Canberra Times article: Some dubious and bodgy games

Jack Waterford is a well known Canberra correspondent who is the Editor-at-Large of The Canberra Times. Very knowledgeable about federal politics, he writes a weekly column in the Saturday Forum lift-out, which is a must read for all Canberra watchers.

Seeing that he is not really a sports nut as such, when he has something to say about dodgy practices, political or otherwise, you can rest assured he does it from a fairly neutral and objective stand point.

Today he has written about a whole lot of current sporting issues that are unified by the theme of political maneuvers of questionable morality.

I can’t find an online link, so I well summarise some of the more salient points, with the odd pearler of a quote thrown in. But if you can track down the article, I highly recommend it because Waterford is a very intelligent writer with a way of cutting through to the heart of the matter.

He begins with the statement that the John Howard rebuff, the World Cup bid and the UN Security Council all have one thing in common – they are part of a search for Australian influence in the world.

Given the propensity for a significant chunk of the Australian population to seek out some sort of greater recognition on the World stage (otherwise known as cultural cringe), the environment is there for a cast of shady characters to push all sorts of “ridiculous ideas”, and invariably these same people stand to gain personally at taxpayer expense.

Waterford says: “Lobbyists and some respectable consultants prostitute their craft to estimate, without any responsibility or accountability, that umpteen millions will flow in from visitors, that a critical mass of expertise will occur, or that the value of having images of Australia or Australians on international TV screens will be worth specified millions” (actually, in the case of this WC bid, the FFA consultants actually estimated billions!)

“The economics is almost invariably bodgy, the spin-offs very dubious.”

The attraction of a false bargain becomes even more exaggerated anytime these very same shysters stand to gain via bribery and corruption, and by “arse-kissing of the most repugnant people imaginable, followed by a range of local corruptions and inefficiencies as government and business are dragged from their proper priorities to playing handmaiden for the event’s success”.

Waterford makes the point that many of us have made over and over, if the World Cup was to guarantee endless economic riches, one would expect that the “spruikers would put up more of their own cash, and that they would devote less time to extracting money from various levels of Australian government.”

As we know, to date, the very same spruikers have not offered up one red cent.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, “politicians, city fathers and business urgers will do such things over and over again, not for the glory or economic benefit of their state, but because they find that spending our money gets them in the spotlight, for what that’s worth.”

The bigger the event, the more likely that corruption will follow, especially where the bulk of the decision-makers come from third-world countries.

This then leads otherwise decent, ethically inclined Australians to justifying “presents, prostitutes, under-the-lap payments, incentives, consultancies and boarding school fees as the price which must be paid” (witness Les Murray’s outburst questioning the temerity of any news outlet to investigate where the taxpayer dollars are heading).

The bottom line is that Australians end up being every bit as corrupt as “and morally worse than those whose palms they’ve greased”.

Waterford rightly asks: “if it’s wrong for a wheat firm to bribe an official, it’s no les wrong for a soccer official to do it”.

Waterford concludes: “One day, indeed, we might get over our national anxiety and neurosis about our standing in the world, and let things happen on their merits.”