Tuesday, 1 April 2025

Select Committee on the 2026 Commonwealth Games Bid

Inquiry into the 2026 Commonwealth Games Bid

David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (13:11): Pursuant to standing order 23.22, I table the select committee’s final report on the inquiry into the 2026 Commonwealth Games bid, including appendices, extracts of proceedings and minority reports, and I present the transcripts of evidence. I move:

That the transcripts of evidence be tabled and the report be published.

Motion agreed to.

David LIMBRICK: I move:

That the Council take note of the report.

Next year the Commonwealth Games will go ahead in Glasgow, not Victoria, and every man, woman and child in Victoria will pay about $90 for the privilege – a total of $589 million. This is reminiscent of the kind of story you might see on A Current Affair where a family gets ripped off by a dodgy tradie, except this happened to everyone in the state. It is also fees for no service on a scale that would make the CEO of a bank blush. But this report into the Commonwealth Games bid that I am tabling today is not just about the Commonwealth Games; it is a deep dive into how this state works. To summarise, it starts with a thought bubble that turns into a grand vision that is then handed over to people who justify bad decisions with poor justifications. I hope the Victorian government will use the learnings in this report to improve its processes and make sure it never happens again – we hope.

In some ways the failure of this project was less shocking than the government’s response to the failure. The government impeded this committee from collecting important evidence by refusing to appear at public hearings unless forced, withholding documents under broad claims of executive privilege and even refusing to follow the process set out in the standing orders to properly assess those claims of executive privilege. The government needs to have its privilege checked as a matter of urgency. In fact the committee has recommended the Procedure Committee take a careful look at doing just this. The Victorian people now owe $589 million, yet neither the current Premier nor the last one felt they owed it to Victorians to answer some questions. The final report makes 62 findings and six recommendations, focusing on critical decision-making and process failures, the $2 billion regional funding package and impediments the committee experienced when collecting evidence. This is the committee’s third and final report for its 18-month inquiry. The committee received 44 written submissions and heard evidence from 89 witnesses in 47 sessions over 12 days of public hearings, including regional hearings in Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and Traralgon.

My sincere thanks to all those who made submissions and provided evidence at public hearings. I would also like to thank my committee colleagues for their hard work, and I would also like to thank the Parliament staff, including committee managers Matt Newington and Kieran Crowe, inquiry officers Jessica Summers and Chiara De Lazzari, administrative officer Sylvette Bassy, chamber procedure officer Tom Mills and chamber services officer Monique Riordan Hill.

Sarah MANSFIELD (Western Victoria) (13:14): I too would like to extend my thanks to all those who participated in this inquiry and who provided evidence and particularly to the staff and to the chair for an excellent inquiry.

This really could have been called the ‘Comms Games’ rather than the Comm Games. It was a masterclass in the consequences of governing by press release and from the outset was beset by failures in transparency, oversight and governance. It was ultimately another demonstration of Victoria’s public integrity failures. These failures are not unique to the Commonwealth Games saga and are not anything new in Victoria. Time and again they have occurred, and there have long been calls for reform from everyone from the Auditor-General to the Ombudsman and various integrity experts.

A key question arising from this inquiry is whether adequate measures are in place to ensure that major government investment decisions are being made in the broader public interest. In the case of the Commonwealth Games, I think the answer is a resounding no. Core problems included the use of private consultants and the impact this has on the role and capacity of the public service; failures in the parliamentary oversight systems, particularly the ludicrous situation we have where the government dominates joint investigatory committees like the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee and essentially are left in charge of marking their own homework; and failures in transparency, which we saw in everything from the refusal of ministers to appear before the inquiry to the government’s failure to follow standing orders with respect to executive privilege claims over documents requested by the Parliament and a lack of transparency regarding cabinet decisions.

We are not going to have another Comm Games situation, but there are plenty of others where the same issues are at play. You only have to look as far as the disaster that is the North East Link Program or the decision to demolish Victoria’s 44 public housing towers. The Victorian public deserve to have trust and confidence in its government’s decision-making processes, and based on what we saw through this inquiry right now I do not think that they can.

