Brisbane’s Olympic Games go round in circles

Annastacia Palaszczuk has found herself in the unaccustomed position of being on a unity ticket with former LNP premier Campbell Newman, whom she dispatched in 2015 to take power. Both support a grassroots campaign that is gaining traction.

What a Victoria Park venue for the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games could look like.

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Annastacia Palaszczuk says there are two certainties when it comes to Brisbane’s Olympic stadium: it is going to be built from scratch on the green expanse of Victoria Park and this is a bad decision.

A very bad decision. The former Queensland Labor premier is talking in unprecedented detail about what went wrong in the convoluted stadium saga and how it is primed to deliver a second-best outcome for the 2032 Games, the state and the nation.

Palaszczuk’s conviction that the stadium will go to Victoria Park, sandwiched between the sprawling Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital campus and the Ekka showgrounds on the northern lip of the CBD, is widely seen as a given of the 100-day review of the troubled Olympic venues program that was due to deliver its finalised recommendations to her successor once-removed, David Crisafulli, this weekend.

Annastacia Palaszczuk is is talking in unprecedented detail about what went wrong in the convoluted stadium saga.

The fact is that the time to do what she wanted and sold to the International Olympic Committee – rebuild the ageing but ideally positioned Gabba on the opposite bank of Brisbane River – has come and gone. With all the best will in the world, it is hard to see how the Gabba redevelopment could be pursued in the face of the overwhelming technical and logistic challenges now confronting it.

Victoria Park is the safer option, practically and politically. Which is why Crisafulli is likely to embrace the greenfield build even at the cost of breaking an explicit and repeatedly voiced election promise, and quite possibly against his own better judgment.

“It is no secret around Brisbane that the committee has been told it is Victoria Park,” Palaszczuk says, referring to the board of the Games Independent Infrastructure and Co-ordination Authority that is conducting the re-evaluation. In her assessment, the fix is in. If so, get set for another round of finger-pointing and unseemly squabbling.

Palaszczuk has found herself in the unaccustomed position of being on a unity ticket with former Liberal National Party premier Campbell Newman, whom she dispatched in 2015 to take power. Both support a grassroots campaign that is gaining traction to halt the development.

She says the state government – that’s the one she relinquished to her then deputy, Steven Miles, in 2023 before Crisafulli applied the coup de grace at the Queensland election in October 2024 – was wrong to have moved away from the Gabba in the first instance. The pity is we did not hear more of the case she put forward while it still mattered. As we will see, Palaszczuk herself bears some responsibility for this failure.

Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman at a Victoria Park Olympic stadium protest. Picture: Liam Kidston

The Gabba’s appeal is readily expressed: location, location, location. Yes, the rebuild Palaszczuk proposed had issues, cost foremost among them, after the preliminary pricing ballooned. There were questions about fitting an oval-shaped 400m Olympic running track into the ground’s circular footprint and whether the enclosed site, hemmed in by busy roads, could accommodate the extra seating, access points, pedestrian plaza and warm-up track for athletes. A noisy protest by local parents about the relocation of a heritage-listed primary school added to the clamour.

But what has been missed, Palaszczuk says, is the bigger picture. Zoom out and you see that all roads on Brisbane’s southside lead to or run through the Woolloongabba precinct. Its centrality as a public transport hub will be reinforced when the $17bn Cross River Rail subway comes on line.

One of the new network’s biggest underground stations is being constructed beneath the existing Gabba stadium, with 220m platforms designed to handle nearly 18,000 people a day during the working week and more on game days. The Brisbane City Council’s incoming Metro system of tram-like buses will have a depot nearby, augmenting existing passenger services. This is what recommended the site, Palaszczuk insists.

Moreover, the sizeable public investment in Cross River Rail, in particular, demands that the pricey new mass transit assets be fully used. “Wherever the stadium goes, and my position on this is well known, it needs to be connected to transport nodes,” she tells Inquirer. “That’s the primary consideration – how to move a lot of people in and out of a game or an event, and do it efficiently and quickly.

“You know, we’re going to have a brand-new railway system happening in this city with new stations at the Gabba, Roma Street and Albert Street, smack bang in the middle of the city. It’s going to transform Brisbane.

“And why you wouldn’t utilise those connections is beyond me. Wherever those connections are is where your new infrastructure needs to be.”

Victoria Park is the safer option, practically and politically. Which is why Crisafulli is likely to embrace the greenfield build. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/Courier Mail

Palaszczuk points out that the nearest train station to Victoria Park will be nearly 1km away at the showgrounds, after the stop limited to use during the Ekka fortnight each August is upgraded for Cross River Rail. That’s quite a walk in the Brisbane heat.

In any event, she shares Newman’s position that the city can’t afford to lose more of the picturesque 64ha reserve. (He admits he is not blameless when a section of parkland was resumed for a control centre of the road tunnel system he championed while Brisbane mayor, before his switch to state politics in 2012.) “It’s an amazing green space that could be transformed into something like Singapore Gardens,” Palaszczuk says. “I just can’t see why you would build a stadium there when there is another option … I never thought I would say this but Campbell Newman and I are actually on the same page here.”

