*... no respect for the hard work that has gone into those taxes...#

No prescience, no respect and above all total arrogance towards the subject!

Dan

If only Morrison could do vaccines, the way Australia does water sports. I've been to six Games, but one of my favourite sports is razzing Life Emperor Coates.

To be sure, the IOC is corrupt and bloated leviathan, and the deals with the host cities are vastly asymmetric. But I'm still a de Coubertin guy at heart, as are many millions of us. Sydney itself is an overrated and overpopulated mess, but it worked in 2000. Don't like Brisbane either, but I'll be there on my walking frame I imagine.

Steve S

And as you’ve obviously walked through life in the same manner of ignorance towards the obvious, maybe you should apply for a free ticket for your dedication to that ignorance!

Dan

Graham could have added a couple more negatives.

Every time Australia hosts a Games event we get a good collection of third world athletes that disappear into the community and claim asylum.

The multi-billion dollar sporting infrastructure is supposed to be an asset for generations. It turned out that less than 20 years after the Sydney Olympics the NSW Government wanted to demolish the main stadium.

Overall, wining the right to host an Olympic Games is the mother of all booby prizes.

Graham. I believe Brisbane will be different. Given we already have much of the required infrastructure in place and other parts like rapid urban rail. Will bring with it, sustainable long term economic growth. And done with or without the games! And given it showcases areas like tourist mecca, the gold coast. Bring in a new surge of cashed-up tourists.

Sure we need to avoid the economic pitfalls and the waste of money! And we need a better deal for the broadcast rights from a post-pandemic world starving for escapism. And should the local media be unable to properly pay for broadcast rights, then sky news etc. May step into that money/honey pot breach. And broadcast to a world that's is bigger with billions more eyes glued to billions more TV sets.

Moreover, the upgrades will continue to serve a sports-mad population long after the games are little more than memories.

We do games very well and our renowned expertise is sort after, the world over! All we need do is break-even and then reap the later economic reward and economic expansion!
Alan B.

Graham,
>Brisbane's budget for the Olympics is $5 billion. This would make it the cheapest since the
>Athens Olympics, and even cheaper than the 2000 Sydney Olympics, which sounds ambitious.
It may sound ambitious until you look at the ratio of existing to new infrastructure.

>According to the Flyvbjerg study, the amount has at least a 20 per cent risk of being $15 billion or higher.
I had a look at his study and it didn't even mention Brisbane! You're making the mistake of looking only at statistics rather than the reasons behind them.

>And the state government has also done a sweetheart deal with the CFMEU for government construction
Any actual evidence it's a sweetheart deal? There have been lots of deals with unions resulting in high labour costs but also high labour productivity.

>That's bound to make the eye-wateringly expensive $1 billion redevelopment of the
>Gabba... even more expensive.
Not necessarily - it's just as likely to be part of the reason why it's expensive in the first place.

>Just how good a job generator that will be can easily be measured by comparing the Olympics
>with the Adani mine, which will employ 2000 a year not just for 10 years, but for 60.

An extremely dubious figure. The reality is much lower: http://www.thebigsmoke.com.au/2021/05/17/this-is-what-the-adani-mine-is-really-delivering/ quotes Senator Bridget McKenzie as claiming: “(Adani will) be employing 1,500 through the construction phase and around about 100 ongoing.” And the assumption that the coal mine will remain economic for 60 years is highly fanciful - world demand for coal is certain to fall for economic reasons as well as environmental reasons, and the mine's far enough from the port to suffer from high transport costs.

If you're going got whinge about costs and dubious benefits, please at least try to be consistent about it!

Brisbane the only bidder! Shows how dumb or totally out of the touch Pluckachook is. I hope she is 'rewarded' by Queenslanders at the next election. Of course, voters probably don't know that there is an opposition: like all states except SA, they never say boo.

Aidan last year Germany increased it's coal consumption by 29%, with the majority of that being brown coal. It is building a new gas pipeline to import much more Russian gas. So much for renewables reducing emissions. The only thing windmills reduce is the wealth of people of the country that erects them.

Yes the Olympics are sure to see more investment in tax payer funded public transport. Not only will billions be wasted in building the things, but then hundreds of millions more will be wasted every year in running then at a huge loss for decades.

Time to get inefficient government out of public transport for ever.

Hasbeen,
> last year Germany increased it's coal consumption by 29%,
What is your source or that figure?

Germany is phasing out coal power. In 2038 it will be banned completely.
But unlike other nations, Germany is also phasing out nuclear power. So it is possible that closure of nuclear plants resulted in a reversal of Germany's huge decrease in coal consumption from 2018 to 2019. But if that's the case (and I can't find any evidence it is) it's just a statistical biip on a decline that will reach zero in the medium term.

