Tuesday, 1 August 2023

Commonwealth Games

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (15:22): I think all of us were shocked when we heard this decision by the government on the Commonwealth Games. It is one of the most extraordinary decisions I have heard in public life over many years, a decision so deceitful, a decision so surprising and a decision so damaging. There was a promise of $2.6 billion, but now the government claims the true cost was to be $6 billion to $7 billion. They have not produced those figures. Those figures are nowhere to be seen, and the community is owed honesty, owed transparency and owed accountability on this. The Premier and his hapless ministers, who have been stripped of their now defunct portfolios, actually need to come clean and explain how this set of figures was arrived at. No-one believes that this is a truthful set of figures. Everybody believes they have been cooked up just simply to put the state in a position where it could cancel the Commonwealth Games. But I say honest people keep their word. Honest brokers as states – governments – keep their word, and in this case they have trashed the state’s reputation. It is resonating heavily overseas and around the world. Inbound investors are looking at this state and saying, ‘This is a shocking outcome.’ There have been billions of dollars squandered – still we do not know how much they are going to have to pay to get out of the contract ‍– and waste, incompetence and damage to the state. It is extraordinary, and these ministers should resign.