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When I perform stand-up comedy I usually wear the same t-shirt, have done for six years.
It’s like my favourite footy ground, not perfect but I love it. It’s comfortable.
Occasionally, when I do corporate gigs I’ll wear a collared shirt, as there’s nothing quite as satisfying as dressing up to perform for a bunch of businessmen who are drunk and not listening to you.
If my favourite t-shirt – made from cotton by a child somewhere in Asia – can last six years and counting, why do rarely-used engineering masterpieces like ANZ Stadium and Allianz Stadium have to be reconstructed after ten, fifteen or twenty?
On Thursday (today), NSW Premier Mike Baird announced that $1.6 billion would be spent on upgrading various stadiums around Sydney. $1.6 billion is a lot of money in anyone’s book. Even an out of touch politician.
Why are we, the taxpayers paying for this? As individuals we already spend a monetary fortune every year travelling to and from games, entering grounds, buying memberships and clothing our children in club paraphernalia, not to mention paying mentally by having to listen to Ray Hadley or painful advertisements on television and radio.
Let the clubs pay, or whichever sponsor has its name plastered all over the concrete wastelands. Or, subsidise the development with some of the profit made through selling the excruciatingly expensive meat pies I and everyone else buy at the footy.
Clive Palmer or Nathan Tinkler can pay for all I care. Or here’s an idea, increase tax on the filthy and tragic money punters donate to gambling consortiums every year and use that.
These echo-chambers are used on average for a paltry two hours a week. Anything else used so sparsely would be pulled down. There’s nothing wrong with ANZ Stadium or Allianz Stadium except they’re not used enough and are rarely full when they are.
This type of prioritised government expenditure is as stupid as the idiotic defence spending on submarines. Less people live underwater than attend Souths matches at ANZ Stadium. Who the hell are these subs looking for, Harold Holt?
We all know the $1.6 billion could be better spent elsewhere. Anywhere probably, well other than on submarines. Grassroots sport for starters. I’m yet to see how a flashy corporate suite at a football ground, or a state-of-the-art press box has ever helped a kid become a rugby league international.
And don’t for a minute think that the cheap, plastic seats you and I will be sitting on will offer any more legroom or be any more comfortable than they have been for the past hundred years.
Does it really matter how nice a stadium is anyway? If Canterbury are playing you still have to sit among their fans.
The other interesting thing about the debate over which sporting precinct would receive what ludicrous amount of funding, is that there wasn’t one. The issue was never even pitched to the public as, ‘Do we need or want this?’ It was immediately presented as a foregone conclusion that one or more sporting complexes would be getting a refurbishment.
The discussion only ever centred on which ground would get what. We weren’t asked, we were told. Those with vested interests, corporate giants and developers had decided long ago, along with their mates in government. It’s pure and simply cronyism.
How about a plebiscite on whether or not we should spend $1.6 billion on football stadiums that are used for two hours a week? Instead it looks like we’ll be having one about gay marriage, something that at least 70 per cent of the population now believe in.
You reckon 70 per cent of New South Welshmen care about two new stadiums in Sydney?
The Baird Government’s political audaciousness on this matter is staggering for its belligerent contemptuousness for the people, yet is typical and what we expect of our politicians. For them a new stadium is simply something to point at during an election campaign.
When I finally decide to get a new t-shirt, I’ll pay for it. I won’t be asking someone else to. If privately run, professional sporting clubs – who persistently tell us that they are businesses – want new stadiums, they can pay for them too.
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