Cameron Milner: Qld can no longer afford three-week 2032 Games ‘vanity project’

A three-week sporting event in nine years’ time that will cost billions of dollars might no longer be that important to struggling Queenslanders, writes Cameron Milner.

Like many Brisbanites, I was filled with pride when it was announced our city would host the Olympics and Paralympics in 2032.

After the gloom and social dislocation of the Covid lockdowns and having our lives so restricted, it was nice to see a global event being held in our city.

I remember what the Olympics did for Sydney, already a global city.

But two years later, the crippling effect of inflation and cost of living is hitting Queenslanders hard.

The world has changed and we’ve got to learn that indulgences like having a three-week sporting event in nine years’ time might just not be that important any longer.

Then Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announces in August the state will pay $380m in Commonwealth Games compensation. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Luis Enrique Ascui

Brisbane undoubtedly came of age after the 1982 Commonwealth Games, but the city and our state must have a vision for its place that doesn’t need the endorsement of an organisation with opaque politics based in Switzerland.

Former Victoria premier Daniel Andrews might have copped a bit of criticism for the process of cancelling the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, but the reality is that essential projects to make life better in Victoria are now financially easier to deliver.

Melbourne will be as liveable a city without the inconvenience and expense of a sporting event that commemorates the colonies of the former British Empire.

Closer to home, we have seen the unedifying spectacle of the Ekka proposal and the ensuing bunfight between Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner and Sport Minister Stirling Hinchliffe.

An artist’s impression of the Gabba ahead of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Image: Queensland government

The reality is that AFL and cricket will be denied access for at least five years to their home of the Gabba due to a decision of the Olympic bid committee and the Queensland government.

The $150m for the total Ekka project is a rounding error in the blowouts the Olympics build is now projected to cost taxpayers.

The Gabba project has tripled to almost $3bn for an extra few thousand seats – when it was earlier described by an Olympic appointee for life as “just needing a lick of paint”.

The temporary swimming pool – I repeat temporary – is slated to be in a new facility that will cost $2.6bn. And who knows how much other venues will cost.

And the price of the Olympics does not just stop with the construction bill.

So the Olympic committee politicians, their entourages and hangers-on can get from cocktails to hors d’oeuvres in their stretch limos, Brisbane will be expected to suffer even more congestion and inconvenience while they visit.

Then Australian Olympic Committee boss John Coates in 2022. Picture: Richard Walker

Honestly, they live the lives of those from the Capitol of Panem while the rest of us are enduring our very own hunger games and trying to make ends meet and pay the next bill.

Brisbane wasn’t chosen in some competitive run-off.

We were fitted up by then Australian Olympic Committee boss John Coates and his mate, IOC president Thomas Bach, being the beneficiaries of “a new selection process” – designed by Coates.

We live in a very different world than when Brisbane was announced.

Since then, inflation and cost of living has blown out and now political tensions are there for all to see, even before we’ve poured one post hole for any new Olympic venue.

The only certainty about the cost is it will be more than we’ve been told and we as taxpayers will have to stump up even more.

Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner. Picture: Richard Walker

Meanwhile, our hospitals, schools are over capacity.

Our roads are already congested. Vital funds to keep our city liveable are needed now, not diverted to an Olympics money pit.

This is to say nothing of Queenslanders living beyond Brisbane and the Gold Coast who won’t see any new stadiums built or capital spent on projects they also desperately need.

The true cost of the Olympics is now much better known than two years ago and a full cost-benefit analysis is needed before we stumble any further down this rabbit hole.

The federal government, even with its wrong priorities and financial profligacy, has called time on throwing more money at this Olympics vanity project.

Sport Minister Stirling Hinchliffe. Picture: Dan Peled/NCA NewsWire

Mr Schrinner has called time on his ratepayers being any further inconvenienced.

Voters are genuinely questioning the benefit when our government services are already at breaking point or beyond.

Queensland needs to call time out and reassess whether this is really what our state needs.

Andrews showed it with the Commonwealth Games. Melbourne hasn’t missed a beat.

Perhaps it’s time that other shortlisted cities such as Doha, China again or Germany’s Ruhr Valley were invited by the IOC to see whether they’d like to be host and pay the exorbitant costs involved.

It’s not too late to get our priorities right and decide what’s in Queensland’s best interests.

Cameron Milner is a former Queensland state secretary of the Labor Party