Who actually wants the Olympics?

The concept of the games is amazing. But like with everything these days it's become enshitified into a corporate driven consumtion based product geared only towards making the rich richer.

In college my city was bidding for it. My final (editing, I didn't produce it) was a documentary about a group fighting the bid.

Really opened my eyes to the damage hosting the Olympics causes. Hundreds and hundreds of people displaced to make room for a one-time event.

I know it's not popular in the online Brisbane community, but I do.

I don't agree with all the specifics about how it's being done (like EBSS being moved outside of its own catchment to make way for a warm-up track), but I think hosting the Games themselves is an amazing privilege. I don't think that everything we do should be in the pursuit of maximum profit, and so the arguments about how it doesn't end up being profitable for many cities don't persuade me. And that's without remembering that Brisbane will be one of the first of the new Olympics intending to be less expensive to run—a claim I'm sceptical will actually bring it into profit, but should at least make it less unprofitable than some of the most notable failures.

We need to have room for things that are just fun and exciting, or things that can bring a collective sense of pride. And there's not much bigger than the Olympics as far as that goes.

Governments can and should do more than one thing, and I think pointing to the Olympics as the excuse for why they're not doing more about housing, or pointing to the housing crisis as a reason we shouldn't host the Olympics, is a pretty lazy approach.

From a purely practical standpoint, hosting the Olympics is also a great way for us to get more funding for important projects in our region. This shouldn't be the case, and we should get the funding we need regardless of whether we have the Olympics or not. But realistically that's unfortunately just not how it works, and we can use the fact that we're hosting the Olympics as a way to push for some much-needed improvements. Including, I hope, more decisive and wide-sweeping action on housing.

I'm just a bit peeved that the triathlon is gonna be down the Gold Coast. Gold Coast doesn't even have an annual Olympic-distance triathlon. Mooloolaba or Noosa would be so great as hosts.

I don't. Bribery and questionable decision making about facilities aside, I don't want to put up with lterally years of traffic disruptions so a few people can run or jump or swim a couple of times.

Also I hate that we hero workshop athletes over other achievements, but that's not just an Olympics issue.

I don't. Waste of money. Brisbane has enough housing and transport issues already.

I certainly don't want it, although I am hoping there will be significant improvements to public transport and active transport infrastructure because of it. Wishful thinking I know.

Did they ever release the final costings for the Gold Coast Comm Games? I reckon they lost money on it, and as someone involved at the time ferrying people around the GC during the Games, the place was dead. It didn't bring the tourist dollars it was supposed to.

I reckon the Aussie dollar will be trading very low, like during the Sydney Olympics.

That makes anything bought from overseas super expensive. Which is pretty much everything in Australia. Shhhhh! Don't mention inflation!

Oh, but look over there! A gold medal 🏅

i've always heard horror stories of cities paying off the amount of money lost on hosting for decades. i'm worried.

here's an article outlining a lot of what i've heard, but of course i'm far from an expert: https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/economics-hosting-olympic-games (I checked and there are no obvious red flags with the source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations and https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/council-on-foreign-relations/ )

i'm not sure vic was wrong for pulling out of the commonwealth games, it was a PR disaster but the closer you get the higher the pressure and the more costs can blow out.

My child will be 12 when it is here. I'm very excited. It's such an impressionable age and we are saving up to go to as many events as she wants to.

I really enjoyed the Comm Games on the Gold Coast. The events were great and it was super well organised from a spectator perspective (transport, food & bev and no long queues etc).

I don't mind the idea of the games being hosted by Brisbane. But I'm not keen on how the whole hosting process has gone down. And the tax money that's just being thrown at it without a second thought.

I'd love the chance to watch the climbing in person but don't think the Olympics is a net positive for the host country

I definitely want them, as I'm hoping it will make house prices go up!

I have four rental properties I want to sell because I'm sick of the government interfering even though I try to do the right thing by my tenants (in the 15 years I've had rentals I've never kicked anyone out or taken any bond money, all my tenants left because their job moved or they got married and needed a bigger place). It really annoys me that one arm of the government puts up interest rates to take money out of people's pockets, yet the other arm says no no you can't pass those increases on to tenants, you can't take money out of their pockets! Like make up your mind, either take the money fairly from everyone or take it from nobody! I'm just waiting for the house prices to go up enough that I can break even when I sell (so I can pay the loans off in full) - if I sold today I'd still have a debt of around $100k to pay off - no thanks.

Apparently I'm not alone, a lot of other landlords are also planning to sell in the coming year so it looks like rents are only going to go up as fewer properties are available for rent. So ironic that a policy was hastily brought in to try to limit rising rents but it will end up making the problem worse, but I guess that's normal for government.

It will be nice not to have to subsidise people's rent any more though. At the moment I'm paying around 30% of the rent out of my pocket on top of the rent paid by the tenants in order to meet the bank loan repayments, and that's on top of the loan repayments for my own place (a tiny one-bedroom unit) so the majority of my salary (and rental income) just goes to the bank. That was the deal going into it though so it comes as no surprise, and I wouldn't mind so much except most of my tenants seem to have way more money than I do, driving cars that are less than five years old and all I can afford is a 13 year old ex-taxi. One of my tenants is in the same unit complex as me so we're almost neighbours, and they love getting Uber Eats delivered all the time while I'm instead frequenting Coco's at Annerley to buy all the cheap stuff with expired best-before dates just to save a few bucks.

Maybe once I've sold I should start renting instead, tenants seem to have way more disposable cash than landlords do!