Manipulative tactics, not genuine debate, drive costly stadium plans, exposing flaws in political governance.
by Bernard Keane, The Mandarin
Nicholas Gruen calls it ‘agonocracy’ or, rule by strife. It’s a neologism of his own devising.
“Government by factions whose views are pre-determined by political advantage, culture war, and party discipline. Politicians, talking heads, and their supporting players in consulting or the bureaucracy are strategic performers seeking outcomes — manipulative effectiveness, not deliberative authority.”
Gruen, one of Australian public policy’s national treasures and one of the few real big-picture thinkers in that space, has a good idea of what he’s talking about after his role in the controversy over a new stadium in Hobart to host an AFL team.
As is standard, the Tasmanian government, via the Macquarie Point Development Corporation, hired a Big Four audit firm, KPMG, to conduct an economic analysis of the project, which in the planning stage alone ballooned in cost from $715 million to $774 million. The Tasmanian government is committed to spending $375 million, with the federal government handing over $240 million.
KPMG found the stadium would operate at a loss and that, with a host of other taxpayer funding factored in, would produce a benefit-cost ratio of 0.69. But the firm reckoned that was not unusual for a stadium and anyway, it reflected the fact that “a large component of benefit is either not quantifiable or not able to be monetised”.
Ah, those old, unquantifiable benefits.
Read the full story here: Are you an agonocrat? Come to Hobart Stadium and watch a fake contest of ideas
