Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Gabba plan left federal government ‘bushwhacked’, Senate inquiry hears

Senator Richard Colbeck has revealed the moment Annastacia Palaszczuk dropped a 2032 Games bombshell he says was nothing more than a billion-dollar “thought bubble”.

Senator Richard Colbeck has revealed how Annastacia Palaszczuk’s plan to demolish and rebuild the Gabba for the 2032 Games was nothing more than an uncosted “thought bubble” – that prompted the International Olympic Committee to ask, “What on earth is going on?”

Senator Colbeck made the revelations during the lunch break of the public hearings of the Senate inquiry into Brisbane’s readiness to host the 2032 Games.

Asked if it seemed the Gabba was a thought bubble from then premier Ms Palaszczuk, he responded: “I would say that the evidence to date is that is exactly all it was.

“We (the former federal Coalition government) were completely bushwhacked by the Queensland government when they announced the decisions to put the Gabba on the table for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

“And might I say so were the International Olympic Committee – who came in and said, ‘What on Earth is going on?’”

Former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

He said the then Palaszczuk government had presented the federal government with a list of projects necessary for the 2032 Games on a Tuesday in April 2021 – and that list did not include the Gabba.

But by the following Sunday media inquiries had started to be lodged with the federal government asking about a rumoured $1bn upgrade to the Gabba. By the following Friday they agreed to fund 50:50 of the infrastructure – on the proviso an independent authority was established to oversee it.

“That was April 2021. Here we are, April 2024, and the legislation for that is only just arriving because the Queensland government resisted it at every turn until it became completely untenable for them to do so, even to the extent of commissioning a $750,000 report from a consultant to justify their decision,” he said.

The Gabba was the state government’s preferred option until now-Premier Steven Miles took over in December, when he charged former Lord Mayor Graham Quirk with leading an independent review of the Games venue plans.

Senator Richard Colbeck.

The purpose of the review was to find an excuse to dump the Gabba, which had become a hugely unpopular plan – particularly in the local Woolloongabba community due to the loss of homes and the local East Brisbane State School.

Mr Quirk told Wednesday’s inquiry he had seen no evidence of where the originally $1bn price tag had come from – but that he understood it was a “quickly put together estimate”. He said he did see government information about a revised figure of $2.7bn.

Peter Edwards, the founder of local architecture and urban design firm Archipelago told the inquiry the Gabba option had been a “quite strange” decision because the main stadium would be “25m from private balconies spanning across arterial roads”.

Former Lord Mayor Sallyanne Atkinson also expressed her distaste for the Gabba plan, saying “I never liked the idea”.

An artist’s impression of a redeveloped Gabba.