Opinion: Brisbane’s Olympics dream must be protected from politicians
The Olympics is a glorious festival that brings nations together and must not be derailed by puny politicians, writes Des Houghton.
Des Houghton
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I see a gaggle of five former lord mayors have come out and condemned Victoria Park as a site for the 2032 Olympic stadium. Please ignore them.
The group includes Jim Soorley and Campbell Newman, who were among the knockers who denounced the redevelopment of Lang Park.
The Lang Park rebuild would not work, they bellowed. It would cause traffic chaos, noise and light pollution and disrupt life in Brisbane as we knew it. How wrong they were. There are lessons for Olympic planners here.
Since it opened in 2003 Lang Park, the Cauldron, or Suncorp Stadium as some call it, has never looked back. It is where mere footballers become gladiators. Lang Park is accessible, and the action is in your face. It has more atmosphere in my opinion then even the great sporting arenas of Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium or London’s Twickenham.
As the debate about Olympic venues warms up, it is worth recalling the other opponents of Lang Park included the Property Council of Australia, the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, the Urban Renewal Taskforce and the Brisbane Development Association.
Terry “The Fox” Mackenroth, Labor’s deputy premier at the time, courageously brushed aside the knockers and built it, leaving then Premier Peter Beattie to describe him as one tough son of a bitch.
Who is the tough son of a bitch who will step in to save the Olympics for Brisbane and build the major stadium at Victoria Park where it belongs?
I doubt if it will be union lapdog Steven Miles or Grace Grace, the latest infrastructure minister who has a cosy relationship with the CFMEU. Both lack the necessary vision and now face legitimate questions about their competency.
Miles and Grace have been spectacularly unimpressive in their previous ministerial roles across health and ambulance services, education, infrastructure, planning and local government and the environment.
While I’m on my high horse may I also suggest you ignore the ignoramuses who say we should withdraw our offer to host the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. How dare they.
If these miserable knockers get their way a grand opportunity will be lost to Brisbane. The Olympics is more than a global sporting spectacle. It is a gathering of extraordinary young people who aspire to something better. Sadly, those kinds of aspirations have not spread to our political elites.
Steven Miles put up a white flag when he suggested a scaled-down Games arena at the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre at Nathan. It’s an insult to all our Olympians past and present and is an insult to the people of Brisbane. Nathan is hard to get to and not liked by sporting fans.
In his assessment Graham Quirk said refurbishing the Nathan centre for between $1.4bn and $1.6bn was not value for money and “very hard to justify”.
A QSAC stadium offers no legacy. Or a very modest one.
A new stadium at Victoria Park for Games opening and closing ceremonies offers an opportunity for something special and it doesn’t have to swallow all the greenspace there. And it is not as if we are short of parks. They are everywhere. There are two botanical gardens in Brisbane, one hugging the river in the CBD and another at Mt Coot-tha and there is greenspace at South Bank and University of Queensland. And there are glorious bush walks 40 minutes from Brisbane at Mt Nebo, and Mt Glorious.
Meanwhile, there has been speculation that Lang Park may be used for the opening and closing ceremonies. It is a stupid idea that would require pulling off the roof to add extra seats.
Please leave Lang Park out of it. It works fine now, so don’t mess with it.
Lang Park is my favourite place in Queensland, and I’ll probably have my ashes scattered there.
Rugby League is not an Olympic sport but the Olympic organisers would feel the heat from spectators if they disrupted the NRL season.
There are plenty of other exciting venues and some in the planning stages for lesser sports.
Yet so much is unknown.
A perplexing mystery among sporting organisations is how a proposed Logan indoor sports centre not in the original master plan suddenly appeared after the Quirk review.
It is in the electorate of Rankin held by Treasurer Jim Chalmers.
The Courier-Mail reported the “Logan multi-use sport precinct” would contain a 7000-seat indoor stadium. What sports? No one is saying. Hmmm.
Meet the LNP candidate who won’t say what he does for a living
He’s standing in a South East Queensland seat of more than 40,000 voters, but this enigmatic LNP candidate won’t say where he works, nor even what he does for a living, writes Des Houghton.
‘A decade of Labor has turned us into a nanny state’
If I lived in a place where the state has to step in to feed schoolchildren I’d be embarrassed, Des Houghton argues.