Govt has ‘eroded’ Brisbane’s 11-year Olympic runway: Paris ’24 and LA ’28 consultant

A consultant to the Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028 Games says Brisbane’s advantage from a 11-year lead time to the 2032 Olympics has been “eroded” by the lack of an independent delivery authority.

But Arcadis global cities director John Batten, visiting Brisbane on Friday, said the past three years had not been a total waste, and there was time to get it right.

The past three years have not been a total waste, Arcadis global cities director John Batten says.

“I’ve seen many Games delivered in seven years from scratch, so no, the answer is no,” he said, when asked whether Brisbane had cause to worry.

Brisbane’s Olympic planning has been beset by indecision and captain’s calls, such as former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s unilateral 2021 announcement of a Gabba rebuild and last month’s move by her successor to instead have the main Olympic stadium at the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre.

John Batten: “I’ve seen many Games delivered in seven years from scratch.”

Batten said that uncertainty could have been avoided if the state government had established a delivery authority on day one. Instead, legislation for the body was introduced to parliament on day 1002.

“I’ve seen the benefit of having a DA [delivery authority] put in place, which would have streamlined the decision-making of locations of venues, of legacy, getting everyone aligned and on the same page around those things,” Batten said.

“In the absence of a DA, I think that that has protracted decisions … In my discussions with [Brisbane Arcadis colleagues] I would often leave our conversations wondering why the DA hasn’t yet been established. I think that would have been a prudent decision earlier on in this extra runway time that you have.”

The Palaszczuk government had controversially decided to keep all Olympic planning in-house, rather than set up an independent authority.

Then-deputy premier Steven Miles, who has since ascended to the top job, had insisted there had been no commitment to the International Olympic Committee that there would be such an independent cross-governmental agency.

But the Brisbane bid’s IOC Future Host Commission Questionnaire Response outlined an Olympic Coordination Authority that would include all levels of government.

In his first act as incoming premier, Miles announced he would establish that promised delivery authority. Legislation to establish the Games Venue and Legacy Delivery Authority was introduced to state parliament on Wednesday.

Batten, who has been intimately involved in preparations for the next two Summer Olympic Games, said that was a welcome course correction.

Paris has contracted Arcadis as cost managers for Solideo, that city’s Games delivery authority. In Los Angeles, the global engineering company has been engaged in delivering new public transport links to established venues.

Brisbane 2032, Batten noted, would be “the first Games that the IOC are procuring, which are regional Games. Typically, they’re associated around a very large city – Tokyo, Paris, Los Angeles – megacities, right?

“Brisbane wouldn’t have qualified alone, so they throw in Sunshine Coast and throw in the Gold Coast, south-east Queensland, and then you get a regional Games.”

That meant taking management authority away from a single city, he said, and spreading it between the state government, the Commonwealth, Brisbane City Council and other local governments in the region.

“So now you have four stakeholder groups, trying to sort out the direction and where the locations of venues and infrastructure is going to go,” Batten said.

“That’s added a complicating dimension, but the positive side of me says those three years could be – and I think have been – used constructively to build consensus and work out how that pattern of play amongst those four stakeholder groups works.”

There had been some concern amon some of Brisbane’s movers and shakers that the stadium debacle risked major reputational damage for Brisbane.

“This stadium situation doesn’t really export well,” New York-based Batten said.

“What does export well is how well the World Cup women’s soccer event was delivered here within the last year – it was delivered flawlessly.

“So I think the sceptics, if there are any out there, can be reassured that Australia knows how to deliver events.”