A Senate inquiry into the cancellation of the 2026 Victorian Commonwealth Games is underway in Melbourne.
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00:00 Witnesses are gathered here in Melbourne today to answer questions in relation to the Victorian
00:07 Government's decision to pull the plug on hosting that 2026 Commonwealth Games.
00:13 Now, it's arguably the most interesting leg of a federal Senate inquiry into Australia's
00:19 preparedness to host sporting competitions.
00:22 That was launched back in March, so prior to Premier Daniel Andrews' announcement here,
00:27 they did reopen submissions after the news broke.
00:31 Now, the Commonwealth Games Australia is one of the key figures that has spoken already.
00:36 They remained fairly tight-lipped on a lot of fronts, saying that they had to retain
00:42 confidentiality around that $380 million settlement deal that was arrived at with the Victorian
00:48 Government, but they did throw into question some of the accuracy around some of the costings
00:54 that the Andrews Government has been talking about in recent months since they decided
00:58 to pull out of hosting the Games.
01:02 We also heard from the consultant group Ernst & Young, a couple of partners from that group.
01:08 Now, they were involved in originally coming up with some of the estimates for how much
01:14 it would cost to put on the Games, which was originally around $2.6 billion, and they were
01:19 fairly tight-lipped as well, refusing to even answer questions about how much they were
01:23 paid for their services.
01:26 So a senior, one of the big four, sitting here and saying you're not prepared to be
01:30 public about what you were paid to actually develop a business case that has seen Victorian
01:40 taxpayers fork out hundreds of millions of dollars for non-existing Commonwealth Games
01:46 is an appalling disrespect to this committee, but also Australian taxpayers, and I would
01:51 say professional standards.
01:53 That's Senator Bridget McKenzie right there.
01:55 As you can see, she's quite frustrated.
01:58 That kind of confidentiality issue kept coming up again and again, and the panel did reiterate
02:03 multiple times that the Senate does have powers to request information and documentation from
02:10 witnesses unless there's a significant public interest reason as to why they can't provide
02:16 that or why they need to retain that confidentiality.
02:20 But Ernst & Young did at least acknowledge that they stand by their initial costing estimates
02:25 of around $2.6 billion for the Games, but they also acknowledged that certain circumstances
02:31 may have changed in the interim.
02:33 So really a lot of question marks still remain around this, and hopefully we'll find out
02:38 more as the inquiry continues.
02:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]