Mayor Paul Antonio hits back at John Wagner over Toowoomba council’s Olympic support

Is council “asleep at the wheel” when it comes to securing Olympic events for Toowoomba? Mayor Paul Antonio has responded to John Wagner’s criticisms.

Toowoomba Mayor Paul Antonio; Wagner Corporation's John Wagner.

Toowoomba Mayor Paul Antonio has hit back at comments by a powerful businessman, who said the council weren’t doing enough to secure Olympic events for the city.

Wagner Corporation’s John Wagner made the explosive claim at The Chronicle’s Future Toowoomba luncheon on Friday, arguing the council were “asleep at the wheel”.

Neither the mayor, councillors or the organisation’s top bureaucrats were at the luncheon, something Mr Wagner pointed out while on a panel discussing Toowoomba’s 2032 Olympic opportunities and obstacles.

“They absolutely have a role to play, but they actually need to show some leadership,” he said.

“Today was an example of them being asleep at the wheel — not one councillor has bothered to come here.”

Mr Wagner also slammed current political leaders for a lack of “vision” around legacy infrastructure.

Mr Antonio, who said he had prior engagements, defended the council’s handling of the Olympics.

He said it was the council which had commissioned the report currently being completed by Toowoomba and Surat Basin Enteprise’s Mark Mason into the city’s Olympic opportunities.

“The journey is only just beginning and we certainly are heavily engaged and have engaged our subsidiary in TSBE to do work for us,” he said.

“The first step is to get the whole community involved, so we can interpret the outcomes of the study and in the new year, we’ll go hard for what we can get for Toowoomba.

“We’re certainly not asleep at the wheel — we recently had the CEO of the Australian Olympic Committee here, Matt Carroll.

“We then had a dinner with Mr Carroll that included our local MPs, the Wagner family, Clive Berghofer, TSBE and Chamber of Commerce.”

Mr Antonio said he would be pushing to secure a new stadium for Toowoomba as a legacy project, as well as key infrastructure like passenger rail.

“The State Government is looking at providing us with a significant stadium, which would be wonderful,” he said.

“We’ve got land at Charlton that’s part of our vision and dream to provide a regional sporting facility.

“There are many different propositions, but the key thing is we get that stadium, not too far from the CBD.”