18 Jul PREMIER, READ THE ROOM AND CANCEL THE GAMES: KAP

The cash-strapped Queensland Government need to follow Victoria’s lead and address the cost-of-living crisis by cancelling Brisbane’s plans to host the 2032 Olympic Games, Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) Leader and Traeger MP Robbie Katter has said.

Mr Katter said Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk needed to “read the room” and do the right thing by Queenslanders.

“In the words of Mark Twain, ‘it’s time to pause and reflect’,” the North Queensland-based MP said.

“Queenslanders do not want to the better part of $20 billion spent on preparing and hosting these Games.

“That figure is where our rough estimates sit based on 2023 costs; we cannot fathom what this number will look like in nine years’ time.”

Mr Katter said the billions of dollars pledged to the games was desperately needed to address the current cost-of-living and economic crises.

Today, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced the southern state would cancel its 2026 Commonwealth Games due to higher than forecast costs.

Initially $2.6 billion had been pledged but this has now blown out to $6 billion, a figure the southern Premier said was “well and truly too much for a 12-day sporting event”.[1]

“I think all Victorians would agree that more than $6 billion is just too much,” he told the press.

“I’ve made a lot of difficult decisions in this job – this is not one of them.

“We’re simply not going to invest that money.”

Mr Katter said the fact Victoria had abandoned it’s 12-day sporting festival because it was deemed too costly at $6 billion meant Queenslanders would be subject to daylight robbery should the Olympics go ahead.

“The Olympic Games carnival is 16 days – spending $20 billion on a three-week event could almost be called criminal given the state of play in Queensland at present.

“We need to face it, we’re all broke – the Premier needs to read the room.

“You can open the newspapers on any given day and get a glimpse of how everyone is suffering.

“Just today, Coles data is telling us Australians are cutting back on household and personal cleaning items such as cleansers and soaps.

“Also today, the Brisbane Times has reported that half of Australians are ‘on the brink’ as the cost-of-living bites in the face of spiralling interest rate rises.[2]

“That’s even before we talked about the health of the Queensland Budget, which is being solely propped up by inflated coal royalties.”

[1] https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/victoria/fears-grow-over-looming-changes-to-victorias-commonwealth-games/news-story/a799de241572eee999ae92a932d648c0

[2] RBA interest rates, cost of living leaves Australians on financial brink: RPM data (brisbanetimes.com.au)