Olympic Games costs must clear financial hurdles

The Australian remains a keen supporter of Brisbane’s 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, as we have been since legendary sports writer Wayne Smith proposed the idea in our pages in 2015. Smith, who died in June this year, had covered eight Olympic Games, where he specialised in swimming news. He put the idea for the Games to Brisbane’s lord mayor at the time, Graham Quirk, who took it to a meeting of southeast Queensland mayors. As we said in February 2021 when the successful bid was announced after guidance and support from Australian Olympic Committee president and IOC vice-president John Coates, Brisbane’s Games were already stirring imaginations of sports lovers around Australia and overseas.

Taxpayers were assured the Games would be geared to breaking even and would bring $7.4bn in economic benefits, 130,000 direct jobs, tens of thousands of indirect jobs and substantial tourism growth to southeast Queensland. Almost three years into the preparation process, the Palaszczuk government’s tendency to cut corners on detail has emerged as a problem, to the alarm of stakeholders and the taxpayers.

Great ideas – such as a 17,000-seat Brisbane Arena (with a drop-in swimming pool during the Games in July-August 2032), to be built over the busy Roma St railway hub in the central business district – are easier set out on paper than to build and pay for. So much so, associate editor Jamie Walker wrote in The Weekend Australian, that the state government is exploring alternative sites. “We have to applaud the vision,” an executive from one construction contractor told Walker. “But what you need to work out is whether or not it is cost-efficient … and we’re none the wiser as to what the government has decided in that regard.” The Albanese government will pay $2.5bn for the auditorium but no more.

The $2.7bn to rebuild the Gabba, home of cricket in Queensland and the Brisbane Lions, increasing the venue’s size by just 8000 seats to 50,000 to serve as the main Olympics stadium, is to be paid for by the state. In April 2021, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk estimated the upgrade would cost $1bn. But as Auditor-General Brendan Worrall said in March, “I don’t think there ever was a business case.”

Aside from the 170 per cent blowout in costs, the project has hit another hurdle. Brisbane lord mayor Adrian Schrinner has resigned from the Olympic and Paralympic Games Inter­govern­mental Leaders’ Forum (the main infrastructure planning body) over the government’s demand that Brisbane ratepayers fund a third of the $137m cost of a temporary stadium to host AFL and cricket while the Gabba is out of action. The Palaszczuk government wants to pay a third, leaving the codes and the RNA (which hosts the annual Ekka agricultural show where the temporary venue would be) to find the rest.

Concern also is rising about transport given the lack of a rail connection from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast. And the Brisbane-Gold Coast rail link needs to be extended to Coolangatta, near the Gold Coast airport. At peak times the main roads north and south from Brisbane often slow to a crawl. Talk of a “three airport” strategy linking the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast and Brisbane by rail, raised when the Games were awarded, is no longer discussed. But Infrastructure Minister Catherine King has promised federal funding for the Sunshine Coast rail link.

Ms Palaszczuk, who faces an election in November next year, is the minister responsible for the Games, assisted by her deputy Steven Miles. It is imperative that another year is not wasted. Time is running out for pragmatic, hard decisions to manage the logistics and avoid a heavy debt as a hangover. The Games promise an enormous upside. In Brisbane’s idyllic winter weather they should be memorable, but not for overcrowding and congestion. Instead of basking in their anticipated success, Ms Palaszczuk and her government need to do the work to get key financials and logistics settled and properly costed.