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (13:16): I want to join with others in commenting on this Commonwealth Games bid inquiry, noting that this was a Liberal-National motion to bring this inquiry forward and an important motion because of the scale of the reputational damage done, the scale of the financial loss and the incompetence of the processes that have been exhibited. This has been an important inquiry. I want to thank the staff in particular for the work that they have done on this inquiry. I thank Mr Limbrick for his chairmanship. But what this shows is that when the games are held in Glasgow they will be largely funded by money from Victoria. They could have been held here. We could have had a scaled down games in country Victoria or indeed a Melbourne-based games in part. All of these would have been options that could and should have been considered. Instead of that, you had Jacinta Allan and her merry band of ministers, who actually exhibited extraordinary incompetence here, failing to undertake even the most basic processes.

As you look at what came forward to the inquiry you can see the absolute governance failures of this government, and those governance failures have had a huge cost to and huge impact on Victoria. Now, the government of course has not been honest with this inquiry either. There are literally hundreds of documents that the government has refused to provide – basic information that should have been provided to the inquiry, and the only reason it has been covered up is because it is embarrassing to Jacinta Allan and her ministers. That is the truth of the matter and that is outrageous. This government has squandered enormous amounts of Victorian taxpayers money and done so with very little outcome for Victoria. We should be very angry.

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (13:18): The decision by the Victorian government to withdraw from the 2026 Commonwealth Games was the right decision at the right time. The government was clear from the get-go that the purpose of agreeing to host the games was to deliver benefits to regional Victoria. Once the cost escalations became evident, the government was right to pivot away from the games and instead invest in the $2 billion regional package. This package is delivering the Big Housing Build into cities and towns across regional Victoria. It is investing in legacy community sporting infrastructure projects in the host cities and beyond. Despite some of the nonsense that has been peddled by the Liberal members of this inquiry, this report found no evidence at all of any reputational impacts which affected Victoria’s ability to draw in major international events, as we have seen, such as the Rugby World Cup and the National Hockey League games. Indeed in the last month alone Victoria’s major events have drawn in a whopping 2 million people.

This report does make a sensible recommendation about reforms of the Department of Treasury and Finance’s high-value high-risk guidelines, but regrettably some other recommendations in this report seek to undermine both exclusive cognisance, which Mr Davis is only too keen to pursue, and the constitutional basis for executive privilege, both of which are cornerstone principles of our Westminster system of government. Ms Ermacora, Mr McIntosh and I put together a minority report which expands on these and some other various points, and I commend that report to the chamber.

I would particularly, though, like to finish by thanking all of the staff, including Matt Newington, Kieran Crowe and all of their teams. They have worked extensively hard so that we can do our work, and I really appreciate all the invaluable work that they have done in supporting this committee’s work.

Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (13:20): I would like to rise as a member of the select committee into the Commonwealth Games debacle and thank all the committee and staff for doing an outstanding job and my colleagues for their very fulsome participation but also the submitters and the witnesses. Indeed we travelled to regional Victoria, as we should have, because this hoax was to be placed in the space of regional Victoria. It was conspired no doubt in the minds of the former Premier and the current Premier as well, Jacinta Allan. It was aided and abetted by the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events, the Treasurer and others. It was supposed to be ‘an ambitious model’. What it did was rip the heart and soul out of country Victoria. People were built up. They were told that this was going to happen. The expectation was built, and what did this government do? It trashed regional Victoria, and it trashed it to the extent of $185 million – and there is $200 million going over to Glasgow. The business case was not worth the paper it was written on. There were people shut out from making comment on the business case, who provided insight and examples as to how this would or would not work. And we see all these commitments; we see these legacy projects that are supposed to be in the future. It is just normal spending, and it is probably on the never-never. Let me just read one quote from a lady who felt that her whole existence in this area and her commitment to the English team were just trashed. When the announcement came the English team said:

‘Well, we’d never trust an Aussie again’ – not a Victorian, an Aussie. It damaged the country as well as Victoria … ‘Well, you guys, your handshake’s not worth anything.’