The picturesque 64ha reserve at Victoria Parklands. Picture: John Gass/NCA Newswire

Then there’s the IOC, the Lausanne-based guardian of the Games. Palaszczuk points out that the Brisbane Olympics will be the first staged under the IOC’s New Norm framework that is supposed to ease the financial burden on host cities. Flashy new stadiums are out, the cost-effective repurposing of existing venues in. And one of the selling points of the Brisbane bid in 2021 was that 85 per cent of the sports facilities were in situ.

No one is suggesting the IOC would issue sanctions or a formal reprimand if Victoria Park proceeded. The clubby politics of the Olympic movement doesn’t work like that. Any reproach from Switzerland, however gently worded, would be enough to move the Richter scale here.

The IOC’s former point man in Australia, John Coates, credited with delivering Sydney 2000 and the Brisbane Games, effectively killed the Gabba in February 2024 by announcing the project had lost public support and threatened to put the Olympic movement “on the nose”. His suggestion that track and field events be shifted to the unloved 1982 Commonwealth Games stadium at suburban Nathan was embraced by Miles but not Crisafulli, who went on to brand it “dumb”. It’s fair to say the LNP man had public opinion on his side.

Palaszczuk is scathing of the backflips. “The politics needs to cease over the venues. This constant unpicking of venues, you know, is not a good look for a host city,” she says, having visited Lausanne recently on a private trip.

Asked how the IOC would view the saga, she answers carefully: “The IOC watches everything. I mean, they would watch whatever’s being said in the media.”

Coates, for his part, has opted this time to sit out the willing debate over Victoria Park. There’s no doubt siting the stadium there is building a head of steam. The powerful president of the Games Organising Committee, Andrew Liveris, has thrown his support behind the proposal, as has LNP mayor of Brisbane Adrian Schrinner. The Gabba’s anchor tenants, the AFL premiers the Brisbane Lions and Queensland Cricket are keen to move to the new digs, antagonising Palaszczuk.

Her attack on the codes, covered in the news section, is extraordinary. Palaszczuk says these “vested interests” were key to stalling momentum for the Gabba. “I never thought I would see the day when they didn’t want the Gabba redeveloped,” she says with an exasperated sigh. “Take the cricket. It’s been the home of cricket for well over a century. You know, people in India come to the Gabba to take pictures because it’s synonymous with cricket.”

Had Miles kept faith with her plan, she says the design and procurement process would be well advanced by now, not stuck at square one. Demolition of the stadium would be on track to begin in December, immediately after stumps were drawn on the second Ashes Test. There would have been more progress on the main athletes village on the river at Hamilton, downstream from the CBD, Palaszczuk says. She had signed off on a proposal to fast-track the development to bring on line affordable and social housing units to ease Brisbane’s accommodation crisis.

Her frustration is understandable. The advantages that were given to the Brisbane2032 organisers on her watch – an 11-year runway to plan and prepare, unambiguous public support for the Games project – have been frittered away. The stadium isn’t the be-all of the exercise, of course, but it is an important building block, and there’s no doubt the chopping and changing have dented community confidence in how the process is being managed.

Palaszczuk denies the rot started with her rubbery figures, blowing out the initial costing of the Gabba rebuild by 170 per cent to $2.7bn, an estimate that has continued to climb. “That’s the number we had, the estimate we were given at the time,” she says. “We had the rush to get this in for the … selection process with the IOC. We knew the Gabba was reaching the end of its life, so something had to be done with the stadium anyway. It was the logical solution.”

Crisafulli will be hoping the GIICA review provides a circuit-breaker when the clock is ticking, louder and louder. In addition to backing in Victoria Park, my colleagues Michael McKenna and Sarah Elks have reported that the board will recommend that the 17,000-seat Brisbane Arena, earmarked as the Olympic swimming venue, be moved to a site adjacent to the Gabba. This makes sense. The hall, funded by the federal government to a capped price of $2.5bn under a cost-sharing deal with Queensland on Games venues, would help deliver bang for the big bucks sunk into Cross River Rail, a lasting legacy.

But here’s the thing. Crisafulli is not only on the hook for promising there would be “no new stadium”. He has pledged to keep the venues spend within the existing $7.1bn funding envelope that Palaszczuk negotiated with Anthony Albanese. One source with knowledge of the GIICA review doubts whether the Victoria Park stadium can come in under $5bn, taking in the required access and public transport upgrades, while Brisbane Arena is likely to cost north of $3bn. A more realistic venues budget would be $12bn, the source insists.

Palaszczuk says she will have more to say after the GIICA findings, and Crisafulli’s response, are released on March 25. For all the travails of the past four years, she remains confident that Queensland will “put on a great show” come 2032.

Her message to all concerned is: get on with it.