Backlash grows to $1.6 billion Brisbane Olympics stadium bombshell
A shock decision to scrap plans to build a dedicated stadium for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, saving billions of dollars, has divided opinion.
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A shock decision to scrap plans to build a dedicated stadium for the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, saving billions of dollars, has divided opinion in Queensland.
Queensland Premier Steven Miles on Monday released an independent review into the Brisbane Games’ venue plans — but rejected its signature proposal for a $3.4 billion, 55,000-seat venue to be built in Brisbane’s inner-north at Victoria Park.
“I was hopeful the review would find a better-value option,” Mr Miles said.
The Premier said no one “wants to see money spent on facilities that are only needed for four weeks” and that “while the concept of a new stadium at Victoria Park has merit, the uncertainty around final cost means it is unfortunately not an option”.
Instead, the Queensland government will spend $1.6 billion renovating the Queensland Sports and Athletics Centre (QSAC), at Nathan in the city’s south, allowing it to hold 40,000 people in renovated stands but just 14,000 after the Games are complete.
Lang Park in Milton, currently known as Suncorp Stadium, will host the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.
Mr Miles also announced he was finally pulling the pin on a hugely controversial knockdown-rebuild proposal for the iconic Gabba cricket ground, which the independent panel concluded would have cost a total of $3.4 billion, up from $1 billion when the plan was initially floated under former Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
The Gabba will be refurbished enabling it to host Olympic cricket.
The review, conducted by former Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk, had recommended The Gabba be fully demolished and replaced with a new stadium elsewhere, “which is something we couldn’t accept for such a beloved venue”, Mr Miles said.
“Due largely to its age, the Gabba stadium is in poor condition, is operationally inefficient, inaccessible and offers very poor amenities for athletes and staff,” the review said.
The Miles government said that its response “prioritises community benefit while ensuring costs remain within the agreed funding envelope of $7.1 billion to be shared between the state and Commonwealth governments”.
“The government does not believe it would be possible to deliver any new stadium at Victoria Park within the existing agreed funding, and the IOC has noted that a new stadium for the Olympic and Paralympic Games sits outside the ‘new norm’ of using existing or already planned venues,” it said.
“The government is therefore ruling out a stadium at Victoria Park, instead favouring investigating upgrades to QSAC and Suncorp.”
The option to renovate QSAC, built for the 1982 Commonwealth Games, had been slammed by the review, which said it “does not demonstrate value for money and is very hard to justify” as it would have “virtually nil” legacy benefits — especially because Mr Quirk estimated $1 billion would need to be spent on the Gabba to keep it up to standard after 2032 anyway.
The total cost of that refurbishment plus the QSAC build would thus be $800 million less than building a completely new venue which would sit as a permanent upgrade on The Gabba.
“The Gabba will reach the end of its life by 2030,” Mr Quirk said.
“Now, even if you keep it going beyond that date with some upgrades, at some stage, the Gabba is going to need to be replaced and it is never going to be a tier-one stadium because of the limitation of space. As far as the QSAC site is concerned, we just don’t see, after spending around $1.5 billion, any significant legacy benefit to the people of Queensland.”
He added, “I’ve heard people say we should build an 80,000- or 90,000-seat stadium, but our view was you’re starting to then get into the white elephant stage … it sits empty there the other times of the year.”
Mr Quirk argued “one of the great attractions of the Victoria Park site is that you not only have Cross River Rail and the Exhibition station, which is just about complete, you’ve also got Brisbane Metro stations at Herston, Kelvin Grove and Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital”.
“You’ve also got significant car parking opportunity at the RNA Showgrounds, so these were things in terms of accessibility that were very important to us,” he said.
“We had the Department of Main Roads and Transport look at it to see if it could work and while it’s early days — I mean, we’ve had 60 days for this review — their findings are positive.”
Olympic champion swimmer and now Triple M Brisbane radio host Liesel Jones said on Monday the announcement made her deeply worried about the 2032 Games.
“I’m concerned, this makes me so nervous,” Jones said on her drivetime program.
“I was so confident before about the Brisbane 2032 Olympics. I am so nervous now about what’s going to happen, because we can’t agree on anything. We can’t decide on what we’re going to do with the Gabba … I’m so worried about these Games that they’re going to be costing so much more than we even expected.”
The call on the 2032 Games is set to play a major role in this year’s Queensland state election where Labor seems set to lose government.
Queensland deputy opposition leader Jarrod Bleijie accused the Premier of having “botched” the independent review, but would not say what the LNP would do if it was elected in October.
Mr Bleijie said a Crisafulli government would leave such decisions to a newly established independent infrastructure delivery authority.
“This must be taken out of the hands of the politicians and put in the hands of people with expertise that will be able to get value for money and ensure all Queenslanders can go on a positive journey to the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Mr Bleijie said on Monday, the Brisbane Times reported.
“So we will say to the independent delivery infrastructure authority that we set up, that is our priority for Queenslanders, that is our priority to make sure these Games deliver generational infrastructure that has not been and will not be delivered under the Labor government.”
Mr Bleijie told Sky News on Monday night that the LNP had been “pretty consistent on the Olympic and Paralympic Games waste that the Miles government has overseen and the Palaszcuk government oversaw with Miles as the responsible minister”.
“We never supported the Gabba knockdown because we saw it go from $1 billion to $2.7 billion, and then today we find out … [it] was actually going to be $3.4 billion,” he said.
“How long has Steven Miles known that his pet baby project had blown out to $3.4 billion? We don’t support these projects and stadiums unless there’s business cases to back it up. That wasn’t the case with the Gabba and that’s not what I’ve seen the case for new stadiums that have been announced by the government today.”
Jamie Walker, Brisbane associate editor with The Australian, described the QSAC decision as a “very bad” mistake.
“The best that can be said of the old QEII stadium is that it did a cracking job as a 1982 Commonwealth Games venue but was already well past its use-by date when the Brisbane Broncos stopped playing there 20 years ago,” he wrote on Tuesday.
“The club’s crowds plunged by three quarters because of the access issues.”
While Mr Quirk’s $3.4 billion Victoria Park idea “was always going to be a tough sell in the teeth of a cost-of-living crisis”, it was “better than what the Olympic city will get from a pale coat of paint being slapped on the white elephant of QEII stadium”, Walker argued.
“That’s not a legacy, it is a disgrace,” he said.
But former Queensland Liberal Premier Campbell Newman was scathing of the rejected Victoria Park proposal. “After [Brisbane Lord Mayor] Adrian Schrinner reclaimed Victoria Park as vital green space for ALL the people of Brisbane, the idea that it should be appropriated for a stadium is disgraceful,” he wrote on X.
“It’s time for the grandiose Olympic dreams for multi billion stadiums to be shelved. Use the infrastructure we already have — that was always meant to be the deal. And keep your hands off our wonderful new park!”
— with Fox Sports
Originally published as Backlash grows to $1.6 billion Brisbane Olympics stadium bombshell
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