Olympic planner was right and now the government is finding out the hard way

If the state government listened to this advice they may have avoided an Olympics diaster.

I was howled down last year when I warned that Labor’s takeover of the planning committee for the 2032 Brisbane Olympic would end in disaster.

The then premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her deputy Steven Miles commissioned secret reports that still have not been made public. And put their arms around the coordinating committee in what I described as a power grab.

Fearing the worst, I contacted the Queenslander knighted for his work as chief executive of the 2012 London Olympics delivery authority.

“It’s not going to work, is it,” Sir David Higgins told me quite forcefully from his home in London.

Higgins said planning had to be done at arm’s length from the government with bipartisan political support.

And the taxpayer who had to pay for it had to be told what was happening every step of the way.

Sir David said he saw no signs of this happening in Queensland.

“You’ve got to have a clear brief, proper governance and an independent board so that it can work with the various sporting bodies and the IOC,’’ he said.

“I think what is happening in Brisbane at the moment is
a bit of a challenge.’’

Higgins was right. It’s clear now that Palaszczuk and Miles had no intention of taking Queenslanders – including Olympic athletes – into their confidence.

In these pages in March last year I wrote: “Sir David’s words should ring alarm bells for Queenslanders who have watched the Palaszczuk government botch infrastructure projects with billions in cost overruns.’’

Higgins also told me that Olympic infighting would probably turn “nasty” as it usually did.

Right again.

I spoke to him the day that Palaszczuk told Parliament the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games would be delivered by the “Brisbane 2032 Coordination Office”.

Exactly what that meant was a multi-billion-dollar mystery. Palaszczuk declined to enlighten me when I rang her press secretaries.

Sir David Higgins revealed something else last year. He was invited to join the Olympic organising committee but declined.

“Someone asked me to put my name forward and I looked at it. It had 20 people on it, and I thought it was a waste of time. There were just too many people and I didn’t think it was going to work.

“There were five from federal, five from state, five from city hall and I thought: That’ll be a talking shop. So I didn’t put my name forward.’’

Higgins, the son of a Darling Downs cattleman, is an engineer, railways expert and businessman.

He was knighted by Prince Charles for bringing home the London Olympics $1bn under budget – and a year ahead of schedule.