Opinion: How to organise Olympics if your IQ is less than your shoe size

It is becoming increasingly obvious that Queensland is incapable of hosting the 2032 Olympics, writes Mike O’Connor.

We should ask the Americans if they’d mind holding the Olympic Games in 2032 as well as 2028, because it is becoming increasingly obvious that Queensland is incapable of hosting them.

The latest episode in the comedy that has become and was always going to be the preparations for the Games must worry even the staunchest supporter of the Queensland government.

It’s late in the afternoon and you make an important business phone call that relates to preparations surrounding the Games and involves the expenditure of significant sums of public money.

The other party doesn’t answer, so given its importance do you (a) wait until you can get a message to them or (b) proceed on a unilateral course of action that may be counter-productive and end in disaster?

If your IQ exceeds your shoe size you do A. If you’re Sport Minister Stirling Hinchcliffe you do B and blindside Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner with a demand to co-fund a stadium at the RNA showgrounds, necessary in the wake of the government’s decision to tear down the Gabba.

Apart from screwing Brisbane ratepayers, Hinchcliffe’s thought bubble also included significant financial contributions from the Brisbane Lions and Queensland Cricket. None of these things will happen, so who is going to pay for the stadium, the cost of which has risen from $80 million to $137 million since the middle of 2022?

Hmmmm. Tricky one that.

The cost of the Gabba rebuild has gone from $1 billion to $2.7 billion and any assumption that this will be the final figure would be truly heroic.

Then there is the 17,000 seat Brisbane Live arena, complete with drop-in Olympic pool, to be built in Roma St with federal government money and set to be one of the jewels in the infrastructure crown.

It seems, however, that it did not occur to anyone that building such an ambitious project over the new Roma St railway station – which is part of the Cross River Rail project – would cause a significant increase in cost, meaning the $2.5 billion being provided by the federal government wouldn’t cover it.

Sport Minister Stirling Hinchliffe at the weekend. Picture: Richard Walker

Who would pay for the cost blowout? Tricky one, that.

The state government is now casting around for other sites for the City Arena, one proposal involving the demolition of Queensland Police headquarters, also in Roma Street. Where would the coppers go and who would pay for it? Tricky one, that.

International Olympic Committee vice-president John Coates, who famously ordered Premier Palaszczuk to attend the Tokyo Games opening ceremony during a bizarre press conference back in 2021, is among those to voice concerns that the wheels on the Brisbane Olympic bandwagon are starting to wobble.

Coates says the Brisbane Olympics will be jeopardised if cuts in federal government contributions go ahead and there is every indication that they will.

He has complained that he recently spent one hour and 50 minutes sitting in traffic while trying to get from the Gold Coast to Brisbane. Welcome to our world, Mr Coates.

Without a duplication of the highway to the Gold Coast the Games he said, “just won’t work.”

Where will the billons come from? Tricky one that, given that it was recently revealed that the cost of the state government’s Gold Coast Faster Rail project has jumped from $2.6 billion to $5.7 billion.

Federal Infrastructure Minister Ms King said the Sunshine Coast rail project to extend the line to Maroochydore had gone billions of dollars over what has been previously indicated and that the federal government’s contribution would be limited to $1.4 billion.

Whatever it is said to cost now will bear no relation to the final cost so who’s going to fund what is said to be a vital piece of the Olympic transport jigsaw? Tricky one, that and the odds are that it will never be built in time for the Games.

Once Premier Palaszczuk decided in a display of extraordinary hubris that rather than an independent co-ordination authority, her government would oversee Olympic preparations then the course towards disaster appears to have been set.

Palaszczuk is finished as a political force, but while she fights to survive and her colleagues cast lots to see who will deliver the fatal blow, the wobbly Olympic bandwagon veers down the road towards 2032.

Maybe the Greeks will offer to host them for us. It’s all their fault, after all. They started it.