Editorial: Keep giving yachts natural advantage

The event at Flemington racecourse in Melbourne yesterday is one that every city in the Southern Hemisphere would like to have. How does Melbourne get to host the hemisphere's richest horse race every year? Aside from the prize, there is nothing exceptional about a race for stayers in Melbourne on the first Tuesday of November - nothing except tradition, which counts for everything.

Auckland has been trying to build a lucrative tradition on yacht racing events, particularly the round-the-world race once sponsored by Whitbread and now by Volvo. It would have been easy to have neglected that event once the America's Cup came to town and the city council spared no expense to develop the Viaduct Basin for the defence.

It would have been particularly easy to neglect it when, just as the city was gearing up for the America's Cup defence, the Volvo event organisers threatened to go elsewhere unless the city subsidised its stopover more generously.

It seemed to count for little that the extra-ordinary public interest in the race here was unmatched at any other port of call. Sydney was now bidding for it and Auckland would have to raise a counter-offer. In the event, the Volvo people decided the race would visit both ports, which took some of the lustre from the race as far as Aucklanders were concerned. The yachts no longer arrived here at the end of a gruelling battle with the southern ocean; this became the finish of a short leg across the Tasman.

Nevertheless, the council coughed up and it agreed to do so again this summer, although it hoped its patronage would also attract sponsorship from private enterprise. Some hope. At the latest report, this week, not a cent had been contributed by the private sector. Whatever the economic return on the event may be, it is clearly dispersed too thinly to attract investment from individual companies. Either that, or the corporate sector calculates that the city will come up with whatever it takes to keep the race coming here, which might have been a safe bet before the recent elections but is less so now.

New Auckland Mayor John Banks vows to "take a magnifying glass" to outlays for the Volvo stopover. When he does, he will find the council is putting up 30 race officials in the Ascott Metropolis Hotel for the duration, at a cost of $235,000. It is also giving $155,000 for a concert to greet the eight yachts, $155,000 for a prizegiving for the Sydney-to-Auckland leg, $220,000 to provide helicopters, boats and planes for visiting media - and so on.

Some of those bills look like the excess that commonly results when public bodies commit themselves to a project. Because the project has no direct measurable return - if it did it would attract private investment - it is hard to know how much it is sensible to spend. An event such as this is justified by estimating the amount of work needed to service the investment and the spending it will generate.

There can be yet wider benefits, as Melbourne has demonstrated. Its horse race is not the only event. Under an entrepreneurial state Government, the Victorian capital has attracted a Formula One motor race and built a new stadium for its grand slam tennis tournament. The city has picked itself up and is visibly prospering.

So public investment in events that attract wide attention can be worthwhile. But it is not an automatic success. Not every event that puts its hand out for council patronage is capable of catching the popular imagination at home, let alone a wider audience. And those that can need careful and sustained marketing in the right places over many years.

The investment the city council has already put into the round-the-world stopover must not be lightly discarded. It might have risen from $1.5 million to $3.6 million but we must now stick with it. And the burden should not fall on Auckland City ratepayers alone. The whole region shares the benefit of the economic stimulus and all the councils in the region should contribute their share.

Auckland's investment in yachting is exploiting an obvious natural advantage. It should be known worldwide as a maritime leisure venue without peer. It is no more than the truth.