CUE THE ELEPHANTS

Am I going mad or are Melbourne people so blinded by sport that the Premier can announce committing more than $360 million of taxpayers’ money to extend –yet again – the tennis centre and everybody thinks it’s Christmas. Three hundred and sixty mill?  No probs. Hand me the chequebook? Can you imagine what $360 million could do for our Police force? For our hospitals?  For public transport? For the elderly? In this current climate?  
 
And on the same day that Prime Minister Rudd says we’ll have to all work harder in the years ahead to avoid reducing government services, including health services, as the needs of an ageing population become greater.
 
This isn’t Nero fiddling while Rome burns. This is Nero planning new circuses, and grandiose new buildings to stage them in, while Rome burns.
 
John Brumby has an edifice complex. And he can feel an election coming on. Put up more circus tents. Send in the clowns. Distract the idiots.
 
They were all like kids with a new Leggo set as they unveiled it all yesterday.
 
 Why should you the taxpayer pay for it all? Tennis is an elitist sport. An individual’s sport. Like golf. Not a team sport. It’s not going to improve the fitness of hundreds of thousands of young football players or netball players.
 
This project will improve the bank balance of a few foreign sportsmen and women. An Australian hasn’t won the Open since the 1970s but that’s not the main point.
 
The top players now courted as celebrities endorse products like Louis Vuitton and Tag Hauer watches. The winner of the singles title takes home more than a million dollars.
 
So why shouldn’t the government put a new building tax on the prize money? Make the ITA and Tennis Australia kick in for their new facilities.
Add a building tax to ticket prices. Claw back some of the millions that Channel Seven pays for the broadcast rights to pay for the improved facilities.
 
The Premier say this guarantees the Australian Open is now guaranteed to stay in Melbourne until ‘at least 2036’, Have they signed a new 25-year contract with the International Tennis Federation? Or will we one day discover this is a new Bernie Ecklestone blackmail deal with the recurring threat that  they’ll take their marbles and go home if we don’t keep  paying  through the nose.
 
What they are all forgetting is who pays for the marbles. You do.
 
Wednesday, January 20, 2010

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2010