Seven years to plan, design and build Brisbane’s Olympics centrepiece
With only seven years until the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games, will Queensland have enough time to plan, design and build its showpiece 63,000-seat Victoria Park stadium?
Queensland will have enough time to plan, design and build its showpiece Brisbane Olympic Stadium at Victoria Park in the seven years until the 2032 Games, the state government insists, despite Western Australia’s Optus Stadium opening a decade after inception.
Premier David Crisafulli unashamedly broke an election promise in March when he declared the state would build a new main stadium at the inner-city parkland site to serve as the centrepiece of the Brisbane Olympics and the future home of AFL and Test cricket.
Forecast to cost $3.785bn – not including the cost of associated public transport or the surrounding precinct – the stadium will be designed to seat 63,000 spectators.
But seven years out from the Games, Mr Crisafulli conceded the government had not appointed an architect or a builder, nor engaged engineers to test whether the bedrock at the site would be too tough to excavate.
Optus Stadium in Perth seats 60,000 people for AFL games and has the capacity for an additional 5000 drop-in seats for sports played on a rectangular pitch.
The multipurpose stadium officially opened in 2018, 11 years after WA’s Major Stadia Taskforce recommended the development of a 60,000-seat outdoor stadium.
Asked whether Queensland had enough time to plan, design and build the Brisbane Stadium given the WA precedent, Mr Crisafulli said it would be done in time.
“We can, and I want Queenslanders to believe that we can … and we are planning to make sure that we deliver something world class,” he said.
He defended the fact the state had not yet locked in an architect or a builder, saying legislation had only just been passed to empower the Games authority and the government to subvert existing planning laws to fast-track new Olympic venues.
“We are full-steam ahead and we will share with you every milestone,” Mr Crisafulli said. “We have a deadline and we have to build it by that deadline, and we will.”
Significant capital expenditure for infrastructure needed for the Olympics will be included in next week’s budget, Treasurer David Janetzki confirmed.
“There will in the budget be a significant investment into the infrastructure that sits outside of that ($7.1bn Olympic venues) funding envelope,” Mr Janetzki said.
He declined to say whether or how specific Olympic venues would receive funding in the budget.
The news comes just days after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese indicated it made financial sense to scrap plans to host the Olympic rowing in Rockhampton’s crocodile-inhabited Fitzroy River and instead use the existing Sydney Olympics venue.
“There’s a bit of a debate going on at the moment over the Olympics. We’ll wait and see where that goes. I’ve been meeting with (Brisbane 2032 organising committee president) Andrew Liveris, as well as with Queensland Premier Crisafulli, about where it goes,” Mr Albanese told the Two Good Sports podcast.
“For example, are we really going to do rowing in Rockhampton on the Fitzroy River, when there are some pretty good facilities at Penrith?”
Mr Crisafulli and Mr Albanese are still thrashing out details of the Olympic venues before the two governments agree to re-sign the intergovernmental deal that guaranteed $3.435bn in federal funding for Games infrastructure, part of the overall $7.1bn venues budget.
The previous iteration of the deal tied $2.5bn of commonwealth cash to building the Brisbane Arena, which was to host the Olympic swimming, before that plan was axed by the Queensland government in March.
On Sunday, Mr Crisafulli said while he would negotiate with Mr Albanese with “respect and decency”, he wanted Olympic sports held in Queensland.
“It’s a Queensland Games and we want all of Queensland to benefit from it,” he said.
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