Both Australia’s bid to host the United Nations climate conference, COP31, in 2026 and the building of a new convention centre in Canberra hang in the balance of the election outcome, at this point.
Federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton, indicated at the start of the election campaign that a Coalition Government would abandon Australia’s bid to host the global climate change conference, which would bring tens of thousands of international delegates to Australia, including world leaders, and position Australia favourably in relation to climate change action.
The South Australian Government has confirmed it is vying to host the event in Adelaide, should Australia win the bid.
However, a little over a week ago, Dutton indicated Australia’s bid to host the event next year would not go ahead if his party won power.
“The government’s planning to spend tens of billions of taxpayers’ dollars on hosting a COP process that’s not going to bring down power prices and is going to sign a Labor Government up to giving tens or hundreds of billions of dollars out to third party countries,” he said.
“It’s madness so that’s not something we’re supporting.”
There is, so far, no evidence the actual hosting of the event would cost billions – some of the most recently available figures indicate the UK Government spent £290.73 million – AU$621.85 million at today’s exchange rate – to host COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, which was partially offset by £40.593 million – AU$86.83 million – in sponsorship, both cash and in-kind.
Meanwhile, yesterday, between them, the federal Labor Party and the ACT Labor Party together committed $200 million to get started on building a new convention centre, a new entertainment precinct and an aquatic centre in Australia’s capital.
“Canberra as our national capital deserves a fit-for-purpose convention and entertainment centre just like other major cities around Australia,” said ACT Labor senator Katy Gallagher.
“This project will boost our economy, create new jobs and make Canberra an even better place to live, work and play.”
In micenet’s February magazine feature on the long road to convention centre redevelopment in Australia, the general manager of the existing National Convention Centre Canberra, Stephen Wood, said the centre was turning away “significant amounts of business” due to capacity constraints.
“We’re denying a lot of business. And then there’s a lot of business that already knows what our capacity is…so there’s an awful lot of business that knows it can’t fit into Canberra at the moment and absolutely would come to Canberra if the facility was big enough for them,” said Wood.
“There’s a lot of pent-up demand just waiting for a larger facility.”
micenet understands Canberra’s new convention centre would be built on a different site to the current venue so that there would be no interruption of convention facilities in Canberra during construction. However, the new centre would be built in close proximity to the existing facility.