>The only thing windmills reduce is the wealth of people of the country that erects them.
What will it take for you to comprehend that costs are not what they were a decade ago?
We've now reached the stage that it's coal fired power stations that have the wealth reducing effect.

>Yes the Olympics are sure to see more investment in tax payer funded public transport.
Good - there's been an underinvestment in that, and it's time it was remedied.

>Not only will billions be wasted in building the things, but then hundreds of millions
>more will be wasted every year in running then at a huge loss for decades.
Would you prefer they emulate Melbourne and spend the money on overpriced roads instead?

>Time to get inefficient government out of public transport for ever.
Reducing government involvement doesn't automatically make it more efficient, and doing nothing is not an efficient option either. Making it more efficient is possible, and crowdsourcing should be a big part of the solution.

"Germany is phasing out coal power. In 2038 it will be banned completely". A pipe dream Aidan, & cheap words. Watch the actions. Huge pipe line to get more gas, & a big increase in coal fire to keep the lights on, & that after importing French nuclear power as well. Only the soft in the head actually believe wind & solar can supply the power a modern society needs.

Hasbeen, only the empty in the head believe that it can't. What you see as insurmountable obstacles are actually minor problems that can be easily overcome.

The coal phaseout in Germany is not a pipe dream nor cheap words, but law. It will happen - the biggest question now is whether they'll stick with the 2038 deadline or bring it forward.

>Watch the action
I suggest you take a look yourself - you'd notice that renewables are supplying Germany with twice as much power as they generate from coal.

>Huge pipe line to get more gas
Yes. They're not trying to phase out gas yet, and I never claimed they were. But as output from renewables grows, it's likely they'll become less reliant on gas.

>& a big increase in coal fire to keep the lights on,
I asked what your evidence for that was, and instead of providing any you merely repeated the assertion. I' had a look and couldn't find any evidence of any such increase last year, though there was an increase in the first half of this year due to the combined effects of a gas shortage, an unusually cold winter, and low wind conditions.

To see our best striving with every ounce of determination and courage to achieve for Australia, and the efforts of our blame-shifting and buck-passing "permanently bewildered" leaders, is striking, to say the least!

Our Olympians are lifting the spirits of the nation all while our bungling leaders are busy blame-shifting and buck passion like there was no tomorrow!? If there was a gold medal for the latter? They'd win it hands down!

Go and get vaccinated is the PMs call! And most would if there were sufficient supplies of Pfizer vaccine! We had the opportunity early in the pandemic to secure enough supplies to vaccinate the whole nation many months ago! But a complacent bean-counting government sat on laurels they never ever earned! But adroitly claimed a gold standard that started with the Ruby Princes.

Continue to resist invoking island quarantine or ensuring that airline crews and their drivers stay locked down in their own bubble between shifts. And because this is so, now have allowed the delta variant in!

Make no mistake, and I believe, the ultra-complacent Morrison government owns this outcome, the death toll and casualty rate that accompanies it!
Alan B.

If gas is the answer? Then why not inexhaustible biogas? Well?

Simply put, every household in Oz produces enough biological waste to not only power their domiciles 24/7 but if scrubbed and then fed in ceramic fuel cells a 50%+ salable surplus and forever!

That would require a massive retrofit and steel mills reopened across the nation and on overdrive 24/7

And something that'd be producing wealth and jobs, jobs, jobs for the nation, well beyond the pandemic!

There's no question that the days of coal are very numbered or that the only viable substitute is nuclear. Or that, that nuclear has to be MSR thorium.

And doable now that that the remaining bugs have been ironed out. And they're not responsible for the massive bird kill of these eyesore monstrosities/windmills.

The Morrison government needs to get behind nuclear. At least then they'd stand for something other than spin, sports rorts and pork barreled railroad parking where there are no railroads? AND WITH TAXPAYER FUNDS!

Quite a record to stand on as we approach the next election?

As for labor, what they so obviously stand for, is simply winning the next election! THAT IS ALL!

And kowtowing/selling their souls to the greens and their dumber than dumb policies, if that's what it takes!?

Nuclear power? They'd die in a ditch first, regardless of how much that is the first, most obvious and sane choice going forward!
Alan B.

Alan B.,
Gas is not the answer, but I'm curious as to where you got the idea that every household produce 50% more biological waste than needed to power it? It sounds very unlikely to me.

Also, if you think it's true then why do you not regard it as a viable alternative to coal?

Meanwhile in the real world, nuclear power is quite an expensive alternative. Renewables are a much cheaper option for Australia, despite most on this board being unable to comprehend that.

And the problem of massive bird kills from wind turbines was solved decades ago by not using a truss tower to support them.