Opinion: Time to send home the clowns and get busy with Games

Three years on, we still do not know whether the Queensland government will put on a successful Olympics, but they have put on a pretty good circus, writes Matt Canavan.

Three years ago the Queensland and Australian governments were negotiating to fund the venues needed for the 2032 Olympics. The promise had been that this Olympics would use as many existing venues as possible so it did not cost a bomb.

The Queensland government had sent a list of projects to Canberra and all had almost been agreed.

Then one Sunday, the media contacted the then federal sport minister Richard Colbeck for his views on then premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s plans to use a rebuilt Gabba as the main Olympics stadium.

It was news to Canberra. The Queensland government gave them a week to respond. As Senator Colbeck described, the federal government had been bushwhacked.

It reluctantly agreed, but on the condition that an independent delivery authority be established. After the election of the federal Labor government, Palaszczuk scrapped this body and centralised all Olympics planning in her department.

Since last year I have chaired a Senate inquiry into the planning for the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games. We uncovered the shambolic way the Gabba was chosen, the many unresolved issues around its construction and the complete lack of rationale to scrap an independent planning authority, a method that had served the Sydney Olympics so well.

So, we recommended that the Gabba option be reconsidered and that an independent body be re-established ASAP.

The new Steven Miles Queensland government agreed with all of this. The Gabba plans have been scrapped and this week legislation to establish an independent infrastructure delivery body was introduced.

So three years later we are back to where we started. We still do not know whether the Queensland government will put on a successful Olympic Games, but they have put on a pretty good circus so far.

With just eight years to go until the Games, it is time to send the clowns away and make the bold and tough decisions necessary to make these games as successful as the Sydney Olympics.

Coalition senators Anne Ruston, Richard Colbeck, Matt Canavan and Bridget McKenzie at a media conference. Picture: Dan Peled/NCA NewsWire

I know there are many that say we should scrap the Games. I was never an enthusiastic supporter because I could see little benefit for Central Queensland.

However, we have committed to do them. We have built our country on being true to our word. We are one of the few countries in the world to have never defaulted on our debt.

If we were to default on our promise to host the Olympics it would impose a much greater cost to our reputation hosting sports and major events than the cost of proceeding with the Games.

The problem is that all decisions around the Games are now being made with a view to the October Queensland election, not the 2032 Games and its legacy. This is leading to short-term thinking and misleading statements that somehow the Games can be done at little cost.

For example, the athletic venue has been shifted from the Gabba to the old QEII stadium based almost solely on the lower cost of building the stadium. Yet, as revealed this week in our senate hearing, there has been no estimate of the increased cost of building better transport infrastructure to the QEII location.

Australians are being hoodwinked into believing that the Games can be done on the smell of an oily rag. Support for the Games is likely to fall further when this lie is revealed.

Perhaps it is too much to expect politicians to think of the long term just six months from an election. Maybe what would be better is that we fund parallel planning for different options. This can be done away from the political glare.

Then after the election, whoever wins, won’t be locked into an inferior option chosen for its political not its legacy potential. It is sad that the state of our politics has fallen so low that we just can’t trust politicians to make the right decisions.

A generation ago we had political leaders that built our country even against great political opposition. Expo ’88, the South Bank Parklands, Japanese tourism investment, Brisbane’s tunnel network all faced huge political opposition.

Back then our leaders faced down the naysayers and were generally rewarded with re-election and an enhanced legacy.

Sadly, our current crop of politicians may win an election on false hope, but they certainly won’t be getting any gold medals in the history books.

Matt Canavan is an LNP senator for Queensland