Miles rejects Victoria Park stadium plan, dusts off Commonwealth Games venue instead

The Queensland government has sensationally rejected the signature recommendation of its specially commissioned Olympic venue review panel to build a new stadium in Brisbane.

Instead of building a $3.4 billion, 55,000-seat Olympic stadium on the site of an old golf course at Victoria Park in Brisbane’s inner-north, Premier Steven Miles has chosen to spend $1.6 billion dusting off the old QEII Stadium at Nathan in the city’s south.

This will save taxpayers money but leave a lasting legacy of just 14,000 seats.

Former Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk led a 60-day review into Olympic venues, commissioned after former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s planned $2.7 billion Gabba rebuild received significant public opposition.

The review, formally released on Monday morning, recommended the Gabba be demolished once a new stadium at Victoria Park was operational.

But within hours Miles had rejected that recommendation.

“I ordered this review because I had heard from Queenslanders that $2.7 billion at the Gabba was too much,” Miles said.

QSAC has sat mostly empty since 2003, when it was still called ANZ Stadium.Credit: Google Earth

“I know that for Queenslanders $3.4 billion at Victoria Park will be too much, so I’m ruling that out.”

Miles said the Gabba would be saved, and host Olympic cricket, however the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre at Nathan would be upgraded to host the Olympic athletics.

Suncorp Stadium will also be refurbished and host the opening and closing ceremonies.

“I know that I said I’d do what the Quirk review recommended, but I cannot support the option that they have landed on,” he said.

“I cannot support building a brand new stadium while Queenslanders are doing it as tough as I know that they are.”

The Quirk review found QSAC, known as QEII Stadium for the 1982 Commonwealth Games and ANZ Stadium when the Brisbane Broncos called it home, would only hold 40,000 people in temporary stands, with the stadium reverting to a 14,000-seat athletics venue post-Games.

Quirk had said rebuilding QSAC would be a waste of money, as the legacy benefits for the southside venue were “virtually nil”.

“As far as the QSAC site is concerned, we just don’t see, after spending around 1½ billion dollars, any significant legacy benefit to the people of Queensland,” he said.

The Graham Quirk-led review into Olympic venues was released on Monday.Credit: Cameron Atfield

In making the case for Victoria Park, Quirk said the Gabba would have to be rebuilt anyway, and the site – landlocked on a single inner-city block – would not allow for a quality venue to ever be built.

“The Gabba will reach the end of its life by 2030,” he said.

“Now, even if you keep it going beyond that date with some upgrades, at some stage, the Gabba is going to need to be replaced and it is never going to be a tier-one stadium because of the limitation of space.”

Quirk said Victoria Park would be a tier-one, 55,000-seat stadium, with the ability to attract prime events to the city.

“I’ve heard people say we should build an 80,000- or 90,000-seat stadium, but our view was you’re starting to then get into the white elephant stage … it sits empty there the other times of the year,” he said.

The review found transport to QSAC was also “extremely challenging” and costly.

“One of the great attractions of the Victoria Park site is that you not only have Cross River Rail and the Exhibition station, which is just about complete, you’ve also got Brisbane Metro stations at Herston, Kelvin Grove and Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital,” Quirk said.

“You’ve also got significant car parking opportunity at the RNA Showgrounds, so these were things in terms of accessibility that were very important to us.

“We had the Department of Main Roads and Transport look at it to see if it could work and while it’s early days – I mean, we’ve had 60 days for this review – their findings are positive.”

Quirk said the $3.4 billion cost was in line with other stadiums built in Australia, such as the new Optus Stadium in Perth, and around the world.

“You can show me examples of stadiums that have come in at a lower price, but they haven’t included all of the costs,” he said.

“The actual construction of a stadium itself, in terms of the design and construct, is going to be probably under $2 billion for the Victoria Park Stadium.

“But there are a lot of other add-on costs and you have to, to be fair, add in a significant risk component because of the escalating prices that we’re seeing.”

While the QSAC option would be about $1.8 billion cheaper than Victoria Park, the Quirk review found the Gabba would need a $1 billion investment to bring it up to code if it were to remain operational beyond 2032.

So, if Brisbane were to retain an oval stadium for cricket and AFL, the total cost of QSAC and the Gabba would be $2.6 billion – just $800 million shy of a new Victoria Park stadium – and Brisbane would have no tangible legacy from either, according to the Quirk report.

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