Marion Studdert
The games we shouldn't play
Sydney's bid for the Olympic Games is inextricably bound up with the development of Homebush Bay — 760 hectares in the demographic heart of Sydney. Much of this is degraded land once used for brick making, abattoirs and light industry.
The area is being redeveloped to include the provision of transport, water, services and sporting facilities. Developers aim to make it a tourist attraction in the style of Sydney's Darling Harbour. In 1992 the cost of achieving this was estimated to be $807 million. On top of this, the Games budget is an estimated $1392 million.
Can we afford such a facility? From the outset, lack of genuine community consultation meant that social and environmental criteria were inadequately considered.
Many local residents have indicated a strong preference for Homebush Bay to be redeveloped as open park and bush land. Many worry that the neighbouring areas will be disadvantaged by traffic, noise, pollution and crowds both during and after the Olympics. Others express disgust at the vast amounts of money being spent on the redevelopment, feeling this could go to better use.
While the Sydney Bid Committee argue that this is a very reasonable budget, they do not include the costs of the major infrastructural changes that are surely linked to the Games bid — the Glebe Island Bridge, the third runway, the second airport, the harbour tunnel, the F4 freeway and the F5 motorway. Considerable opposition has been raised to all these developments on the grounds of environmental degradation, reduced quality of life and the government's unwillingness to address the urgent question of an efficient and environmentally benign public transport system.
Then there's the plan to sell the Showground and shift it to Homebush Bay, where it will be used
for Olympic events, while the projected $74 million proceeds from the sale will go to the Olympic budget. There is also a real danger that the tonnes of ammunition stored by the Navy at a site near the proposed Olympic Village will be shifted to the naval base at Jervis Bay. Already local community groups are organising against this plan.
The committee has made great fanfare about the bid being for a "green" games. Assurances have been given that the development will not impact on native bush land, forests, wet lands, fauna or threatened ecosystems. Yet one of their first projects — the clearing of an access road to the Olympic site — involved the destruction of 30 large trees, including six Moreton Bay Figs over 100 years old.
Homebush Bay is home to a number of protected migratory birds. Australia has signed agreements with China and Japan for the protection of the golden plover from Alaska and Siberia, the ruddy turnstone from the high Arctic and the blacktailed godwit from northern Europe and Asia. Can we be sure that these birds will not disappear in the wake of cement, tracks, buildings, houses, walkways, car parks and roads built just for a two-week event?
Development is running amok at Homebush Bay. Where money should be spent on the redevelopment of part of the bay as salt-marsh wet land, an Olympic Stadium seating 80,000 is being built. Where truly "green" efforts would regenerate the mangroves at the edges of the river, luxury suites are being built to accommodate Olympic officials.
While thousands go homeless in NSW, accommodation will be built for 22,500 athletes and officials. While government cuts to social welfare programs proceed apace, 15,000 Olympic competitors and officials will get cash grants for free return air fares and freight charges for horses, yachts, rowing shells, canoes and kayaks.
[Marion Studdert is an activist in the Concord Peace and Environment Group and the Lowe Greens.]