Hong Kong has again proved itself a world class city, able to match with the very best that others have to offer. This time it is incompetence and waste. While the debacle expat carnival known as Harbour Fest has been ridiculed by many, it is now the turn of the Government Auditor. There is nothing new in the report except the nastiness in all its glory.

The key points:
1. The American Chamber of Commerce, as the organiser, had no hope in hell of getting the whole thing together in 3 months when most festivals take up to 2 years to plan.
2. Ticket sales were abyssmal, because there wasn't enough time or promotion of the events. Additionally the performers were not a good mix, with some events having less than 1/3 seats full despite copious amounts of free tickets.
3. The Government paid for $100mm of the $156mm bill. Tickets basically covered the rest. To show for it, the Government has a video that MTV has played 3 times at midnight and now sits on someone's desk marked "Filler". From the SCMP: The report said a Harbour Fest video had been watched by less than 1 million families in the United States, rather than 100 million homes with television as targeted by the organiser. The show was aired only three times on the MTV and MTV2 networks and it is unlikely to be screened on the ABC network.
4. The Government required no feasibility study or account for the organiser's (AmCham) ability to stage the festival.
5. The Government group that was meant to supervise the investment of the money, didn't.

The hard numbers on ticket sales are embarrassing. Of almost 208,000 seats only 126,000 people attended (60%). Of that 126,000 38,000 were actually given away, leaving 88,000 real paying customers. Set aside the morality of giving away so many tickets to some while others were paying up to $1500 to see concerts. These figures are flattered by the almost full houses for the Rolling Stones and Santana. The Stones drew 24,000 people. Take that out and only 102,000 people attended 15 other concerts - in other words most concerts were only a quarter full at best. At worst, for the "Asian All-Star" night, only 2,000 tickets were sold. Acutally, I should say that's an amazing amount to sell given the low quality of offerings that night. They couldn't even give tickets away: only 2,700 free tickets were given out, making a total of 4,700, or less than 20% of capacity.

What still amazes is that no-one has resigned over this. There has been no accountability over what has proved to be a massive waste of taxpayer money with absolutely no benefit at all to the people of Hong Kong.

World class stuff.