Fitzballbag is on his f**king high horse again today about the stadium issue.
Here is the article so you lot don't have to give him or his shitty newspaper any clicks.
KNOCK KNOCK: STADIUM JOKE
The #StadiumSplurge stuff just gets better and better! Last week, if I do say so myself,
TFF demolished the so-called "business case" for knocking down two perfectly good stadiums and rebuilding them for $2 billion. Infrastructure NSW was firm on the subject of re-doing the SFS: "There was no economic benefit to the state of NSW." And the NSW government' own cabinet minute, as noted by The Oz, "pointed out that the benefit-cost ratio for the projects was well under 1, meaning they would not generate more money than their cost to the state's economy."
(I have since been reliably informed by an insider that the ratio is the astonishingly low, 0.6). Since that time, the Premier Gladys Berejiklian has maintained her radio silence, and not tried to defend her ludicrous assertion that, despite those established facts, the new stadiums would annually generate an extra billion dollars, paying for themselves in two years. And though the Sports Minister, Stuart Ayres, has tweeted to TFF that we need the new stadiums to generate the money to pay for new hospitals – "trickle-down stadium economics," Twitter called it – he, too, has gone off air since I asked for figures to back it up. I humbly assert it is because here are no such figures. It is a demonstrable nonsense.
And no matter how many times stadium supporters assert the old chestnut that "major sporting events pay for themselves many times over because of what they bring to the local economy," I say again: blithely repeating bullshit without any numbers to back it up does not make it so.
I have got the number-crunchers of Infrastructure NSW with me, plus the NSW Cabinet's own cabinet minute. If you have proof that they are wrong, surely we should be able to see those numbers? In their absence, nice words from Jeff Kennett, doesn't cut it.
For yes, Mr Kennett was quoted this week, saying we in NSW need the stadiums, to get the events, because they "add confidence to the community."
Seriously?
This is the best you've got to justify the expenditure? And this is what we lack in Sydney? Confidence? This is bullshit, and more and more people recognise it. And, seriously, Premier, when people from within your own government are leaking to me sensitive documents on the subject, you have to know you can only ram this through at dreadful cost. You are a good and honest politician who made your name by listening to the people. On this one the will of the people could not be more clear.
Peter FitzSimons: Not giving a word for Australian sport (clue: four letters)
