'Process has been questionable': uncertainty as Minister defends stadium contract

Former sports minister Stuart Ayres has rebuffed accusations he misled the public over the awarding of a contract to Lendlease to rebuild the Sydney Football Stadium, saying it was premised on the expectation that the company would deliver a "world class arena" at "value for money".

Labor has accused the government of going to the March election "on a lie", after Mr Ayres announced in December last year that Lendlease had been appointed the "construction contractor" for the $729 million project at Moore Park.

The remains of the stadium at Moore Park.Credit: Brook Mitchell

The Berejiklian government announced last Friday Lendlease would not be constructing the stadium because it was unable to complete the job on budget.

But Mr Ayres, on Tuesday, stood by his characterisation of the contractual arrangements as he defended the government's decision to sack Lendlease.

"Lendlease were always the construction contractor provided they delivered a good product and was value for money," Mr Ayres said.

"They were always going to do demolition followed by construction and we put in place a termination clause should they not deliver a product that met our expectations."

Mr Ayres said the contract "clearly had the provision for demolition followed by construction", but he said the company failed to meet the government's expectations "for a world class arena that should be developed at value for money for the taxpayer".

A spokesman for Sports Minister John Sidoti, who replaced Mr Ayres in March, said the government had costed the demolition at $36.3 million, leaving nearly $693 million of the project's estimated $729 million overall cost for the rebuild.

"The government will deliver Sydney Football Stadium on time and on budget," the spokesman said.

Mr Sidoti's office also confirmed the government "had no plans" for a hotel on the Moore Park site, which is managed by the Sydney Cricket and Sports Ground Trust, after it received an unsolicited proposal to build one.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the stadium would "absolutely" be ready by the 2023 Women’s World Cup, as she announced NSW would back the Football Federation of Australia's bid to host the tournament.

But Labor's sports spokeswoman Lynda Voltz likened the stadium issue to the government's bungling of the CBD light rail, which is over budget and delayed.

“The Sydney Light Rail is a year late and $1 billion over budget and the new stadium looks set to be light rail mark two," Ms Voltz said.

Infrastructure NSW is still progressing through the approval process for stage two of the stadium project, which covers design, construction and operation of the facility.

The City of Sydney, Waverley and Randwick councils - all of which have been opponents of the stadium policy - are among those who have made submissions for the planned rebuild.

Waverley mayor John Wakefield, a Labor councillor, also questioned whether the government could meet its estimated completion date in early 2022, given it now had to finalise plans the stadium's construction while going through the tender process to find a new developer.

"Does it not speak volumes about the process many of us called into question about the demolition and putting the development application approval process ahead of the design?," Mr Wakefield said.

"The so-called architectural plans were only that, they were very conceptual. It's not something you could base a build tender on. Tendering and costing an abstract building is impossible, and we said that."

The lord mayor of the City of Sydney, Clover Moore, said the state government's plan to knock-down and rebuild had always been "a scandalous waste of public funds".

"Now there’s a crater in the middle of our precious parkland, and the project is in disarray," she said.

The Labor mayor of Randwick, Kathy Neilson, said the community was "rightfully concerned" about the future of the redevelopment.

"The process has been questionable at best and we now have a situation where demolition has occurred but no one knows who will build the stadium, what it will cost or when it will be done," she said.