Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

McKENZIE (—) (): I too rise to speak to the interim report into the Commonwealth Games cancellation. The pathway to Paris for our athletes has been absolutely devastated by Daniel Andrews' callous decision to cancel the Commonwealth Games 2026 and his absolute determination to stop anyone else from picking up the slack and finding an Australian solution to a Commonwealth Games in 2026. We have an enviable reputation around the world of being a very proud, patriotic and, shall I say, victorious nation on many, many sporting fields. We have hosted Olympics, we have hosted Commonwealth Games, and just recently we have hosted the Women's FIFA World Cup to great success right across the nation.

At the start of this year, the green-and-gold runway was lined with events that would have taken us through to Olympics 2032, with our homegrown athletes in tip-top condition, fully primed to take as many medals as possible at that Olympic event and the Commonwealth Games was a key part of that pathway. But as Senator Canavan alluded to, late last year, we got knowledge that there was concern from international and domestic stakeholders about the pace of rollout of the Commonwealth Games in facilities and in consultation with regional communities. Regional councils and big capitals like Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat and others have had no real definitive direct engagement with the state government about what the expectation was.

Experts in the field knew that if you wanted to have the transport connections to shift tens of thousands of supporters, administrators, volunteers and athletes around quickly and easily in the middle of a Commonwealth Games, you would needed to have started planning and building them now. That was not happening on transport corridors, on accommodation facilities or, indeed, on some of the key sporting facilities that needed to be up and being used in four years time. Culminate that with a federal government that comes to power and doesn't accelerate partnership with the Victorian government to get these transport infrastructure projects going but presses pause on the infrastructure projects and throws them into a 90-day infrastructure review, which is now in excess of is 30 days and still waiting. So there were lots of concerns when setting this inquiry up. On the cancellation, we went from a $2.6 billion cost in the May state Victorian budget this year to, a mere eight weeks later, the games costing $7 billion. What the inquiry has shown is that the people who put forward that original bid of $2.6 billion still stand by their figures. I don't know what has happened in the last 18 months, but something is wrong in my home state of Victoria for Daniel Andrews to stand up and be unable to substantiate why that has blown out to the tune of $7 billion. And expert after expert we heard from couldn't explain it either.

What the really powerful impact and effect of a Senate inquiry is is that it shines a torch on governments, on people and on community's issues, and on their poor behaviour. Victorians, athletes and, indeed, the global community have been devastated by this decision, and they made their devastation very, very clear on the cancellation. We heard from local communities, local sporting groups, athletes from around the country and the communities who were the biggest losers of this cancellation. And they still have no clarity from the state government on what assistance is going to be provided to them—or, indeed, what appetite there is more broadly across Australia for an Australian solution to the global embarrassment that this Labor premier has caused.

It isn't always easy to front up to Australian senators in an inquiry to answer tough questions and be accountable for your decisions. So I want to say thank you to the Queensland government for actually fronting up, and for allowing their organising committee to front up, so that we could ask genuine and sensible questions about how ready they are for the upcoming Olympic Games. But the Premier of Victoria threw an invisibility blanket—an invisibility cloak, if you like—over not only his ministers but over all his public servants and the organising committee. They're still getting paid, I might say; 90 non-executive roles are still on the payroll in Victoria but no games are being delivered. They're not allowed to talk to anybody about what they were or weren't doing and what were or weren't their directions. He also chose to throw that invisibility cloak—'Nothing to see here'—over officials and companies, like Deloitte, EY and PwC et cetera, which I know have been subject to great questioning here in the Senate. Daniel Andrews chose to silence their evidence to a Senate committee. We had the extraordinary situation where EY executives who did the original costings were claiming cabinet in confidence! Sorry; they've never been in cabinet and they're never going to be in cabinet. That ducking of public accountability and transparency with taxpayer money was, I think, a highlight of the committee.

I want to turn to the lack of consultation with communities outside Melbourne. Let's remember, when the decision to host the Victoria 2026 Commonwealth Games was made by the Premier, it was six months out from a state election. This was the state election post COVID, where he had locked everybody in their homes for a very, very long time—and we're still dealing with the mental health impacts of that at the moment, particularly on young people. The regions in particular had turned their backs on Daniel Andrews because we didn't have COVID but we were still being locked in our homes. But, six months out from the state election, he announced that the regions were going to host the Commonwealth Games. The regions were sincerely and genuinely excited about that opportunity to showcase their love of sport and everything they have to offer on the global stage. So pardon me if I'm a little cynical about the fact that the announcement came based on an EY report of a $2.6 billion cost, only to find it cancelled less than two years later and our international reputation ruined.

This mismanagement was incredibly embarrassing. I'll turn the chamber to the interim report to see the advice we got from experts on what should be done in the lead-up to hosting an international event of this size and complexity, and what shouldn't. Time and time again, we heard advice being given to the Victorian government organising committee about the cost blowouts or that maybe you should think about not holding rugby in Gippsland because there ain't no rugby fields et cetera—It's great to see a former Wallaby here in the chamber to hear this. They were given advice on how to make this more affordable, more attainable and more achievable, and they ignored the advice. In particular, the minister responsible, Minister Allan, refused that advice.

Today, with the tabling of this report, I urge the federal government and all state and territory governments to listen to the impacts that the mismanagement has had on local communities, businesses, councils, community groups, our athletes and our para-athletes in particular, who made it very clear that the Commonwealth Games was the opportunity for classification on home soil, which would have been so expensive and unattainable. It was a key, critical component to having a full para team at the Olympics in 2032, which he has absolutely stuffed.

I commend the report, and I know Senator Ruston will have more to say on this as the shadow sports minister, but I hope we can find an Australian solution. We spoke to everyone, from the Australian Olympic Committee, the Paralympic Committee, local councils to sporting organisations. We asked them, 'If a roundtable were held to actually find an Australian solution, rectify our international reputation and provide that critical classification opportunity for our para-athletes, would you be keen to show up?' To a man and a woman, they said that they would. I commend this interim report to the Senate.