Time is running out for Brisbane 2032 planning

After years of political bickering, Premier David Crisafulli now has a gold medal opportunity, writes Jeremy Pierce.

Queensland’s new Premier David Crisafulli speaks to media at Parliament House on Sunday morning. Picture Lachie Millard

While the dust settles after the Queensland election, it continues to swirl like a tornado around the Brisbane 2032 Olympics.

After years of bickering and flip-flopping involving Queensland’s political parties, incoming Premier David Crisafulli now has a gold medal opportunity to get The Greatest Show on Earth back on track.

When Brisbane was confirmed as the 2032 host on the eve of the Tokyo Games, Queensland celebrated and vowed to deliver a world-class spectacle to make our humble river city the centre of the sporting universe, driving lasting legacies to fuel the state for generations to come.

With an 11-year runway (by comparison Sydney only had six), Brisbane was handed an incredible advantage to deliver the best Games possible as some of Queensland’s best and brightest lent their minds and voices to how we could do that.

But three years have passed – and what has happened?

We still don’t have a decision on the flagship stadium, for starters.

Will it be a revamped Gabba, an airbrushed Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre, or a brand new venue at Victoria Park, Hamilton or even Toombul?

As well as hosting the athletics, an Olympic stadium typically hosts the opening and closing ceremonies and serves as the beating heart of the Games.

It’s where the Olympic flame burns brightest and remains burnt onto the retinas of a worldwide audience in the hundreds of millions as an enduring legacy of the event.

While Paris made use of the existing Stade de France and challenged convention with an opening ceremony which weaved along the River Seine, Brisbane has no such venue which can pull off the spectacle in its present form.

And while an opening ceremony along Brisbane’s famous brown snake would have its fans, it wouldn’t pass le pub test to simply copy the French.

We need our Games to be infused with own identity, and pronto.

Artist impressions of the Athletes village at Northshore, Hamilton for the Brisbane 2032 Olympics

A change of government brings a chance to reset and Mr Crisafulli, to his credit, has hit the ground running with an ambitious ultimatum to finally set the matter to rest. It is one of a raft of objectives he hopes to achieve in his first 100 days in office.

He has tasked the Olympic and Paralympic Games Delivery Authority with determining – once and for all – where athletics will be held in 2032.

He remains “bullish” that this will happen, and happen soon.

“They’re looking at generational infrastructure and creating venues that people can be proud of and I reckon there’s a very, very good opportunity for Queensland to salvage some pride out of this and I remain bullish,” he tells The Sunday Mail in today’s paper.

Exactly what those decisions will be remains up in the air.

A multibillion-dollar rebuild of the famous Gabba was the initial choice but lost support as a host of challenges began to pile up.

Logistically, it’s a huge undertaking due to the constricted space in Woolloongabba. And as well as making that project exorbitantly expensive, there’s also the problem with what to do with the ageing venue’s residents – most notably the AFL Premiership-winning Lions and the crowd-pulling Big Bash cricket champion Heat – for up to five years during any rebuild.

Plans to base them in an upgraded Ekka Showgrounds in the meantime also sounded smart – until it was revealed cricket and AFL authorities would have to open their wallets to get that option off the ground.

Woolloongabba (Gabba) stadium.

Former premier Steven Miles then scrapped the Gabba plan altogether in favour of a budget-friendly spruce-up for the existing home of Queensland athletics, which hosted the 1982 Commonwealth Games.

But whether an Olympics could turn Kessels Road into our own Champs-Elysees is doubtful.

Brand new stadiums have been proposed for Victoria Park, Hamilton on Brisbane’s North Shore and, as revealed in today’s paper, even a site near Brisbane Airport at Toombul.

All have their down sides – and would fly in the face of Mr Crisafulli’s repeated assertion that there would be “no new stadiums”.

But with Labor now packing up boxes after more than a decade in power, the Olympic torch has been passed on.

Over to you, Premier.

Originally published as Time is running out for Brisbane 2032 planning