It wasn't really World Youth Day was it? Bet the Muslim, Protestant, Buddhist and Agnostic youth were not dancing in the streets!
However the actual cost to the tax payer was $89 million (AUS) as far as I can work out from the news reports -- with the Catholic Church and sponsors providing the other $61 million, or $31 million, depending on if you believe press reports of the final cost as $150 or $120 million. However the discrepancies on the cost cited make me wonder how far we can trust any of this...
http://newmatilda.com/2008/03/27/whos-paying-world-youth-day from 27 March gave the figure as likely to be $150 million -- which is probably where the high figure cited came from. The actual figuure was therefore probably $120 million. So the tax payer paid out about a third of the costs. Next up, how overbudget was it? "original estimates were $20 million" say papers - was that the cost to tax payer, in which case it was about 50% out, or the total? The newspapers in March reported -
THE cost of staging World Youth Day in Sydney has escalated, climbing to $150 million after originally being budgeted to cost $100 million, the Sydney Catholic church has disclosed.
So it cost 30 million less than that estimate, but the original estimate cited in March was five times higher than the figure of twenty million cited as the original estimate now? None of this adds up.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national...ows-out-to-150m/2008/03/04/1204402456394.html
So it probably cost the taxpayer $31 million - but note
Nor does it include the $41 million in compensation provided by the NSW and federal governments to the Australian Jockey Club and the racing industry to secure the use of Randwick Racecourse for the overnight vigil Mass to be attended by Pope Benedict XVI on his first visit to Australia.
Er, lucky jockeys! However it seems they were actually turfed off the turf for the duration - details here --
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22764576-5016672,00.html
Now some of those capital improvements are a net gain for the racing industry and the community of NSW long term. Still, we are not really dealing with Catholics here? I'm sure the Catholics could have met somewhere else!
It's not my tax dollar, and i'm not a catholic, but this seems to be far less obvious when you look at it than I first thought. Firstly World Youth Day was not $100 over budget. Secondly, the cost to the taxpayer was not really spent on catholics. Third I suspect an actual net gain to the local economy, because unless my maths is worse than I think then 120,000 catholics spending 5 days locally might actually mean a spend of more than $258 dollars each - thats £108 sterling, $166 US dollars. So it may not be all bad?
Mind you, if i was paying for this I'd certainly be asking to see the budgets and final figures and how it impacted the local economy.
cj x
