Commonwealth Games timeline exposes Jacinta Allan

A new timeline will show that Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan stridently backed the 2026 Commonwealth Games bid about an hour before Daniel Andrews was warned not to bail it out.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan. Picture: Ian Currie

Victoria’s new Premier Jacinta Allan effusively backed the 2026 Commonwealth Games bid about an hour before the state’s senior bureaucrats warned then premier Dan Andrews against further bailouts, triggering its demise.

A leaked draft timeline of events leading up to the cancellation of the Games shows for the first time that Mr Andrews was told on June 13 by his most senior bureaucrats that they would likely brief against a submission for further funding to run the event.

The timeline shows the cost of running the event had leapt from the original $2.6bn to more than $4.5bn in April, and then by July 14 to between $6bn and $7bn.

The Weekend Australian can reveal that about an hour after Ms Allan told an estimates hearing about the “tremendous progress’’ of the Games, Mr Andrews was warned the state’s elite bureaucrats were effectively opposed to any bailout.

The Department of Premier and Cabinet, led by secretary Jeremi Moule, has produced a draft timeline of the event that shows DPC advised Mr Andrews of the budgetary risks of the Games on June 13 – the same day Ms Allan stridently backed the Games.

“We can do this. We know we can do this,” Ms Allan told the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. “There is huge energy, excitement and effort.”

But a few hundred metres away, Victoria’s most senior ­bureaucrats were about to tell Mr Andrews the Games no longer represented good value.

The timeline, which will be used in evidence to Monday’s parliamentary inquiry into the debacle, shows Mr Andrews instructed DPC to seek external legal advice on potentially killing the Games on June 14 but sources said that Ms Allan was not told of this decision until shortly before the lawyers Arnold Bloch Leibler were called about 5pm that day.

If this is accepted by the parliamentary inquiry, it would mean t Ms Allan – as Commonwealth Games Delivery Minister – was not integral to the decision to call in the lawyers and start the process of killing the event.

The version of events in the timeline, backed up by diary entries, emails and phone records, will be savaged by the opposition, which has accused Ms Allan of being fully aware of the plan to ditch the Games when she appeared before PAEC.

But the government will argue that the situation was much more nuanced and heavily influenced by Mr Andrews, who quit as premier last week, and that it was mid-July before the Games were actually cancelled.

The fact Mr Andrews was directly told that the public service was likely against the draft submission for further funding to run the Games but that Ms Allan wasn’t aware until the next day will also be challenged by the ­opposition.

Ms Allan said this week she had no conversations about the Games’ cancellation until the day lawyers were called – June 14 – and insisted she was truthful when she told PAEC the day ­before about her views on the progress of the Games.

The debacle has ­embarrassed Ms Allan in her first full week as Premier, especially as she was also previously in charge of major projects that suffered huge blowouts.

The public service timeline suggests that the government still had an open mind on the Games until as late as July 14, when the submission for more funds to bail out the Games was finally rejected after costs had soared to between $6bn and $7bn.

On July 17, the timeline suggests, cabinet approved the decision to withdraw from the Games and Mr Moule was authorised to tell the Commonwealth Games Federation in London on the same day.

It wasn’t until August 19 that Mr Andrews announced the outcome of the mediation, which has cost taxpayers $380m but likely much more.

The Victorian government assumed it would receive more than $200m in federal funding and that the costs would be kept to $2.6bn.

Another embarrassment for Ms Allan is the fact the timeline points out that in early June a ­report back to government on the need for additional funds had not included costings for transport and policing.

There is bewilderment in government how the Games process was so comprehensively bungled, especially as initial studies into the cost of the Games failed to take fully into account the cost of running an event in several different locations.

In 2006, the Games were delivered within budget, in part because Melbourne possessed some of the world’s best sporting assets.

But the decision to run the 2026 bid across regional Victoria created a series of financial challenges that included sub-standard sporting facilities, a lack of accommodation and significant issues with security.

Whereas the Melbourne Games were mostly confined to the inner city – especially athletics – Labor’s latest bid focused on five regional areas hundreds of kilometres apart.

Monday’s parliamentary inquiry will hear evidence from Mr Moule, Victoria 26 chair Peggy O’Neal and its chief executive ­Jeroen Weimar, as well as Office of the Commonwealth Games former CEO Allen Garner.