Editorial: Olympics should not just be about sport

It is easy to be cynical about the impact that hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games will have on our region and our state. But the truth is that this is a once-in-a-forever chance to deliver some amazing outcomes to enhance our lifestyle.

It is easy to be cynical about the impact that hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in South East Queensland will have on our region and our state.

But the truth is that this is a once-in-a-forever chance to deliver some amazing outcomes to enhance our lifestyle – outcomes that would otherwise not have ever happened.

The confirmation that the state government will acquire the huge inner-city riverside Visy site with a view to transforming it into “South Bank 2.0” is a case in point.

The 7ha factory is smack bang in the heart of what is increasingly a residential (apartments) area along Montague Rd at South Brisbane. It is an eyesore not benefiting the heart of a modern and liveable city. And it had to be moved at some point. But without the catalyst of the Olympics, the significant deal that was announced yesterday might never have been struck.

Instead – thanks to the Olympics – the state will spend $160m buying the land from Visy, which will invest $700m in a new purpose-built facility at a much more suitable location at Stapylton on the Gold Coast.

Google Maps image of the Olympic Broadcast Centre site at the Visy Glass factory.

Once the demolition works are done (from 2025), the site will be repurposed as the location of the International Broadcast Centre for the Brisbane 2032 Games – and after that, a new riverside parkland (just as the Expo 88 site was transformed into what we know now as South Bank).

We endorse the plan. But we also urge those who will be responsible for its realisation to think bigger than a massive lifeless shed for the period that the site will be the home of the IBC. We suggest perhaps turning the IBC into an activated site – where the world’s media can learn about Queensland, and where Queenslanders can perhaps look into the IBC to watch the world’s media at work covering our Games.

In the press release announcing the government’s Olympics Legacy Committee, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk floated the idea (put to her, we note, when she appeared on The Courier-Mail and Nova’s Towards the Games podcast) of “a Queensland Pavilion as part of our Olympic venues to tell visitors the story of our state”. We suggest this site would be the ideal location for that idea to come to life.

There is another idea kicking around as well. Hidden deep in the recent Brisbane City Deal signed by all three levels of government was $3m for the business case for a proposed First Nations Cultural Centre in the inner-city – a world-class tourism experience that would tell the story of indigenous Australians, warts and all.

And so what better way to build on that concept for a temporary Queensland Pavilion next to the IBC at South Brisbane than for the government to also acquire the neighbouring Parmalat site and use it for this permanent landmark honouring our First Nations people at Kurilpa, historically a meeting place by the river.

This centre could perhaps be modelled on the concept used by the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC, where two million visitors each year are forced to first confront the challenging stories of slavery and segregation before emerging into more optimistic contemporary galleries that celebrate the contribution of Black Americans to that nation’s history.

The Sydney Olympics did much to contribute towards the path to reconciliation that we still traverse today. Brisbane’s Games demands an equally significant contribution.