In world sport, the Commonwealth games are a bit of a sideshow. In swimming and athletics, at least, they are seen as something of a mid-cycle training event for the Olympics. Australians, however, love the Commonwealth games. Not just because they are about friendly sporting rivalries and promote goodwill between the nearly 60 nations of the Commonwealth and Britain’s remaining dependencies. Nor because they are one of the few remaining institutions that justify the Commonwealth’s active existence.
But because Australia wins big, every time. With only England as a serious rival for intra-Commonwealth supremacy, Australian teams and athletes are guaranteed a shower of gold medals, in a way the Olympics nor any other major sporting event can rival. Australians punters love winners and, more importantly, so do cashed-up Australian broadcasters and Australian politicians.
Yet on Tuesday, the state government of Victoria unilaterally reneged on its commitment to stage the Commonwealth games in 2026 – throwing the event into chaos. Victoria’s Labor premier, Daniel Andrews, announced that his state would no longer host the games to an astonished media, and gobsmacked the regional host towns in his state and the Australian sporting community, including the London-based Commonwealth Games Federation, who were only given eight hour’s notice in the dead of the British night.
Last year, the state government bid for the games at an estimated cost of A$2 billion. Instead of holding events in the state’s biggest city, Melbourne, with its extensive established facilities, the bid proposed building new sporting and housing infrastructure in regional Victoria.
There was an ulterior, political, motive to the hosting commitment. Facing a state election last November, the bid allowed Andrews to go on a spending spree. The games justified his renewal plan, which in turn helped his government hold onto a clutch of marginal seats against the conservatives. Tellingly, the renewal plans in these areas are still going ahead. The cynical political stratagem worked. But with the games having served their purpose, Andrews has now washed his hands of them at the first opportunity.
That he had had made a critical manifesto promise to hold the Commonwealth games, and given his word, apparently doesn’t matter to him.
Andrews has justified the move on cost. ‘With significant planning work and extensive market soundings completed, it is now certain that the cost of hosting the Regional Victorian Commonwealth Games will exceed $6 billion – more than twice the estimated economic benefit the Games would bring our state’, Andrews said in his statement.
He told the media, ‘$6 to $7 billion is well and truly too much for a 12-day sporting event. I will not take money out of hospitals and schools in order to fund an event that is three times the cost estimated and budgeted for last year’.
So he claims. But his statement was immediately contradicted by Commonwealth Games Australia chief executive Craig Phillips, who in a withering response said, ‘The stated costs overrun, in our opinion, are a gross exaggeration and not reflective of the operational costs presented to the Victoria 2026 Organising Committee board as recently as June.’
Andrews’s cancellation of the 2026 Commonwealth games has now made headlines around Britain and the Commonwealth. As a result the games, if they’re held at all now, almost certainly won’t be in Australia. The other state governments rapidly fell over each other to rule themselves out.
But the warning message to businesses, sporting organisations and, indeed, overseas governments is clear. If you don’t want to be crucified by sovereign risk, don’t do business with the government of any Australian state, not just Victoria. The severe damage to not just Victoria’s but Australia’s reputation as a reliable and stable partner cannot be understated. Andrews has put political expediency ahead of ensuring confidence in the state.
Even more ominous is the fact that Australian states are integral to the Australian government delivering its obligations as part of the Aukus nuclear submarine agreements signed in March. Australia’s Aukus partners Britain and the United States will note this breach of governmental trust with concern. Perhaps they will even issue a ‘please explain’ notice to Australia’s Labor prime minister, Anthony Albanese. They should.
When Andrews announced Victoria’s bid last year, he promised ‘a Commonwealth games unlike any other’. That’s a promise he certainly has kept.
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