When you’re spending other people’s money, the drive to robust cost-benefit analysis is highly diminished. Still, Queensland’s Department of Tourism, Innovation and Sport did one better when spruiking the benefits of its 2032 Olympic bid, by only counting one side of the ledger.

A June analysis produced for the Department and largely reliant on untested figures supplied by the 2032 Taskforce tallied up $17.6 billion of potential benefits from hosting the spectacle. While any normal financial accounting would have the costs of staging the whole thing deducted from the benefits, KPMG’s does not. Allowing Scott Morrison, his sports minister Richard Colbeck and a bevy of Queensland politicians to this week spruik the $17.6 billion gross figure like no one, let alone citizens, would pay for it.