- Aug 2, 2012
- 34,820
- 56,392
- AFL Club
- Geelong
I would be interested to hear the justification for paying $100 million of public monies to be, effectively, handed on to a group of multi-millionaire tennis players.The Victorian government approved a secret taxpayer-funded bailout of Tennis Australia on the eve of the last state election, just four months before record crowds flooded back to Melbourne Park for last year’s bumper Australian Open.
The previously undisclosed “solvency and cash flow support” payment of up to $63 million, approved by Treasurer Tim Pallas on September 1, 2022, was purportedly made so that Tennis Australia could pay its bills after its cash reserves were depleted by the additional cost of staging successive tournaments during the pandemic, documents obtained under freedom-of-information laws reveal.
The contingency was approved about the same time the government forgave a $40 million loan made to Tennis Australia in February 2021 to cover additional costs at the height of the pandemic.