Sydney: The New South Wales government has been criticised for its decision to spend $2 billion knocking down and rebuilding two Sydney sports stadiums.

The NSW cabinet on Thursday decided to push ahead with the plan to demolish both ANZ Stadium at Olympic Park in the inner-west and the Allianz Stadium at Moore Park.

The two stadiums will be replaced at a cost of more than $2 billion, Fairfax and the Australian have reported.

The $2-billion figure does not include plans to rebuild Parramatta Stadium, Fairfax reported.

The opposition leader, Luke Foley, immediately condemned the decision.

“I can’t and won’t support spending $2.5 billion on a couple of sporting stadiums when there’s 100,000 school kids being taught in demountable classrooms,” Foley said on Thursday.

“Labor will put schools and hospitals before stadiums,” he said.

Sydney’s Olympic stadium will be rebuilt a year after the smaller Allianz Stadium gets the same treatment.

ANZ Stadium at Sydney Olympic Park, which held the 2000 Games, will be substantially demolished and rebuilt from 2019 after Allianz Stadium at Moore Park is rebuilt in 2018, Fairfax Media reports.

The NSW government hopes the works will make ANZ Stadium the premier rectangular ground in Australia.

The new 75,000-seat stadium could have a roof, with construction works to take at least 2.5 years, according to Australian Associated Press.

The overall plan, to be officially announced on Friday, is larger in scope and significantly more costly than the vision revealed by former premier Mike Baird in 2016, which would have seen the two stadiums refurbished only.

The decision was made on the same day as a group of state MPs and the Sydney lord mayor, Clover Moore, sought an urgent meeting with the government over their concerns about the stadium plan.

A local residents’ group, Saving Moore Park, also wrote a letter of concern to the premier, Gladys Berejiklian, about the Allianz project on Monday.

The group fears the Allianz Stadium will expand past the current ground held by the Sydney Cricket and Sports Ground trust.

Allianz has been declared as a security risk, and a building assessment warned of a lack of fire sprinklers, exists and emergency power supplies as well as inadequate crowd barriers.

Saving Moore Park accepts about $137 million needs to be spent on safety at Allianz, but has questioned the need for an entire rebuild.

Foley questioned why so much money was being spent on Allianz when it was rarely full.

“Why are we doing this? I mean is the Waratahs versus the Bulls in Suer Rugby going to get 45,000 people? They struggle to get 10,000,” he said.

“Yet, the government of this state is going to prioritise the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars on a white elephant stadium in the eastern suburbs of Sydney that won’t host the biggest games. It will be full once, maybe twice a year.”