Brisbane’s top movers and shakers band together to promote 2032 Olympics bid

A top-level team of Brisbane business identities have banded together to spark debate and shape policy as Southeast Queensland booms. And they’re bringing their own money to the table.

POWERBROKERS UNITE

Some of Brisbane’s top movers and shakers have banded together in a new group to spark debate and shape policy around the simple proposition that south east Queensland is the best place in the world to live.

Among those providing advice, and opening their wallets, are energy baron Trevor St Baker, stadiums boss Harvey Lister, eco-tourism operator Jude Turner, corporate travel mogul Jamie Pherous and Eddie Scuderi’s team at law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth.

Chairing the group is stockbroker Steve Wilson, who also oversees Racing Queensland, and renowned indigenous artist Delvene Cockatoo-Collins has just come on board too.

They comprise a new advisory body within the non-profit Committee For Brisbane (formerly known as the Brisbane Development Association) and have an ambitious agenda to do what they can to promote a bid for the 2032 Olympics.

Steve Wilson

They are also focused on bringing some as-yet-undefined but game-changing arts project to the city to make it more of a drawcard on the world stage.

Putting their money where their mouths are to prove this is serious, members of the group have collectively pitched in about $1 million to help pay for a new CEO, Wilson told City Beat yesterday.

The recruitment process is already under way.

Members were among a group of about 40 powerbrokers who held a quiet breakfast meeting in the governor’s room at the RNA earlier this month with Australian Olympic Committee chairman John Coates.

Wilson said the idea to form the group of “good burghers’’ sprang up about a year ago and, rather than just concentrate on Brisbane in isolation, they have intentionally focused on the fast-growing region from Byron Bay to Noosa and Toowoomba to Tangalooma.

Meanwhile, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk reinforced this regional theme yesterday at an American Chamber of Commerce lunch, saying any Olympics bid had to stack up financially but would need to be inclusive of the whole state if it proceeded.

Cairns and Townsville both hosted events during the Commonwealth Games, she noted, so why not have Olympic sailing in the Whitsundays?

Why not indeed? Think of the tourism upside from the world seeing that glorious part of Queensland!

MORE FIREPOWER

There’s been a serious addition to the intellectual firepower that we’ll see at next month’s Asia Pacific Cities Summit in Brisbane.

Organisers have managed to rope in Dr Andreas Weigend, who previously served as chief scientist at Amazon, where he helped create its big data strategy and customer-focused culture.

He has also worked with plenty of other global market leaders, including Alibaba, Best Buy, Goldman Sachs, Lufthansa, SAP, SingTel, Thomson Reuters and the World Economic Forum.

Having received a PhD in physics from prestigious Standford University, he teaches there and has delivered headline addresses at corporate events sponsored by the Federal Trade Commission, MasterCard, GE, Google, HP, IBM, Sony and Volkswagen.

Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner

“For local companies, the opportunity to hear from someone of Dr Weigend’s calibre is a rarity and will provide a glimpse of how multinationals…are harnessing big data,’’ Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said.

The Asia Pacific gathering, which is held every four years in Brisbane, is expected to attract more than 1000 government and business delegates from 100 cities across the region when it plays out over four days starting July 7.

With the theme of “Driving Cities Through Business and Innovation,’’ the conference will also feature keynote speeches from Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph and sustainability adviser Peggy Liu, who chairs the joint US China Collaboration on Clean Energy.

Randolph served as the first CEO of Netflix in 1998 but he left the firm in 2004 and went on to launch other start ups.

CORRECTION

Our item yesterday about former Shark Tank star Andrew Banks investing $20,000 in Brisbane tech start up Informed 365 failed to include enough zeros. In fact, he has tipped in $200,000 to the firm, which promotes a software program to help track global supply chains and encourage corporate social responsibility.