Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
I thought the Council planned it but it was canned, then brought back but I would have to hunt for that and I can’t be doing that now. I am making Lasagne.
The government and the then Auckland Regional Council contributed $20 million each to buy Queen’s Wharf in 2009, as a fan site for the RWC and as a site for a future cruise ship terminal and public space. I think it’s fair to say that brought forward the opening of the red gates by years.
After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing about what structures would be on the wharf and who would pay for them, both sides got their way: the government paid for The Cloud and the council funded the restoration of Shed 10 (which wasn’t suitable for use without the work).
Both structures will stay on the wharf indefinitely. I seem to recall a proposal for Shed 10 to be used as part of the cruise ship terminal, but they can go to hell. It’s an event space now.
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Up Front: Casual, Shallow and Meaningless, in reply to Moz,
Names only get you so far. I am similar, and usually I can place the face and give you a potted summary of the person, but not always. Sometimes I find myself having a great chat with someone who obviously knows me then afterwards going “who was that”? I find the faking it only gets me so far, partly because I’m micro-famous so people who have talked to me once, five years ago, seem to remember me while I have NFI who they are
I have written a whole blog post about this in the past. I still need to work on not giving that look of bewilderment when someone who clearly knows and has previously met me starts up a conversation.
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to merc,
And yes, the media has been reporting the expenditures to date when they can get answers.
Te Puni Kokiri's inability to explain how it spent $2.8 million was fairly pathetic.
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to merc,
This is pretty good list to start with and the excuse that it’s pretty much in line with what you would expect, well, I would expect better.
Not everything in that story is of the same order, though. As I noted above, if tens of thousands of us are going to descend on the key public venue, the council pretty much has to provide for us.
And the earlier Herald story I linked to -- and on which the new story is based -- includes infrastructure upgrades to ports and airports etc in that $200m cost, which I'm not sure should really be entirely attributed to the RWC, given that those facilities serve our tourism trade in the long term Again, it'd be good to see it itemised rather than take the reporter's word for it.
(They almost included $1.1 billion in capital expenditure by NZ Rail, which would have made for a spectacular total.)
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to merc,
I think we have grown a far more jaded view of the benefits of these types of expenditures.
I'd say that we -- and to give due credit, our media -- are far less inclined to ignore the kind of crap that went down with the Viaduct redevelopment.
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Our government could have got together with the Aussies, Brits and South Africans and agreed not to be kicked around by Big Sport. Then the IRB would have had a choice of either pulling their (substantial) necks in, or holding future tournaments in places like Dubai and Hong Kong
There was a strong lobby amongst some of the European unions for RWC 2011 to go to Japan, which ended up having to wait till 2019. (The other bidder was South Africa.)
It was believed that New Zealand couldn't provide the facilities or the ground capacity for an international tournament, and that it made more sense to expand the game's profile in Auckland.
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to merc,
There are so many instances of totally incompetent behaviour round RWC spending. The cloud, tubeworm future itself is being debated, no real ideas and it’s not purpose built for the timeframes they are quoting.
The Cloud was part of the Queen's Wharf compromise between central and local government -- I suppose it was a mercy that at McCully didn't managed to get Auckland Council ratepayers to stump up for it, as the Hide appointees at the CCOs were proposing.
Funny thing is, we never remember the amazing sums of public money that went into the America's Cup Village and the Viaduct a decade ago -- $100 million-plus.
The Infrastructure Auckland-owned America's Cup Village Ltd, which was supposed to make money, lost $10 million during the first defence and went out of business before the second one. It was a major shambles and had a strong whiff of cronyism.
But we forget these things ...
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to merc,
Ngati Whatua get it.
And my word have they been sensitive about criticism of it.
Maybe it's awesome inside, but it does not look like it will last long before the exterior deteriorates. It looks a bit crappy, frankly.
But my main problem was the government spending $1.8 million outside of any conventional process. WTF?
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to 3410,
Eight bucks for a plastic cup of tankered fake Heineken in a tax-payer-funded venue?? They must’ve made out like bandits.
To be fair, it's a taxpayer-funded venue that will still be a feature of our expanding waterfront long after the RWC ends.
The original proposal, remember, was for both sheds to be bowled. But a public and media outcry led to the preservation of Shed 10. It's one thing you cannot blame central government for.
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Hard News: Winning the RWC: it's complicated, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
Charging for fan-zone tickets would have deferred the cost and contained the numbers.
It would have gone nowhere covering the costs and would have generated massive, and understandable, public resentment.
Free ticketing for Queen’s Wharf, which they finally got round to doing, should have been in place from the beginning. Indeed, as I’ve noted the idea was raised and McCully and others rejected it.
We could have had every game in existing stadia – just with slightly smaller crowds – who could in turn have been transported more easily.
We would not have been granted the tournament without stadium upgrades.