There was widespread condemnation, and this government stuffed it up. It was a hoax and a con games.

Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (13:22): I too want to speak on the Commonwealth Games bid report. I also want to start by thanking Matt Newington and the team for all of the work that was done. It was a very wide range of topics and a whole range of diverse information that was collected as well. It would have been challenging to collate all of that information and input and refine it down to something only as big as this. Thank you for that. I also want to acknowledge and thank the chair Mr Limbrick for his services as chair.

I also believe that this was the right decision at the right time, and this was an example of good governance. I know that sounds really boring, but operating environments do change. If you look at the trend over time, Western nations are the nations that have been traditionally, in the most recent 20 or 30 years, hosting the Commonwealth Games, and even now Western nations are struggling to pull together the Commonwealth Games. So there really is a need for a look at the model. Of course that was happening at the same time as the games were proposed for Victoria and in particular regional Victoria.

This is what I want to close on: the benefits and the compensation of the $2 billion regional package. As someone who represents outer regional Victoria and inner regional Victoria, we have got multiple programs now being funded beyond the five legacy towns that were going to host outside the city: housing, Tiny Towns, regional worker accommodation, and sports and tourism infrastructure. They are positives and have given opportunities to outer regional communities that otherwise would not have had those opportunities.

Joe McCRACKEN (Western Victoria) (13:24): It is so timely that this report is released on April Fools’ Day, because if the story of the failed handling of the Commonwealth Games had not been a catalogue of real-life mistakes, it could easily have passed for a fictional or indeed a dystopian film. The movie Lemony Snicket’s a Series of Unfortunate Events goes some way to describing what happened and what the committee discovered. However, the 2019 film Escape and Evasion encapsulates the government’s response to the work the committee did, because escape and evasion was exactly what happened.

Let me make this crystal clear: the Premier of Victoria Jacinta Allan, the then Minister for Commonwealth Games Delivery, did not attend any hearings. All that was delivered were excuses. The former Premier Daniel Andrews did not attend, along with a string of former ministers. They all should have fronted the inquiry.

Where do we start with the mess? It was found that the business case which justified the hosting of the Commonwealth Games was deeply flawed. Those who prepared the business case were unable to access good information due to government directives. Despite making this abundantly clear in the business case with a list of caveats as long as your arm, the government proceeded to rely on the business case to justify bidding for the games, which they took to the 2022 election and the Victorian people. It has become clear that agencies, departments and ministerial offices did not communicate and collaborate effectively with each other. It was even discovered that local government CEOs were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements, which meant they were prohibited even from detailing conversations with their own elected councillors. The impact on regional Victoria was vast and extremely negative.

I want to finish by thanking the committee staff, who did an extreme amount of work. We appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Tom McINTOSH (Eastern Victoria) (13:26): I want to start off by acknowledging the chair Mr Limbrick, who was very thorough in his role, and of course the staff for all the work they did over what was a very long inquiry.

Victoria took the games on at short notice with a clear goal of investing in regional Victoria. With wars around the world, inflation, material price surges and labour shortages and a tight frame to deliver the games, the decision – which, as my colleagues have said, was the right decision – to cancel the games was made. We consistently heard throughout the hearings that that was the case, and we consistently heard throughout the hearings, despite the ongoing attempts by the Liberals to lead witnesses to certain conclusions, the consensus was that the key outcome for regional Victorians was the $2 billion package – the investment in housing, in sports infrastructure, in volunteering, in food and fibre, in Tiny Towns and in worker accommodation. This investment, through the process, occurred not only in the initial towns that were flagged for the investment but was spread broadly across regional and rural Victoria. We heard from numerous councils, community groups and sports groups that they were pleased to be able to all benefit from projects and investments that could be rolled out in a timely manner and one that did not put further pressure on local labour shortages.

I just want to touch on the point, as Mr Galea said, that we had 2 million people at major events in March and a whole lot in regional Victoria. Tourism is doing very well in this state.

Motion agreed to.