Victorian government under pressure
The Victorian government is under growing pressure to explain why it didn't cancel the Commonwealth Games sooner, in a bid to avoid a $380 million compensation deal to organisers.
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00:00 Even in the best of times, $380 million is a lot of money to pay to not hold a major
00:06 event.
00:07 And Victoria is in the worst of times.
00:09 There's rising debt, extra taxes and the government is tightening its belt, including
00:14 sacking public servants.
00:16 So what could $380 million buy?
00:18 3,800 first year police or 10 brand new schools.
00:22 Perhaps $3,000 retention payments for teachers, principals and support staff to halt the exodus
00:27 from state schools, or 11,500 heart surgeries or 16,000 hip replacements.
00:34 The opposition argued if the state had cancelled the Games earlier, the severance payment wouldn't
00:38 have been as great.
00:40 Victorians are already over the waste, mismanagement and incompetence of this government.
00:46 The Premier says cancelling the Games will save taxpayers billions of dollars.
00:50 The original business case was dotted with red flags that the costs could balloon, and
00:54 the government was warned in the first quarter of this year that the costs had blown out.
00:59 Despite that, the Premier and his deputy are refusing to tell Victorians when they first
01:03 knew that this event had become too expensive.
01:06 In March of this year, we launched the tender website for something like 800 different tender
01:14 requirements for the operation of the Games.
01:17 It's once you go through those processes that the numbers become actual.
01:21 The Premier has said this is the best outcome Victoria could get, but the lingering question
01:26 is why did the government fail to do its homework, and why the starters gun was even fired in
01:31 the first place?
01:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]