Premier denies backflip on staunch Olympic stadium stance
The state government will not immediately release a review into Brisbane’s 2032 Games infrastructure as the Premier denies he has changed his stance on a new stadium.
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The state government will digest and respond to the long-awaited review of Queensland’s critical Olympic Games infrastructure plan before releasing it.
An expert advisory panel is due to complete its 100-day review on March 8, however, the government has not committed to immediately making it public.
Instead, a spokesman for Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie said the government would “urgently review” the report and brief stakeholders, including other levels of government, before releasing it alongside a formal response to the panel’s findings.
“Getting this process right is critical to ensuring we can all work together to get the Games back on track,” he said.
It comes as Premier David Crisafulli denies he has quietly changed his views about building a new Olympic stadium in the weeks before an independent games review provides recommendations to the Queensland Government.
The media quizzed him six times at a conference on Monday on a shifting stance, after the ABC reported he would not confirm no new stadiums would be built.
Before the October election the then-opposition leader stressed there would be “no new stadiums” built under an LNP-led government, which would instead focus on long-term infrastructure.
In a press conference on October 6 Mr Crisafulli rejected “new stadiums” five times, while a month later Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie said the government had ruled them out as he shut down the Victoria Park proposal.
This week Mr Crisafulli said his position had not changed but backed the independency of the Games Independent Infrastructure Coordination Authority (GIICA) and said he would listen to the board’s advice.
“The board has a right to be able to put forward its views independently, and we will listen to those, but I don’t want to focus on just one sporting facility,” he said.
“I’m not going to do what I saw previously, where without any thought, a location was chosen that universally has been panned by Queensland, because that's what happened with QSAC.
“It was a dumb decision.
“It wouldn’t have been either a great showpiece or a legacy play to spend a couple of billion bucks and have it ripped down, that would have been absurd.
“But now is the point in time where the board should be able to put forward that advice without interference from me.”
Opposition Leader Steven Miles said the Premier would need to make a choice when GIICA provided its report to the government on March 8, on whether to take on his appointed panel’s advice, or to disregard it.
Mr Miles said the report needed to be released “pretty much immediately.”
“That’s the approach I took with these things, and we would also want to see very quickly the government’s response,” he said.
Mr Miles stood by his position to upgrade Queensland Sports and Athletics Centre because it would be built within a $7.2bn budget.
“Mr Crisafulli made promises too,” he said.
“He promised to stick to that $7.2bn budget, and I know that’s what Queenslanders are expecting.”
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