Brisbane 2032 Olympics: David Crisafulli clears first hurdle but is in a race against time and budget

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli at the Howard Smith Wharves for the announcement of the Brisbane Olympics 2032 venues and infrastructure on Tuesday Picture: Josh Woning

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Quibble all you like about David Crisafulli’s 2032 Olympics project plan – and there is plenty to question – but the time for talking has come and gone. The imperative must be: build, baby, build.

Let’s leave aside, for a moment, the sorry saga of how the Queensland Premier was boxed into ­having so few choices and such limited time to kickstart the stalled capital works program.

The blueprint he unveiled on Tuesday charts a credible way forward on procuring the key sports venues, an essential building block of the Games.

The big-ticket item, a new 63,000-seat stadium at Victoria Park, is a no-brainer – especially when there was no realistic alternative to the pricey development.

Axing government funding for the other showpiece facility, Brisbane Arena, is also sensible. Crisafulli wants to redirect the cash to the stadium and the long list of second-tier sports facilities that must be upgraded or constructed over the next seven years.

Ditching the arena – if that is what it comes to – will be a much harder sell for the Liberal ­National Party man than breaking an election commitment that there would be no new stadium built on his watch.

Remember, Queenslanders were promised a legacy of “generational infrastructure” from the Games, and the 17,000-seat hall in the heart of the city, replacing the ageing entertainment centre at distant Boondall, fit the bill ­admirably.

The original idea to construct the arena on a platform over busy Roma Street railway station fired the Brisbane public’s imagination, but proved to be impractical and too costly.

Now it won’t happen on a site opposite the Gabba until private sector funding can be teed up.

Will federal Labor play ball and allow Crisafulli to reallocate the $2.5bn Anthony Albanese pledged to the arena project when fellow Labor traveller Annastacia Palaszczuk ran the show?

The Prime Minister was non-committal when pressed on this point ahead of the delivery plan’s release in Brisbane.

But the signals from Canberra are otherwise positive, the word being that the commonwealth is prepared to consider the proposals once details are forwarded in writing. (The substance of the venue strategy was briefed only verbally to federal ministers and senior ­bureaucrats, insiders say.)

Crisafulli, to his credit, didn’t try to duck responsibility for breaking his no-new-stadium pledge to voters, frequently voiced in the run-up to last October’s state election.

“I have to own that,” he said, confirming the backflip.

After nearly four years of ­obfuscation and false starts over where the stadium should go, and at what cost, the long-suffering taxpayers of Queensland would appreciate the straight talk.

Crisafulli was right to accept advice that his preferred option to rebuild the Gabba could no longer be done in time for the Games, compounded by the absence of a viable replacement home for reigning AFL champions the Brisbane Lions and bigtime cricket, gearing up for this coming summer’s blockbuster men’s Ashes ­series with England. His plan to contract to the private sector at least some of the cost and risk of raising Brisbane Arena on a challenging site in Woolloongabba is worth exploring, and exposes the paucity of the former state Labor government’s perplexing hostility to a PPP deal put on the table by the Live Nation group.

Presumably, Crisafulli has re-engaged with the cashed-up multinational concert staging and venue development concern.

The venues’ strategy is a good, long-overdue start.

Now comes the hard part. ­Crisafulli must match his rhetoric with action, and quickly, because, as he made abundantly clear, too much time has been squandered on the false starts and policy U-turns that have bedevilled the ­program to date.

To borrow a phrase from Donald Trump, get set to build, baby, build.