‘Brisbane is not a hillbilly town’: Olympics boss says 2032 Games are ahead of schedule

Brisbane 2032 president Andrew Liveris, armed with a new marketing slogan but still no plan for where the opening ceremony or athletics will be staged eight years from now, has declared his Games ahead of schedule.

Seeking to reassure Olympic stakeholders in Paris that Brisbane has not squandered the additional time it was given to plan and prepare its Games, the former Dow Chemical chairman backed his city’s capacity to follow Paris and Los Angeles in delivering a spectacular Olympics.

Brisbane 2032 president Andrew Liveris addresses international media in Paris.Credit: Getty Images

“I am confident that we will deliver,” he said. “We are a nation that can deliver this very well.

“Brisbane is not a hillbilly town.”

Addressing the floor of the International Olympic Committee session alongside Kirsty Coventry, chair of the IOC’s co-ordination commission for Brisbane, Liveris provided no further information about the venues Brisbane plans to build to stage centrepiece Olympic events.

Instead, he announced that Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate had been added to the Brisbane organising committee; that tenders for 15 smaller venues would go to market by the end of the year; and that his committee had settled on a three-word “brand positioning statement”: Shine brightest. Together.

“I am very proud of that,” he later told journalists. “I think it adds a lot, the three words. Even the period means something.”

Brisabne 2032 president Andrew Liveris (right) and spokeswoman Rebecca Masci in Paris.Credit: Getty Images

With the Queensland state election three months away, big decisions on the future shape of the Brisbane Olympics have been placed in limbo until after the next government is sworn in.

Liveris told the IOC the Queensland government had commissioned an independent review (led by former Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk) of the proposed venues for Brisbane 2032. Following its findings, a new statutory body, the Games Venue and Legacy Delivery Authority, had been established to manage major capital works associated with the Olympics.

At the press conference, he rejected as “noise” media consternation about the Games.

“We are ahead of schedule,” he said. “I know that doesn’t get reported very often, but we are.”

Coventry, a Zimbabwean Olympian who previously chaired the IOC’s athletes’ commission, gave Liveris’ organising committee a solid review.

“Brisbane 2032 continues to take foundational steps to ensure a successful and memorable Games in eight years’ time, making the most of the extended runway they have,” she told the IOC.

There was no indication during the IOC session – an annual meeting of all members – that the global governing body for the Olympics holds serious concerns about the pace of Brisbane’s preparations.

Liveris received only one question from the floor. That related to athlete engagement.

He said Australia had a strong record of staging major sporting events and that visitors would remember Brisbane for its people, rather than the design of its stadiums.

An artist’s image of how a redeveloped QSAC would look at the Brisbane Games.Credit: RTI - Queensland Government

“We will put on our own opening ceremony that will show us off in the best possible light. That I am confident about.

“Our sporting events, people remember them. Why do they remember them? Not because of the pizazz of the stadium, but because of the interaction with us.”

Liveris is leading a large Brisbane delegation in Paris and will spend the next two weeks meeting stakeholders and potential sponsors and observing how Paris 2024 delivers its seven-year project.

Brisbane is the first host city to be able to learn lessons from two Olympic Games before it stages its own.

The city was awarded the hosting rights for the 2032 Games three years ago on the eve of the Tokyo Games. Its organising committee is battling public perceptions that it has wasted much of the additional time it was given to plan and prepare.

Liveris rejects this narrative and took personal responsibility for ensuring the Games are delivered on time, on budget and with a distinct Queensland flavour.

“I am not concerned about the capacity build in Brisbane,” he said. “I have built a lot of big projects in my time and I know how to project build.”

He said a final decision on which venue to use as the main Olympic stadium would be made after a cost-benefit analysis of a proposed redevelopment of the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre, built for the 1982 Commonwealth Games.

Liveris said three possibilities were still in play: a redeveloped QSAC or Suncorp Stadium, or a refurbished Gabba. He called for local political squabbling over the decision to cease.

“I really ask to stop making the Olympics a political football. This is a gift. Let’s get the enthusiasm for what we have been given right, and then whatever is happening on venues, we will deliver.”

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