I walked over to the National Gallery of Victoria last weekend. All Australian capital cities have great galleries and so do many of our beautiful regional towns.

The Victorian Gallery, on one of the world's great boulevards, was opened in 1968 by the state's longest serving Premier, Sir Henry Bolte. In typically formidable style, the plain-speaking Knight of the Realm from Ballarat with his strong Aussie accent pushed ahead with constructing a cultural asset that many would now be calling an infrastructure project.

You could pinch the line from the movie Field of Dreams "build it and they will come", and that's in fact one of the great strengths of Melbourne.

The current blockbuster Van Gogh exhibition, featuring more than 100 pictures from galleries around the world, is setting new records for attendance. People happily queue for an hour or more.

"I wouldn't do that for an avocado latte in Degraves Street," says Louise.

The whole Van Gogh thing is an incredible story. He's gone from being a rejected outsider during his own life time to one of the world's best-known artists today.

The current Melbourne exhibition is the third Van Gogh show in 25 years, and it attracted more than 100,000 people in its first 14 days.

I wandered back home up Collins Street only to be confronted by a throng of people milling around the great and gracious Regent Theatre, owned by my good friends the Marriners. It was the matinee crowd from another cultural event going gangbusters in Melbourne: My Fair Lady directed by the queen of musicals, Julie Andrews.

There are timeless values in all the great musicals, including this one, which is based on the 1913 play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw.

"I did it at school," says Charlie.

But it was the 1964 movie with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison that made it famous right around the world.

As I stepped through the highly animated and delighted crowd that covered the footpath, I wondered why people today have such an interest in a story from a century ago and a movie from 50 years ago.

And why, for that matter, are so many people queuing down the street to see the work of an artist who was regarded as a worthless mad man during his own lifetime.

I think it's because we all identify deep down with the underdog and we are inspired by the recognition of the real talent and fine qualities of ordinary humans - especially those who are unrecognised by the elite of the day. We all want to be accepted for what we are and certainly not as guinea pigs for the elite.

As is the case with Professor Higgins - who wanted to show how clever he was by bragging to his associate Colonel Pickering, played in the movie by Wilfrid Hyde-White, that he could turn poor cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle into someone more acceptable by teaching her to speak "proper English". The tables are turned when Eliza becomes the star of London society, only to have Higgins turn his back on her and ignore her achievement of passing herself off as upper-class. After all, to Higgins, she was still just a very ordinary worker and he was extraordinary in every way.

But Eliza revolts at his revolting behaviour and the self-reliant Miss Doolittle re-emerges, with her old accent, causing Higgins to wonder what went wrong.

Lord knows what he would have made of the "strine" talking Sir Henry!

Scratch the surface of any of our 24 million people and something extraordinary will appear.

Our government at the federal level is having a struggle, as it looks down on the population without realising it.

Perhaps our leaders should see this production of My Fair Lady and discover that the ordinary people really are the extraordinary ones after all.

Harold Mitchell is chairman of the Premier's Jobs and Investment Panel.