Wayne Bennett calls for QAS to be made independent body

Wayne Bennett has made an emotional plea over an issue he believes is strangling Queensland sport in the countdown to the Olympics.

The Queensland Academy of Sport is headquartered at the Queensland Sports and Athletics Centre at Nathan in Brisbane’s south

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Wayne Bennett has made an unprecedented emotional plea to stop Queensland being strangled by government red tape in the countdown to the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The coaching great is one of several sports administration heavyweights set to push Premier Steven Miles to immediately overhaul the Queensland Academy of Sport into an independent body, claiming it has been hamstrung by multiple layers of bureaucracy and wasted spending which threatens to derail our Games chances.

The move comes just weeks after the shock departure of London Games “gold medal maker” Chelsea Warr as chief executive, and the subsequent resignation of QAS chair and Olympic gold medallist Renita Garard – the latter of who will front Mr Miles on Tuesday alongside QAS founding director Wilma Shakespear and several other experienced sports administrators.

Bennett said he felt so strongly about the matter that had he not been in New Zealand next Tuesday, he would have attended the meeting with Mr Miles.

Rugby league master coach Wayne Bennett

“The Brisbane Olympics will be one of this state’s finest hours. But we need to bring our athletes’ ability to fruition for those Games. If we are winning nothing and not performing it will be a disaster,” he said.

“Elite sport cannot run with severe government constraints.

“The tragedy of the AIS and the QAS is that other countries have copied us and if we don’t be careful, they will do it better than us.

“I know in coaching where I have just been able to do my job it works – anywhere I have gone where people prevent me from doing my job it just gets very hard.’’

The QAS has fallen down the pecking order to be under the watch of the Department of Tourism and Sport.

Experts fear the academy may struggle to retain their highly respected current staff and fail to attract the world’s best to train our future sporting greats if the system stays bogged down in red tape.

“The detraction for world leading practitioners is joining an organisation where they are working beneath multiple layers of bureaucracy, and where structural changes can be made which introduces absolutely unnecessary inefficiencies and derails progress,” Ms Garard said.

Recently departed QAS boss Chelsea Warr

“Given the shrinking runway to 2032 and the immediate approaching planning into LA in 2028, the structure needs to be ‘fit for purpose’ urgently.”

Bennett said the QAS program was in danger of being compromised if there were struggles to recruit the best coaches, dietitians, physiotherapists, strength and conditioners.

“The QAS has been a great program. It’s not just Olympic athletes who have done such great things.

“It was a big turning point in Queensland rugby league when we got access to the QAS in the early 2000s when we looked as if we would get beaten every year.

“Without the QAS we would never have achieved what we did.’’

The group will also lobby Mr Miles to commit to a “fit for purpose” governance – such an independent skills-based board that reports to a minister – and urge him to ensure as much as possible of every dollar received by the QAS is used to deliver services and support Queensland Athletes, instead of “wasting funding on unnecessary bureaucracy”.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Tourism and Sport said there were no plans for the QAS to become an independent entity.