Of all the stupid infrastructure spending we’ve witnessed over the years, the NSW Government’s $2 billion expenditure on the Olympic Stadium and the Sydney Football Stadium is right up there. From The ABC:
The Olympic Stadium and the Sydney Football Stadium will be demolished and rebuilt in a $2 billion overhaul signed off by New South Wales Cabinet.
Work at the Sydney Football Stadium site at Moore Park is expected to start next year, followed by the Homebush Olympic stadium in 2019…
It is understood some [Cabinet members] raised concerns about the $2.3 billion price tag, up from former premier Mike Baird’s original estimate of $1.6 billion… some [were also] scratching their heads as to why a stadium that was built as a state of the art venue for the Sydney Olympics less than 20 years ago should need such a complete overhaul so quickly…
The rebuilt Sydney Football Stadium’s capacity is expected to be 45,000 people while the Olympic stadium will hold between 75,000 and 80,000 people…
Opposition Leader Luke Foley supported the rebuilding of the Olympic stadium but said the work at Moore Park was a waste of money.
“I’ve always said west before east because that’s where the people are,” he said.
“They will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a white elephant, on a stadium that won’t host grand finals, State of Origins, Bledisloe Cups or the biggest Socceroos qualifiers.
“Why are we doing this? Is the Waratahs vs the Bulls in Super Rugby going to get 45,000 people? They struggle to get 10,000.”
Have we hit ‘peak stupid’ yet? Demolishing and rebuilding two perfectly good and underutilised stadiums to build flashy new bigger stadiums is like digging holes just to fill them up again. It might create jobs and increase GDP directly, but it will cost taxpayers a huge sum, won’t boost productivity, and will do nothing to raise living standards.
This is a textbook example of the broken window fallacy in economics.
