Brisbane 2032 Olympics planning is in utter shambles

Artist‘s impression of what the RNA Main Arena would look like during the Gabba redevelopment.

What an utter shambles.

That Annastacia Palaszczuk put a rebuilt Gabba stadium front and centre of the 2032 Brisbane Olympics on the basis of a-back-of-the-envelope cost calculation was bad enough.

Now International Olympics Committee powerbroker John Coates has pre-empted a long-overdue review of the former premier’s decision-making on Games venues by declaring that the project had lost public support and was “dead”.

So much for due process. The Gabba has come to symbolise everything that’s gone wrong with Olympics’ planning to date, starting with Palaszczuk’s shonky costings. The original $1bn price tag soon ballooned to $2.7bn, and even that might not be enough to fund the do-over she envisioned.

There were other problems: a noisy protest by locals at the relocation of the East Brisbane State School was gaining traction, and the ground’s primary tenants - Queensland Cricket and the AFL - were unimpressed by the arrangements for them to up-sticks during the planned redevelopment.

Yet Palaszczuk’s successor, Steven Miles, stepped into her shoes last December adamant that the Gabba was still the best option to be Games HQ, and would anchor a city-defining revamp of the Woolloongabba precinct.

Until it wasn’t.

Former Brisbane mayor Graham Quirk’s job was to run a ruler over the pricey plan as well as Brisbane Arena, the equally troubled proposal to build a 17,000-seat auditorium above Roma Street railway station in the CBD to house the Olympic swimming. Together, these projects consume nearly 80 per cent of the $7.1bn so far committed by the state and federal governments for Games venues under a cost-sharing deal.

‘Brisbane had the priceless advantage of an 11-year runway to get the big decisions right and make the most of the generational opportunity’

On the Gabba, Quirk was asked to decide whether the expense and short-term disruption of rebuilding the ageing stadium was worth the long-run benefits on offer. In other words, would Brisbane gain an affordable civic asset that outlived the sugar hit of the 2032 Olympics and Paralympics?

Coates’ extraordinary action to leak details of his own submission to Quirk renders moot whatever the review finds on the Gabba, such is the standing of the man who secured two Olympics for Australia.

But the options he put up for staging the opening and closing ceremonies at the rectangular Suncorp Stadium and holding the showpiece athletics competition at the 1983 Commonwealth Games-vintage QEII stadium, lightly serviced by public transport deep in Brisbane’s southern suburbs, are highly problematic.

They will do little to allay alarm that the Games are being planned on the run.

Brisbane had the priceless advantage of an 11-year runway to get the big decisions right and make the most of the generational opportunity to stage the world’s biggest all-sports tournament.

Nearly three years in, here’s where things stand: back to square 1 on the prime venues; no plan for transport infrastructure development; no detail on the new independent infrastructure delivery agency Miles revived, junking another Palaszczuk position; no designated Olympics minister in the new Premier’s cabinet.

People are entitled to ask: what on earth is going on?