Sydney Olympics boss Sandy Hollway sounds warning on Brisbane’s bloated board

Sydney Olympics organiser Sandy Hollway has cautioned that a newly minted ‘megaboard’ for Brisbane’s 2032 Games could be too unwieldy to get the job done.

Sydney Olympics boss Sandy Hollway.

Sydney Olympics organiser Sandy Hollway has cautioned that a newly minted “megaboard” for Brisbane’s 2032 Games could be too unwieldy to get the job done.

He spoke as the president of the organising committee for the Brisbane Games, business leader Andrew Liveris, dismissed concern that progress had stalled during the nine months it has taken to ­appoint the 21 directors, delaying recruitment of a chief executive and senior management team.

“We’re on target with our schedule and about four years ahead in comparison to other Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Mr Liveris told The Weekend Australian. “Most other Games are in our delivery position six years out, not 10.”

But Mr Hollway, the one-time public service mandarin who delivered the 2000 Olympics as chief of the Sydney organising committee, SOCOG, said the Brisbane board was nearly twice the size of the one he worked with and might have to be pruned or carved up.

While a big board could operate as a “plenary” group in the opening phase of Games planning, bringing a range of interests and ideas to the table, Mr Hollway said it could give way to “something smaller and more operational”.

“I would be very surprised if they haven’t got a view that the board may evolve in the future,” he said, “and in any event, if it remains that size, they won’t cascade down into smaller groups for … the operational stuff.”

Unlike the Sydney Games, which was largely a NSW government project, the Brisbane Olympics are being funded 50-50 by Canberra and Queensland with input from Brisbane City Council and other local authorities involved in the regionalised event.

The complexity of the stakeholder base for OCOG – Brisbane’s equivalent of SOCOG – is reflected in the 21-seat board that was finalised only last weekend on the eve of Scott Morrison calling the May 21 election. The Prime Minister and Labor Premier ­Annastacia Palaszczuk each nominated four directors while two were put forward by the council.

Both leaders signed off on the five independent directors headed by Mr Liveris, the former boss of US multinational Dow Chemical and an adviser to American presidents including Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

But tensions between the federal and state governments bubbled up last October when Mr Morrison’s Olympics envoy and OCOG board pick Ted O’Brien, Liberal MP for the Sunshine Coast seat of Fairfax, complained the board was being stacked by Ms Palaszczuk and warned this could jeopardise the federal funding.

The SOCOG board was not immune from infighting and burned through two presidents, several directors and a chief executive before Mr Hollway took charge four years out from the Sydney Games.

When OCOG got into the “real meat” of organising the Brisbane Games it could be that the “more consultative large board gives way to something smaller and more operational”, Mr Hollway said.

Or the existing complement could be retained as a plenary, with dedicated subcommittees picking up key areas of delivery in “smaller and more manageable groups”.

Darwin-born and Brisbane-schooled Mr Liveris, 67, pledged to bring a portfolio of “global conn­ections and … connectivity” to the job and would prioritise installing an OCOG chief executive.

Outgoing AFL boss Gillon McLachlan has been tipped for the role and is highly regarded by Ms Palaszczuk after they co-operated closely when the league relocated clubs to Queensland during Covid.

Mr Liveris would not be drawn on whether Mr McLachlan had been approached about the role.

On the connections he hoped to leverage, Mr Liveris said: “I want to bring them to the country so we can learn the better ways that are available internationally. That’s not to say we are importing something better than us, but because … we can become better ourselves.”