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While most of Victoria slept, the Andrews government quietly killed the Commonwealth Games.

The death knell came a little after 2am (AEST) when state government lawyers informed their gobsmacked counterparts at the Commonwealth Games Federation in London that Victoria was terminating the host contract it had entered into a little over a year ago.

The first that local Games organisers officially knew of it was six hours later when Commonwealth Games Australia chief executive Craig Phillips took a call from Tim Ada, one of the state’s senior bureaucrats. Ada advised him that a dramatic blowout in forecast costs – nearly double what Phillips understood the costs to be just a month earlier – had put paid to Victoria 2026.

Phillips, like the other members of the Victoria 2026 organising committee, was blindsided by the decision and what Premier Daniel Andrews later described as a revised $6 billion to $7 billion price tag on the event. He said these numbers beggared belief and the decision to cancel the Games was “absolutely embarrassing” for Victoria, a state that prides itself on staging major events.

“I would be very careful if I was an international sporting body coming and doing business in this state in the future,” the frustrated Games boss warned. Had he been lied to by the government? “We are not sure at this stage.”

To understand how we got here, it is helpful to go back to how and why the idea of Victoria hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games came about.

Andrews spoke of Victoria stepping in to help an event that, since the onset of the pandemic, had been unable to find a host – a white knight riding in to help a sporting concept in distress. In truth, Victoria came up with the idea as a way of helping itself out of its long COVID winter.

It was late spring 2021, as Victoria was emerging from the last of its COVID lockdowns and the crushing impact of 262 cumulative days subject to stay-at-home orders. Senior figures within Visit Victoria, the state government’s major events and tourism promotion agency, started to explore the possibility of Victoria pitching for the Games.

The agency, which is run by Brendan McClements, chaired by Janet Whiting and has prominent figures such as Gerry Ryan and Eddie McGuire on its board, saw little value in Melbourne hosting another Commonwealth Games just 20 years after it staged one in 2006.

It conceived of a new Games model: a regional, multi-sport event spread around a number of host cities that could be used to introduce international tourists to the rest of the state and deliver much-needed housing and sporting infrastructure to fast-growing regional communities.

Premier Daniel Andrews has waved goodbye to the Commonwealth Games.Credit: Joe Armao

To develop the idea, Visit Victoria commissioned two sports and events consultancies, Global Media Sports and the Swiss-based EKS, to reimagine what the Games could look like. They suggested a significantly pared-back program that would include cutting traditional sports and adding men’s T20 cricket to attract more visitors and a television revenue from India. The initial, provisional price tag was $1.3 billion – just below the cost of Gold Coast 2018.

Not all these ideas were welcomed by Commonwealth Games Australia, which opposed the loss of traditional sports. Visit Victoria agreed to a redesign and, with the help of one of the Victorian government’s go-to consultants, EY, came up with a new cost of $2.65 billion.

This is the figure that McClements pitched to the Commonwealth Games Federation, housed in a historic building in central London, over a series of Zoom calls in October and November 2021. In exchange, Victoria asked for a run clear from rival bidders while it developed its proposal. At the time, South Australia and Western Australia had lost interest in hosting in 2026 but NSW, under the leadership of a new premier in Dominic Perrottet, was also eying off the event.

On December 15, 2021, the Victorian government and the Commonwealth Games Federation signed a memorandum of understanding that, in effect, provided that Victoria could have the Games if it decided to take them. Two months later, Andrews publicly announced his plans, promising a Commonwealth Games unlike any before.

T20 cricket was among the sports Victorian organisers were keen to host.Credit: Getty Images

“We are the sporting capital of our nation,” he declared in February 2022. “We have all that is needed to make an event like this a fantastic success, for us and everybody across the Commonwealth. There is a key point of difference, though. It is not just about taking it off the shelf. It is not just about re-running what was done back in 2006.

“Our vision for this is a Games like no other. That will be great for regional Victoria, great for the state, for jobs, for investment, for confidence and just to reassert – if there was any question in anyone’s mind – that we are the major events capital, the sporting capital.”

Those comments – laced with the political ambitions of a state premier who had just seen off a pandemic and was now eyeing an election later that year and third term in government – have now taken on a mocking tone.

Well before Victoria 2026 was cancelled, insiders had dubbed it the “five-times” Games due to the extraordinary complexity, logistical challenge – and costs – of organising an event on this scale across so many regional centres.

Victoria 2026 is no more.Credit: Eddie Jim

Decisions about where to stage events bordered on the bizarre, with the government ditching its original plan to hold the swimming at an existing pool at Kardinia Park in favour of a “Field of Dreams” at Armstrong Creek, a new housing estate halfway between Geelong and the Surf Coast.

Two full-sized Olympic pools were to be built; one would then be demolished after the closing ceremony. In Bendigo, a velodrome would be purpose built for the Games and then torn down, leaving no lasting benefit to any would-be track cyclists inspired by the event.

On Tuesday morning, not long after Craig Phillips received his courtesy phone call from Tim Ada, Andrews appeared at a press conference alongside the two ministers responsible for the Games – Deputy Premier Jacinta Allan and Harriet Shing – and organising committee chief Jeroen Weimar to snuff out the flame of an ill-fated venture.

Andrews said the revised cost estimates had left him no choice. “Six to seven billion dollars is well and truly too much for a 12-day sporting event,” he said. “I will not take money out of hospitals and schools in order to fund an event that is three times the cost as estimated and budgeted for last year.

“I have made a lot of difficult calls, a lot of very difficult decisions in this job. This is not one of them.”

He softened the shock announcement by promising to deliver the affordable housing and sporting infrastructure budgeted for as part of the Games bid.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto described the cancellation as a humiliation and said the damage to Victoria’s reputation would be deep and lasting.

“This is an unprecedented cancellation of a major event, not just in Victoria but nationally,” Pesutto said. “Somebody has to be held accountable for this debacle.”

Visit Victoria chair Whiting, a corporate lawyer who also serves as president of the National Gallery of Victoria council of trustees, does not believe the episode will be as damaging as Pesutto fears. She said the Commonwealth Games, due to their size and complexity, are an outlier, rather than the norm.

“A blowout of this scale years out from the event has to be taken in that context,” she told this masthead. “It is extremely unusual and, as a result, I think it will be treated that way and our reputation for committing to and delivering great events will remain intact.”

Whatever the long-term impacts, Tuesday’s announcement raised troubling questions.

The first is why the Andrews government kept Victoria 2026 in the dark about what he says were the true costs of the Games.

The board of the organising committee is chaired by Peggy O’Neal, the razor-sharp former president of the Richmond Football Club, and includes Commonwealth Games Australia chairman Ben Houston and Commonwealth Games Federation boss Dame Louise Martin.

Once the Victorian government had analysis suggesting the Games would cost more than twice as much as budgeted, why did it not share that information and seek the advice of the organising committee?

If the Victorian government believed its new Games model had gone bust, why did it not consider a redesign instead of pulling the pin?

Phillips said that in recent months, as it became apparent that costs associated with the event were rising, he floated several ideas to cut expenses. These included cancelling the construction of some temporary venues, like the Bendigo velodrome, and shifting the events to Melbourne. He said these ideas were flatly rejected by the government.

Andrews, having promised a Games like no other, would rather have no Games at all.

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