The North Sydney Olympic Pool has spectacular views, a rich history, and plenty of controversy.
The facility became the face of government rorting last year when local mayor Jilly Gibson insisted on national television that the pool perched under the Sydney Harbour Bridge was “a regional facility” and therefore deserving of a $10 million grant earmarked for female change rooms in rural areas.
Now the council has followed up that controversy with a brand new one. As
The Sydney Morning Herald revealed this week, it has handed the contract for the pool’s redevelopment to Icon, the company behind Sydney’s disastrous Opal Tower building.
In September the government announced that half the fund would be dedicated to tourism-related infrastructure, in a bid to help the sector battered first by bushfires and then Covid-19.
Joyce told Guardian Australia the BBRF is “an essential program because it gives some sort of balance back to projects in the regions, the larger geographic area, over the massive political weight that an urban base like Sydney has”.
Joyce said he was “disappointed” at the way regional funding programs had been handled.
“When I was there, we had $272m in the national regional growth fund for projects valued $10m and over, and the rest of $500m [$228m] in the BBRF – now the national regional growth fund has disappeared altogether.”