On Tuesday, will Jeroen Weimar – once Victoria’s COVID-19 response commander – and former Richmond Football Club president Peggy O’Neal pause and wonder what might have been?
It should have been the morning they stood at the MCG to welcome 7000 competitors and officials from around 70 nations to Victoria for the 23rd Commonwealth Games, Weimar as chief of the organising committee and O’Neal as chief executive of the Games.
For 12 days, they would have joined fans watching cricket and gymnastics in Geelong, netball in Bendigo and athletics in Ballarat, BMX in Shepparton and sevens rugby in the Latrobe Valley, showcasing regional Victoria for visitors and global audiences.
“We know we can do this … There is huge energy, excitement and effort,” was how Jacinta Allan, then minister for Commonwealth Games delivery, put it to parliament’s public accounts committee in June 2023. The next day, lawyers were hired to provide advice on abandoning the event.
“A Games like no other, in a place like no other,” was the event’s motto. That at least proved closer to the truth, since these Games have been relocated to Glasgow and stripped down to a skeleton schedule, partly financed by $200 million from Victorian taxpayers.
When a select committee of MPs released its final report identifying a “series of failures” by senior ministers, including Allan, a minority report written by the committee’s three Labor members insisted that the $2 billion package for regional Victoria accompanying the Games would still be delivered.
“In some cases, the legacy benefits … are more beneficial than would have been the case had the Games proceeded,” they argued.
Our state political reporter Rachel Eddie can now reveal that promises of spending on social housing and sports infrastructure are also falling short. Only 10 per cent of the regional housing fund have been spent so far – most of it on upgrading existing stock – and fewer new homes will be built than envisaged.
The Ballarat site of the proposed athletes’ village – the cost of which somehow blew out from $265 million in 2022 to more than $1 billion by the time the Games were officially abandoned in July 2023 – still sits vacant. Nearly a third of the units to be built there were promised as social housing.
If this fiasco stood alone on the government’s record, it would be sufficient cause for concern. But it is part of a much wider pattern when it comes to spending and secrecy that characterises the Labor government under Daniel Andrews and then Allan.
The select committee examining the fate of the Games found that “requests for relevant documentation were met with broad claims of executive privilege”. The business case for the event, released after the government reached a settlement with Games organisers, was full of holes and questionable assumptions. Secrecy surrounding it meant local councils were not consulted.
When government departments warned that advice about risks and costs was being rushed, they were told “that … approach reflected [Allan’s] wishes”, according to a report by the state’s auditor-general. When the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) and Commonwealth Games Australia (CGA) advised against adding more sports and more locations, they were ignored.
Senior public servant Tim Ada told parliament that he was told not to tell Housing Minister Harriet Shing of the June 2023 decision to bring in lawyers. Under the terms of their $380 million settlement with the government, the CGF and CGA aren’t allowed to talk about these decisions either.
Given this catalogue of concealment, is it any wonder that the government’s use of money on major projects such as the Suburban Rail Loop and its management of the state’s spiralling debt and corruption on building sites face a widening trust deficit?
When our treasurer, Jaclyn Symes, warns that the current GST distribution deal – which had its latest iteration on Friday – leaves the state facing a financial cliff, it would be easier to take the complaint seriously if her government had not burnt through last year’s $3.7 billion GST windfall without addressing the shortfalls to government schools funding and other services.
In March 2024, having succeeded Andrews as premier, Allan was asked if anyone would face consequences for the Commonwealth Games saga. She said many of those involved had since left government – a breathtaking evasion from the minister directly responsible for the event – and that “we are now 2½, nearly three years down the track”.
It’s a track that ran out for hockey and rugby players, volleyballers and triathletes hoping to represent their nation. A track that still hasn’t arrived at the benefits to the regions we were assured by Allan herself would accrue.
As The Age said at the time of the cancellation: “In a normal government, the person or people responsible for the Commonwealth Games debacle would resign.”
Ministerial responsibility and transparency in the use of public funds shouldn’t be games, premier.
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