It is hard to fathom why any government in this day and age would go down the path of “bread and circuses’’.
A quick online search by one of their thousands of public servants would have told them the truth about this old Roman saying.
And the truth is that the fellow who said it was being sarcastic or satirical.
Give them – the mob – bread and circuses, because then they’re fed and distracted, is what he was trying to say.
It’s such an obvious political approach anyone can see right through it, but governments of all persuasions have used it for hundreds of years.
The current State Government says it has a more noble reason for wanting to spend billions of dollars knocking down perfectly good stadiums and building new state of the art arenas in their place.
The noble reason: the state of the art stadiums will enable NSW to secure higher profile sporting events, the kind that bring in big tourist dollars.
Let’s give that argument some credit, but on balance it doesn’t wash.
Not when there are so many other needs the money could go to, from replacing demountable classrooms with permanent buildings to funding hospitals and transport infrastructure.
Speaking of transport infrastructure, the rail line between the Western Sydney Airport at Badgerys Creek and Macarthur is of paramount importance.
The State Government is promoting our region as the place where a huge chunk of the total population growth will occur over the next 20 years.
This budget was an opportunity to start work on the rail line to ensure it will be ready when the airport is opened in 2025.
[social_quote duplicate=”no” align=”default”]With stations along Camden, Narellan, Mt Annan and linking with the Campbelltown line at Macarthur station, this could be a game changing piece of transport infrastructure.[/social_quote]
Had the state government allocated funding for this I think it would have got a lot of local critics off its back.
But for reasons best known to themselves, Gladys Berejiklian and her ministers decided to go down a different path.
When the election rolls around in nine months, she might find out the hard way that in the internet age bread and circuses doesn’t cut it anymore.
