Busted budget
Report: Sydney games to cost taxpayers another $440 million
Posted: Thursday January 14, 1999 12:17 AM
SYDNEY (Reuters) -- An official auditor delivered a
devastating report into the finances of the Sydney 2000 Olympics
on Thursday, saying taxpayers had not been given a true picture
of how much the Games would cost them.
The report said the total bill to New South Wales state from
Sydney's big event would be $440 million more than the state government's own public
estimates.
In a report to parliament, NSW Auditor-General Tony Harris
also criticized "unnecessary secrecy" surrounding key
contracts between the state government and Olympic bodies
spelling out terms and conditions for Sydney's hosting of the
Games.
"In other countries, such documents have been routinely
made available to the public," Harris said of the secret
government contracts.
Harris also questioned "optimistic" marketing revenue
targets and said a small operating surplus promised to taxpayers
-- if it was even achieved -- only reflected the fact that not
all Olympic costs had been counted.
"Accordingly, the taxpayers of NSW do not have a complete
picture of the costs for hosting the Games," Harris wrote.
The report will come as a major embarrassment for the
centre-left Labor government ahead of a March election that
could see a change of leadership for Sydney organizing committee
SOCOG.
But NSW Olympics Minister Michael Knight, who is also the
SOCOG president, quickly denied any cost blowout, saying Harris
had simply decided to exclude estimated tax revenues the government would gain from staging the Games.
Unlike the 1996 Atlanta Games, which were entirely privately
funded, New South Wales is underwriting capital and
infrastructure projects as well as the actual Games budget.
"Significantly, nowhere in his report does Mr. Harris point
to excessive spending or money wasted on preparations for the
Olympic and Paralympic Games," Knight said in a statement.
"Mr. Harris doesn't suggest anything could be cheaper or
that the government hasn't received value for money. There is
not one allegation of waste or mismanagement."
But Harris said he did not accept the government's inclusion
of indirect revenues when its own Olympic costs were limited to
direct costs involved in meeting its Host City contract and did
not include, for example, major infrastructure projects related
to the Games.
Politically the most damaging part of Harris's
report might be its one-page preface, in which the
auditor-general attacks the government for its decision to keep
secret various contracts signed with the Australian Olympic
Committee and International Olympic Committee.
Harris said AOC President John Coates had already revealed
some of the details of the contracts -- which Coates says are
"commercially sensitive" documents.
"It is laudable to see a private body (the AOC) disclosing
information in its possession relevant to government
activities," Harris said.
"But it does suggest that the government could itself have
decided that the public is entitled to see what it is doing in
its dealing for the Games."
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