Let’s use Games to change future

THE Games are ours. We’ve won them, so let’s now use them.

The International Olympic Committee has bestowed on Queensland a once in a lifetime opportunity to reimagine our future, and leverage the biggest event in the world to make it a reality.

If we’re ever going to be given a licence to think big, this is it. So, whatever else we do, let’s not waste the opportunity. We’re all Australians, Queenslanders no less, and so many of us are sports nuts. But don’t fool yourself into thinking this is about two weeks of sport, 11 years from now. No matter how scintillating the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games shall be – and they will be – this opportunity is less about the Games and more about us; it’s not about hosting the world so much as defining our place in it.

If your first thought, upon hearing the news that we’re to host the 2032 Games, was about what sporting event might be played in your local area, you’re thinking too narrowly. If your first thought was how the Games might trigger action to fix a tired old road or stretch of rail, you’re thinking too short term. If your first thought was whether the Gabba might be renovated, you’re thinking too small.

All of these issues are important and will be addressed in due course. But, the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games is about far more than sport, fixing tired infrastructure or renovating stadiums. Hosting the 2032 Games is key to unlocking our future, but only if we’re prepared to use it.

The starting point is to look over the horizon, well beyond

2032, towards mid-century. With unabashed ambition, we should envisage our future as a state and ask – what do we want to be famous for?

This is not some airy-fairy esoteric question for marketing boffins, but a strategic challenge for all Queenslanders to reflect on: from Brisbane to Bowen, from Kingaroy to Cooktown, from Weipa to Winton. Reimagining our future in, say, the year 2050, allows the Olympic and Paralympic Games to be seen through a different strategic lens. The 2032 Games is not our final destination, but rather an enabler to help deliver a longer term vision and an important milestone along the way.

Tomorrow will be the Opening Ceremony for the Tokyo Games. Paris will play host in 2024 and then it’s Los Angeles’ turn in 2028. Compared to these tier one global cities, Brisbane and Queensland are relatively unknown.

This isn’t a criticism, but a dream circumstance. We almost have a blank canvas upon which we can envisage our future and sell it to the world. You can’t pay for this sort of opportunity.

If you look to recent Olympic history, Barcelona is a good example of a host city that used the Games as a tool of transformation for its image and infrastructure, catapulting the city to become one of the most visited in Europe.

But, we need to think bigger and bolder than even Barcelona. We need to leverage ‘Brisbane-2032’ to transform not just Brisbane City and the south-east corner, but the entire state of Queensland.

This is no small feat but it’s doable, and it requires the right frame of mind from the outset.

Our Games are to be the people’s Games and that means becoming a vehicle for transformation across the entire state, not an excuse to fix outdated infrastructure in Brisbane or to rebadge businessas-usual road and rail upgrades under an new Olympic banner.

What I’m proposing is adopting a big picture approach where the 2032 Games is an enabler to a longer term plan for Queensland’s future.

Congratulations Queensland. Now that we’ve secured the rights to host the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, it’s incumbent on all of us, all Queenslanders, to seize this opportunity and make this great state of ours even greater.

TED O’BRIEN IS MP FOR FAIRFAX, AND THE PM’S REPRESENTATIVE IN THE LEADERSHIP GROUP FOR THE 2032 OLYMPIC BID