The 2006 Commonwealth Games were held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia between 15 March and 26 March 2006. It was the largest sporting event to be staged in Melbourne, eclipsing the 1956 Summer Olympics in terms of the number of teams competing, athletes competing, and events being held.

The site for the opening and closing ceremonies was the Melbourne Cricket Ground which was also used during Melbourne's 1956 Olympic Games. The mascot for the games was Karak, a Red-tailed Black Cockatoo (a threatened species).

During the 1998 Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, three cities initially expressed interest in hosting the event; Melbourne, Wellington and Singapore. Singapore dropped out before its bid was officially selected by the Commonwealth Games Federation, leaving only two candidate cities. In the weeks prior to the announcement of the 2006 host, Wellington withdrew its bid, citing the costs involved with matching the bid plan presented by Melbourne, which became the default host without members of the Federation going to vote.

The Commonwealth Games is an international, multi-sport event involving athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations. The event was first held in 1930 and takes place every four years.

It was initially known as the British Empire Games and was renamed to the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1954 and the British Commonwealth Games in 1970, before finally gaining its current title for the 1978 edition. The Games are overseen by the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), which also controls the sporting programme and selects the host cities. A host city is selected for each edition and eighteen cities in seven countries have hosted the event.

As well as many Olympic sports, the Games also include some sports that are played mainly in Commonwealth countries, such as lawn bowls, rugby sevens and netball. Only six teams have attended every Commonwealth Games: Australia, Canada, England, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales. Australia has been the highest achieving team for eleven games, England for seven and Canada for one.

Christopher Gordon "Chris" Miles (born 21 August 1947) was an Australian politician. Born in Ulverstone, Tasmania, he was educated at the University of Tasmania and then the University of South Africa, becoming a teacher, traveller and sawmiller. In 1984, he was elected to the Australian House of Representatives as the Liberal member for Braddon. In 1992 he was one of a group of Coalition members of parliament who founded the Lyons Forum, a conservative ginger group.

On 11 March 1996, following the victory of the Coalition in the federal election of that year, Miles was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, John Howard. He held this position until 1998, when he was defeated in his seat of Braddon by Labor candidate Sid Sidebottom.

Delta Lea Goodrem (born 9 November 1984) is an Australian singer-songwriter and pianist. Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, she enrolled in dancing, acting, singing and piano classes at a young age. She began her career as a child actress, starring in various television shows and rose to prominence in 2002 in the Australian soap opera Neighbours as Nina Tucker.

Venturing into the music industry, Goodrem recorded an album entitled Delta through an independent label, which was never released due to legal reasons. Subsequently signing to Sony at the age of 15, she released her multi-platinum album Innocent Eyes which topped the Australian albums chart and UK Albums Chart. It became one of the highest selling albums in Australian history, with 4.5 million copies sold worldwide and all five of its singles— "Born to Try", "Lost Without You", "Innocent Eyes", "Not Me, Not I", and "Predictable"—reaching number one in Australia and three of them reaching the top ten in the UK. This gave her the record for becoming the first ever artist to have five Number 1 singles from a debut album.

Asafa Powell CD (born 23 November 1982) is a Jamaican sprinter who specialises in the 100 metres. He held the 100 m world record between June 2005 and May 2008, with times of 9.77 and 9.74 seconds respectively. Powell has consistently broken the 10-second barrier in competition, with his personal best of 9.72 s being the fourth fastest time in the history of the event. As of 2nd May 2012, Powell has broken the ten-second barrier legally more times than anyone else – 74 times in total.

Powell competed in the 100 m at the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2008 Beijing Olympics but failed to convert his success to the world stage, finishing fifth both times. However, in Beijing with the Jamaican team he won a gold medal and set the world and Olympic record in the 4 × 100 metres relay. At the 2007 Osaka World Championships he won a bronze and a silver medal in the 100 m and 4 x 100 m relay respectively and he has been successful at the Commonwealth Games, winning two gold and one silver medal. At the 2009 World Championships he won 100 m bronze and a relay gold. Powell has won five times at the IAAF World Athletics Final and is the 100 m record holder for the event.