Dan Andrews should be applauded for axing the Commonwealth Games. In case some people have forgotten Australia is in the midst of a housing and cost of living crisis. Wasting billions of dollars on a sporting contest no one really cares about is crazy in the current circumstances. The Commonwealth Games: An anachronism we cannot afford in 2023/24. It is time we reevaluate the value of celebrating a few individuals who can run fast and jump high. Surely, the world has moved on from athletic games and obscure sporting contests in terms of all of us paying for such things.
The 2026 Commonwealth Games may not go ahead after Victoria withdrew as host, saying it was not prepared to spend as much as $7bn on “a 12-day sporting event”. In an announcement labelled by the Commonwealth Games Federation as “hugely disappointing”, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, said the cost of hosting the event had blown out from an earlier estimate of $2.6bn. Andrews said his government would redirect the money to regional housing and sporting infrastructure.
- (Cait Kelly, The Guardian, 18 July 2023)
Cancelled Commonwealth Games A Good Thing
Sport in itself, in its purist forms, is a good thing in terms of the exercise and camaraderie between participants. However, do we really need to parade it on such a grand stage these days. How relevant is it to the lives of every day Australians really. Especially, at times like this when we are being forced by the Reserve Bank of Australia to stop spending and to pull our heads in.
I am sure that there is enough glory in competing at whatever level the participants of these sports and games are currently doing without parading in a colonial flagship from a bygone era.
Running Faster Won’t Help Keep The Lights On
The British empire is long dead and buried, with many former colonies feeling bitter at their exploited status during the height of this farrago. The Commonwealth may have been considered a good thing if you were white but not so for many of the Indigenous peoples. Their enslavement/servitude experiences are none too flash in their memory banks. Athletic carnivals are reminders of our animal status in my book. Fine specimens that can perform wondrous athletic feats in front of spectators. The Royal Shows have livestock on display and in the ring to celebrate the fruits and fauna of the land. The parallels are acute.
Colonial Era Commonwealth Games An Irrelevant Insult To Many
Australia needs to smarten up and our cultural pursuits need to reflect the current zeitgeist. The Commonwealth Games: An anachronism we cannot afford to keep footing the bill for in this day and age. There is an acute housing shortage with some Australians living in tents on the fringes of cities. Rents have gone through the roof thanks to the neoliberal control of our economy and governments over the last 40 years. Australia has some seriously rich people but the majority of us have gone backwards in terms of our share of the nation’s wealth. The Commonwealth Games is a celebration from the colonial era when wealthy white Britons and their colonists put on a show for the world. International sporting events like the Olympics and Empire/Commonwealth Games are political statements funded by governments. They are not just sporting contests, no matter what the athletes might think.
These events, like the gladiatorial games of the Roman empire, are a display of cultural and political might to their subjects. It is time to wake up to the fact that they are out of date in the twenty first century.
If these things are allowed to go on it is a sign that nothing much has changed in terms of the status quo in the power elite. Our governments consider it fine to spend huge amounts of our money on antiquated and irrelevant events whilst inflation, cost of living and rents pillage our wealth. Imagine how much social housing could be built with $6 billion in Victoria.
Dan Andrews should be applauded for having the guts to cancel the Commonwealth Games in 2026.
The market has not taken care of housing in Australia. Inflation in the property sector has been rampant for years – this is why house prices keep going up. Governments have neglected this sector for decades in a neoliberal act of omission. This is why we have bugger all social housing stock. Ordinary working Australians cannot afford to buy a house because of the inflation in this sector fuelled by our Big 4 banks. Inflation is created by too much money chasing too little supply. Lending vast amounts of money to would be home owners creates this funnel of liquidity producing rampant inflation. It is around 382% over the last 30 years. No control on overseas investment in the property sector has further fuelled this inflation. Negative gearing gives tax breaks to very wealthy property investors, as there is no limit on this even if you own 200 houses. This sector is a shambles and has impacted upon our economy in a massive way.
Now is not the time to be wasting money on running around a stadium draped in flags from another time and place. Australians will have to learn to derive their self-esteem from something other than sport.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt & Financial Freedom
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