Wednesday, 2 April 2025

Select Committee on the 2026 Commonwealth Games Bid

Inquiry into the 2026 Commonwealth Games Bid

Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:24): I rise to give a few remarks on the report of the Select Committee on the Commonwealth Games bid, in some elaboration on the comments that I made in this place yesterday and in particular a reference to a few pieces of added context which I believe are important to include. At the outset, while I do not agree with all the recommendations of the report, certainly recommendation 1, which calls on the state government to continue to seek international events of great esteem, is a very good one, and indeed as I flagged yesterday, so is recommendation 2 on ways in which we can improve and expand upon the high-value, high-risk guidelines process. As I said yesterday, the decision to cancel the 2026 Commonwealth Games was the right decision for the government to make to prioritise the investment into regional Victoria.

It is worth mentioning some context as well. The whole reason this came about was because of a failed bid which had been endorsed and accepted by Durban in South Africa. It was an unopposed bid endorsed by the Commonwealth Games Federation, the CGF, which ultimately, due to a number of financial and other issues, was falling apart, from which the hosts attempted to scale back and in fact relocate the games more centrally as well. This was actually rejected by the CGF at the time, which is I think instructive for those who try and say that we should have just moved the games to Melbourne. Ultimately it would take the CGF, though, another four years before the direct approach to Victoria was actually made. I note in terms of the context of various other parts of this report that discuss timeframe pressures that that was a long time for the CGF to have waited to make that approach – indeed four years.

It is not for this report to go into the detail of the model or the efficacy of models of Commonwealth Games delivery, but I do note that out of the 72 member associations in the CGF only seven have actually ever hosted a Commonwealth Games, including Australia, which has hosted the second-most times with five, including just 19 years ago in Melbourne. On the question of Melbourne, I think it is really important as well to emphasise the point that the government was very clear from the outset that we had done the games in Melbourne. They were a huge success, arguably the best ever. There was no need to do the games in Melbourne again, but there was a benefit in providing that support to regional Victoria. Hence the regional model was chosen.

Ultimately, though, due to other cost escalations, which have affected a great many things in the past couple of years, it soon became unviable. So the government made the sensible choice. Rather than trying to proceed with the games in Melbourne and then putting that money toward the Melbourne games and a smaller event, we actually chose to put that money into regional Victoria specifically, and that is through the $2 billion regional package. That package was very enthusiastically supported by the stakeholders we spoke to. In fact the main theme I would say is that they were more interested, and rightly so, in getting those advantages out of the regional package, both in the host cities but of course also in those broader parts of the state that were not host cities. They also benefited from the regional package. It certainly is fair to say, and I am sure Mr McIntosh will agree with me too, that the witnesses were much more interested in that package as opposed to a sporting event, which they had mostly by then moved well beyond. We also heard some very encouraging trends at the time of our regional hearings in February last year about those trends in Victoria’s regional tourism economy.

As I touched on yesterday as well, the reputational impacts, despite the attempts by opposition members to make an enormous meal out of an apparent huge hit on our state’s reputation, have simply not been borne out by the evidence. They struggled to present any evidence at all to the committee to substantiate the claim. But more to the point, we know that since the time of cancellation Victoria has secured several international sporting events, such as the American football game and the Rugby World Cup, and of course it is continuing to host incredible major sporting events. This indeed leads back to recommendation 1, one of the more sensible recommendations of this report, calling on the government to continue that investment, as we have seen with 2 million people attending a major event in the state of Victoria just in March alone, figures that Sydney and anywhere else in the nation can only dream of. It is continuing to happen right here in Victoria. There are further comments that I would like to make, but I do not have time. In closing, I do wish to commend the minority report.