MOPPING UP GRAVY TRAIN

A ROW that has blown up over allocation of Commonwealth Games tickets to city councillors looks bad from myriad angles.

Games chairman Peter Beattie says a leak to the media that he believes started it all is “stupid party politics’’ designed only to undermine council chief executive Dale Dickson, who sits on the GOLDOC board and whose council job is under review.

The council has form for playing politics. The move by some councillors to look further afield for a CEO stunned the city, and Mr Beattie’s frustrations therefore are understandable. If that is the motivation, then dragging the Games into a civic game of thrones is a bad look. The story has gone international, which is unhelpful.

But the prism of scrutiny reveals other aspects that do not sit well with the public.

For starters, it was not the council that bought those tickets – reportedly 800 of them. It was ratepayers, who along with every other member of the public had to go into a ballot to try to secure seats.

They will not be happy to see their local councillors enjoying premium seats at the most sought-after events that the huge majority missed out on: the opening ceremony, for example, or swimming finals.

The revelations create a vicious cycle. Will councillors have to declare a conflict of interest every time a Games matter arises?

And will they spend their time trying to explain whether their tickets were paid for by ratepayers or bought successfully in the same ballot everyone else had to enter?

Political manoeuvring has placed them in a position where they have little choice but to declare whether they have accepted tickets, and even to reveal which seats they have paid for themselves. Mr Beattie says councillors should hand the tickets back.

But the spotlight also swings onto him, the Games board and unfortunately Games employees. How many seats have been set aside for them? And are they justified?

And there is the matter of perceptions. At too many big sporting events, the “free seats’’ provided by corporate sponsors, for example, often sit empty while seats paid for by the public are overflowing.

That cannot be allowed to happen at our Games, particularly when the public has been told that many sports were over-subscribed in the ballot. It will not do for premium seats to be vacant because VIP guests choose to be elsewhere.