Queensland would stage a brilliant Olympic Games

Cycling on a sunny winter’s day beside the ocean at Alexandra Headland on the Sunshine Coast. Equestrian eventers charging across the rolling terrain of a leafy golf course near the heart of Brisbane. Beach volleyball at the Gold Coast. Hockey on synthetic turf at Ballymore. A bounty of gold in the pool. Southeast Queensland’s bid to host the 2032 Olympics and Paralympic Games, endorsed unanimously as the preferred candidate of the International Olympic Committee, is stirring the imaginations of sports lovers around the nation and overseas. The Morrison and Palaszczuk governments have united to embrace it, along with the Brisbane City Council and regional mayors. Queensland estimates that hosting the Games, which would be geared to breaking even, would bring $7.4bn in economic benefits, 130,000 direct jobs, tens of thousands of indirect jobs, tourism growth of about $20bn between 2020 and 2036, and boost trade exports.

It is “not a done deal”, as the IOC’s Future Host Commission chairwoman, Kristin Kloster Aasen, made clear. But it is “very advanced”, with “a number of proposals that work well for us”. In the post-COVID Olympic “new norm”, the lavish bidding processes of the past have gone. So have expectations of extravagant new venues. If Brisbane triumphs, the campaign will have cost less than the $10m Scott Morrison pledged to fund it. Bigger, more spectacular proposals are no longer better. And that suits southeast Queensland, where 85 per cent of the required venues are already in place. What no rival contender — Doha, Budapest, a Rhine-Ruhr German bid and the Chinese cities of Chengdu and Chongqing — can match are Queensland’s natural backdrops, especially at their best in July and August. Australia’s stability, cleanliness and successful management of the pandemic should stand us in good stead.

As the Prime Minister told question time on Thursday, Australian Olympic Committee chief executive Matt Carroll summed up one of the bid’s advantages when he said: “Australia brings certainty in uncertain times.” Our track record in staging big events — Expo 88, several Commonwealth Games, the Melbourne Olympics in 1956 and most of all the Sydney Games in 2000 — counts for a lot. Footage of favourite events in Sydney still tugs Australians’ heartstrings. Rival contenders will gain a look-in only if Brisbane inexplicably tumbles at the final hurdle. It is up to governments and our Olympic leaders, working in unison, to ensure the bid does not falter. The guiding hand of Australian Olympic Committee president and IOC vice-president John Coates will be invaluable. He deserves much of the credit for bringing us to this point. The role of gold medal winner Cathy Freeman also was invaluable. As Wayne Smith and Jacquelin Magnay wrote on Thursday, the woman who lit the flame at the Sydney Games “did the same thing, metaphorically speaking, for Brisbane as she outlined her story to the Future Host commissioners headed by Aasen. She traced her life, from being born in Mackay into the Kuku Yalanji people of her mother and grandmother, with her dad a Burri Gubba man … But it was when Freeman explained that when she moved to Hughenden as a 10-year-old child and she was forced to do all her running in the desert that she truly captured the spirit of the bid”.

The bid began with an idea proposed by Smith in an article in The Australian in February 2015. Smith, who has covered eight Olympic Games, put the idea to Brisbane’s lord mayor at the time, Graham Quirk, who took it to a meeting of southeast Queensland mayors. Following Brisbane’s successful staging of the G20 summit in November 2014, the city was the obvious choice to be Australia’s next candidate to host the Olympics, Smith wrote. Mr Quirk agreed: “It’s Australia’s new ‘world city’. We have demonstrated we are capable of staging world events, staging them safely and staging them successfully with ­attention to detail.”

A final decision could be made as early as the Tokyo Games in July. If successful, the Games will belong to Queensland as much as Brisbane, with the state proposing 21 games venues in Brisbane, six on the Gold Coast and three on the Sunshine Coast. The Whitsundays would be a spectacular backdrop for sailing; football heats could be staged in Townsville. Much remains to be decided, including major upgrades of transport infrastructure such as the often congested Brisbane-to-Sunshine Coast highway, a corridor that needs a rail link as soon as possible. The chance to host the Olympics in 11 years, after weathering COVID-19, should set our national spirit soaring.