The Editor: History tells us your ‘plan’ was a trainwreck Anna

Annastacia Palaszczuk’s deluded memory of her “plan” for the Brisbane 2032 Olympics is dumbfounding, writes the editor.

Have you forgotten about your final days in charge, Ms Palaszczuk? Picture: David Clark

• ‘Anna created this Olympic mess’
• Stacia explodes over Brisbane 2032

Annastacia Palaszczuk is deluded. The former premier this morning took to breakfast television to claim that “when I left, we had a plan” for the main stadium at the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. But her memory of what happened is, at best, misleading.

In the interests of correcting the record, the week leading into her standing down as premier 13 months ago was actually dominated by the news that Ms Palaszczuk’s “plan” to rebuild the Gabba for the Games had been totally bungled.

Turns out, her “plan” was actually one of the straws that broke the camel’s back of her time as premier.

Cricket, AFL and the Brisbane City Council were in open revolt, with even the usually mild-mannered star Usman Khawaja warning Ms Palaszczuk’s plan would send Queensland Cricket broke.

But Ms Palaszczuk and her sports minister Stirling Hinchliffe just kept making it worse, and front page after front page chronicled the mess as the week progressed.

Just eight days after she unveiled her “plan” for the main Games stadium, she resigned.

Ms Palaszczuk was feeling the heat leading up to her resignation.

Even Usman Khawaja was bemused by her plan.

Ms Palaszczuk’s venues “plan” had been to demand unilaterally that the AFL, cricket and the council stump up their own $87m to fund a new boutique stadium at the inner-city RNA showgrounds so they had somewhere to play in the decade the Gabba would be out of action for a rebuild (for $2.7bn, up from the $1bn she had previously promised).

And to rub salt in the wound, Ms Palaszczuk had told cricket and the AFL that any compensation for lost ticket revenue while the Gabba was out of action would only be loaned to them by the government – and they would have to pay it back.

The sports would have been out of pocket.

Adrian Schrinner wasn’t happy with where things were heading.

As we observed in this column at the time, it was like the government demolishing the building a local bakery operates from, and telling the owner they would not just need to suck it up in terms of lost revenue – but they would also stump up cash to help build their temporary shop.

We wrote: “It is just rude – and it certainly doesn’t pass the pub test. It also feeds the growing perception that this is a premier and a government that has lost touch; perhaps in some instances even with reality.”

Sadly, Ms Palaszczuk’s bizarre hubris today suggests she might not have yet reconnected with it.