catholic world youth day month, page-39

140million day lol

World Youth Day costing us a packet

Alan Jones

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18/06/2008 6:22:00 AM.

VIDEO: Alan Jones comments on World Youth Day
The World Youth Day thing rumbles on.

There's so much else happening that it's hard to get a continuing public focus on this. But earlier this month the State Government disclosed it had allocated $60.7 million in the next financial year to fund operations and services for this global gathering of Catholic youth.

But this is on top of the $75.9 million that will have been spent by the time the Pope sets foot in Sydney, and on top of the $3 million in start-up costs to establish the World Youth Day Coordination Authority.

So that takes the total budgeted cost of World Youth Day to $139 million, $20.5 million from the federal government, the Catholic Church $10 million and the NSW taxpayer the rest.

This is for a pilgrims' sleepover and a Papal Mass at Randwick Racecourse.

$49 million will be spent on extra rail and bus services, health, ambulance and fire brigade services, overnight accommodation in about 412 public schools, coordinating traffic networks… and so it goes on. Then there was compensation to the AJC so that the Church could get access to Randwick Racecourse.

The NSW Government maintains the economic benefits of World Youth Day could exceed $180 million, but no one has released any documentation underpinning this assessment.

It's less than four weeks till World Youth Day begins and neither the NSW Government - nor the Catholic Church - is releasing the numbers of the so-called paid up registered pilgrims.

The Government says it's received assurances from the Sydney Archbishop Cardinal George Pell that the church would meet its target of 225,000 pilgrims.

But we're paying a hell of a price.

I see the residents in Parkham Street, Surry Hills, have had a victory of sorts.

They were concerned that trees were going to be cut down in their street to enable the pilgrims to file through the area on their way to Randwick Racecourse.

The local residents were livid and were going to make a peaceful - but determined - protest against the proposal.

Now we're told the trees will stay.

It seems there's more confusion than anything else. Remember we were told that the hospitality industry would benefit from World Youth Day festivities? Now the Hotels Association are saying that hotels will be reducing rates, because the numbers expected to fill the hotel rooms have not materialised.

Worse than that, the hotels are saying there will be about a 30 per cent occupancy rate during the event next month as opposed to a 75 per cent occupancy rate normally at that time of the year. Most of the pilgrims will be in billeted accommodation.

Then of course business and individuals are being told to stay out of the city, or catch public transport. As Adrian wrote to me, "I'm a small business employing seven on-site crew that need vehicle access to the city on a daily basis. How the hell do they think we can transport an average of 500 kgs to 1,000 kgs of material by public transport to the city?"

As Adrian said, "All these events may bring money to the city, but what do they cost the battlers when they're put off work for the day, or more, because we can't access the workplace. We're just recovering from APEC."

So by the time the Pope sets foot in Sydney on his first ever visit to Australia, we'll have forked out more than $80 million and then the NSW Government will fork out another more than $60 million to fund the Government operations and services for the event.

If the NSW Government believes that the economic benefits of World Youth Day will far outweigh these costs, it should release the documentation which enables it to make that call.

Until it does, such a claim seems far-fetched.