Annastacia Palaszczuk needs to come clean about Olympics costs before it’s too late

The Gabba in Brisbane. Picture: Steve Pohlner

Daniel Andrews’s axing of Victoria’s devolved Commonwealth Games sends an ominous message to the organisers and bankrollers of the big dance, the Brisbane 2032 Olympics.

Don’t trust the costings touted by politicians on the make about the “value” these events represent – they are not worth the paper in the press release they’re written on.

The Commonwealth Games debacle brings forward the pain that traditionally comes afterwards when the bill is tallied. It’s only then, as was the case with Sydney 2000, that the predictions about tourism booms and economic boosts are exposed as epic exercises in wishful thinking.

History shows there is no such thing as a “cost-neutral” games, commonwealth or otherwise.

Andrews’s admission that the 2026 tournament to have been staged across country Victoria was “all cost and no benefit” after a twofold blowout in the budgeted spend should puncture the complacency his Queensland counterpart, Annastacia Palaszczuk, has cultivated around the 2032 Olympic preparations.

Friday marks the second anniversary of Brisbane securing the hosting rights. In that time, a preliminary costing of the centrepiece rebuild of the Gabba stadium ballooned from $1bn to $2.7bn, the Queensland government ditched a commitment to the International Olympic Committee to manage infrastructure development through an independent agency and Anthony Albanese tore up the original cost-sharing deal to saddle Canberra with funding another key Games venue, the $2.5bn Brisbane Arena, a tricky engineering proposition above the busy Roma Street railway station.

The known outlays are limited to the $4.94bn earmarked for the operating cost of the Olympics and $7bn for venues, including the Gabba and Brisbane Arena, to be split between the two governments.

But the bankrollers of the Games – we taxpayers – are still in the dark about big-ticket capital works such as rail and motorway upgrades that are held to be part of the “legacy” dividend for southeast Queensland. Surely it’s past time for decisions on what projects will proceed and how they are to be paid for.

Right now, businessman Andrew Liveris and his team at the Brisbane 2032 organising committee are working to convince companies here and overseas to sign on as sponsors or corporate partners, crucial to meeting a cornerstone pledge that the Olympics will be operationally cost-neutral.

Note the fine print.

The train-wreck in Victoria will not help their cause.

Palaszczuk needs to come clean with detail, not platitudes, of how much the Games will cost and why an Olympics that has a sizeable regional footprint won’t be subject to the same cost pressures that detonated in Victoria.