On the same day as Sydney welcomed the Queen Mary 2 and Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise liners, and amongst unprecedented public interest in these two giants of the sea, the NSW Premier, Morris Iemma has announced that he will set up a NSW Major Events Board to be headed by the 2003 Rugby World Cup chief, and Tourism Australia director John O'Neill.
This is good news for a city, that is the only host in Olympic history not to have benefited from increased tourism after hosting an Olympic Games.
Caroline Overington writes
in today's Australian newspaper, that all might not be what it seems in setting this up. It seems that Mr O'Neill will be there to "... review things" and to "... look at things". The question is review what and look at what.
This state has been left out to dry on so many fronts and Tourism and the ability to attract major events has been one of them.
Last year I wrote to the NSW Tourism Minister, Sandra Nori and asked her to look into the possibility of bidding to host a World Expo in Sydney. Some months after this, the Daily Telegraph (sister newspaper of the The Australian) had a large type headline on it's front page "
SYDNEY TO BID FOR WORLD EXPO". The deadline for bidding for the 2015 Expo passed in October, without anything being heard from NSW. We were let down.
So given this governments apathetic approach to attracting major events to this state and city, you'd be forgiven for thinking this is yet another red herring announcement, in order to divert attention away from other major issues.
It is more than co-incidence that this announcement came on a day of great public celebration. It was such a pity that again we were let down again by poor planning. I'm wondering if again we'll be let down by an announcement of something that will probably not get off the ground. Just another day of heading in the right direction ... down the toilet and out to sea.
