{"id":21556,"date":"2024-03-21T21:00:04","date_gmt":"2024-03-21T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=21556"},"modified":"2024-03-21T21:00:11","modified_gmt":"2024-03-21T11:00:11","slug":"how-the-commonwealth-games-was-won-and-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=21556","title":{"rendered":"How the Commonwealth Games was won \u2013 and lost"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victorian bureaucrats gave the state government the green light to host the Commonwealth Games despite significant and unresolved concerns and a business case that overstated the benefits and understated the costs, the auditor-general has found in scathing report into the handling of the scrapped event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Premier Jacinta Allan \u2013 who was minister for the Games\u2019 delivery before&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theage.com.au\/link\/follow-20170101-p5dp2i\">it was axed<\/a>&nbsp;\u2013 said on Wednesday that she would meet the state\u2019s top bureaucrat to discuss the findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"584\" height=\"389\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/image-2.jpeg\" alt=\"Then-premier Daniel Andrews cancelled the Commonwealth Games last June, citing overblown costs of hosting the event.\" class=\"wp-image-21557\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/image-2.jpeg 584w, https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/image-2-300x200.jpeg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 584px) 100vw, 584px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Then-premier Daniel Andrews cancelled the Commonwealth Games last June, citing overblown costs of hosting the event.CREDIT:&nbsp;JOE ARMAO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>She said the process had been far from ideal and that the government\u2019s initial Games cost estimates were \u201cclearly incorrect\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Victorian Auditor-General\u2019s Office also put the cost of withdrawing from the Games at more than $589 million. This includes a previously announced $380 million settlement with Games organisers plus the costs of staff, design work and redundancies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis waste would have been avoided if agencies had worked together better to give frank and full advice to the government before it decided to host the Games,\u201d the office wrote in&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.audit.vic.gov.au\/report\/withdrawal-2026-commonwealth-games\">a report<\/a>&nbsp;tabled in Parliament on Wednesday<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis waste of taxpayer money on an event that will not happen is significant, especially considering the state\u2019s recent sustained operating deficits and rising debt levels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-wp-embed is-provider-datawrapper wp-block-embed-datawrapper\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" title=\"Key findings of the Commonwealth Games inquiry\" src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/BiDHV\/1\/#?secret=6qVHhBNL5s\" data-secret=\"6qVHhBNL5s\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"514\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The investigation heard officials were also hindered in part because Allan wanted to personally approve the sharing of budget updates across departments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even the blowouts then-premier Daniel Andrews used to justify the decision to cancel the Games in July last year \u2013 claiming it could cost $6.9 billion rather than the original budget of $2.6 billion \u2013 were found to be \u201coverstated and not transparent\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victorian bureaucrats gave the state government the green light to host the Commonwealth Games despite significant and unresolved concerns and a business case that overstated [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":21557,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[999,2811],"tags":[993,8],"class_list":["post-21556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia-politics","category-politics","tag-melbourne","tag-victoria"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21558,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21556\/revisions\/21558"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}