It’s an extraordinary move, but I think they’re spot on. It’s a huge amount of money to spend on a sporting even for a few weeks when Victoria is in a real cost-of-living crisis. There are much more pressing priorities for regional Victoria than a legacy of some upgraded sports venues.

Here’s hoping Queensland has the spine to say the same thing about the Olympics.

They want to bulldoze a 100 year old primary school so they can knock down a stadium we already have - to build a new one worth 2.7 billion in exactly the same place. Meanwhile, our rents are going crazy as locals get forced out of their support networks, there’s rough sleepers being displaced and at times outright attacked by the states support workers, our education system is now decades underfunded and the health system isn’t far behind.

We didn’t ask for the Olympics. The campaign was a businessmans vanity project. It’s insane to shoulder the burden of that frivolity right now.

Good. Now’s not the time to sink 3-7 billion dollars on a 12 day vanity project for the regions. The fact that every other states is also throwing their hands up and saying “not me” is probably a good indicator that it’s the right move

Offering an alternative and mostly unpopular view, there are lot of things that society should spend that may not always have a great financial return on investment but will contribute to the culture of society (sports, art, entertainment, history, etc).

That said I do think the Commonwealth Games is a massive cost sink during poor financial conditions and sports already gets a disproportionate amount of funding compared to the others so I don’t think this is necessarily a bad move!

Sports!

I will be back up higher than before within the near future.

Big sports events are a mad circus, all cost, no benefit is the rule. It’s extremely rare that a country/city benefits from a sports events, if ever. Sometimes people point out renovations done to cities that were useful, but those renovations could have been done without the excuse of the games. Building sports infrastructure with a single event in mind is prone to disaster, and don’t mention all the corruption behind. It should be FIFA or the Olympics making the bids, not the cities/countries…

Big sports events are a huge pain for residents and taxpayers. And actually it didn’t have to be that way, with sensible demands many cities in the world could easily host them without extra works and expenses… they’re a finantial disaster by design.

Hope others will learn from Victoria and take their bids back. I’m looking at you, Portugal (WC 2030).

Nobody likes Dan, but he’s spot on the money here.