Long-suffering Victorian taxpayers are shelling out A$1.5M to Tiger Woods for him to play a local tournament in late 2009. The Brumby government’s spin heralded this triumph as an important addition to the stable of Victoria’s major events which, they said, is needed because Melbourne, unlike Sydney, has no opera house or a harbour. The proclaimed rationale for so-called major events is economic. But the government doesn’t require an individual major event to make an operating profit. Or even that its benefits outweigh its costs, because in the face of the Victorian Auditor-General concluding precisely that for the 2005 Grand Prix, a few months later the government signed a 5-year contract for 2011-2015. Due to the global economic crisis, corporate hospitality expenditure and non-corporate ticket sales are both well down – perhaps even 15% down. The government’s self-imposed annual major events cap of A$55M will undoubtedly be obliterated by the 2009 F1 Grand Prix which will certainly cost Victorian taxpayers a lot more than their $40M in 2008 – over A$10,000 for each second of the race at twilight today. Victoria’s economy is in recession. We can’t afford a Grand Prix economically (or environmentally either). And Leonards Hill CFA brigade still has no four-wheel-drive slip-on truck. Long-suffering indeed.
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