Cost-neutral Games is within reach on the Coast
Having seen the folly of the plan to rebuild The Gabba at eyewatering expense, it is now being suggested that stadiums be built for the Olympics in Brisbane’s Victoria Park. At eye-watering expense. Somehow the cost-neutral Queensland Games has become the high-cost Brisbane Games.
Regional Queenslanders concerned about the attention being lavished on the capital should not feel too left out – it will be no picnic for Brisbanites if their green spaces get encased in concrete for 2032. Yes we’ll all be paying for it in dollar terms, but Brisbane residents would arguably be paying a higher price.
The whole debate, however, remains somewhat baffling.
A cost-neutral, carbon-neutral Queensland Games, as originally promised, remains within easy reach.
As proven in the Commonwealth Games, the Heritage Bank Stadium at Carrara is more than capable of hosting athletics events and impressive opening and closing ceremonies.
And it’s very hard to imagine how Brisbane is going to deliver a swimming arena in as sweet a spot as the Aquatic Centre in Southport, which provided a wonderful backdrop in 2018.
Doing so would, of course, be consistent with what we were always told.
“We already have 85 per cent of the venues at the moment,” then-premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said as recently as February 2021, five months before Queensland was officially named host.
“We don’t have to build huge stadiums that are not going to be used in the future. And this gives us hope and opportunity as we go through our economic recovery and plan for the future.”
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) itself has already clearly endorsed Gold Coast venues as an excellent fallback option.
It did so in its official feasibility assessment of the Queensland bid, released at the same time as Ms Palaszczuk’s February 2021 sound bites about having “85 per cent” of venues already in place.
On page 25 of that document is a “venue masterplan”, listing where main events should take place.
It notes the “proposed competition venue” for athletics is a new Olympic stadium in Brisbane. The IOC itself added the following comment: “Consider using existing Carrara Stadium (40,000) in Gold Coast for athletics”.
Next on the list is the proposed swimming venue, listed as the new Brisbane Arena. And the IOC’s comment? “Consider using the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games 2018 Optus Aquatics Centre instead.”
The document also suggests the Gold Coast Hockey Centre as an alternative to hosting the sport at Ballymore in north Brisbane.
It’s worth noting that no such comments are added for the majority of proposed venues.
The suggestion was also endorsed by a cross-bench group of seven MPs in a letter signed in May.
So why the focus on spending billions of dollars to build new venues or refurbish old ones in Brisbane?
Are we actually in the ridiculous situation that in the middle of a costof-living crisis, the Queensland government – and let’s stress that, it’s the Queensland government, not the Brisbane government – might be contemplating spending billions of dollars so the Gold Coast doesn’t steal the capital’s thunder?
Not everyone on the Gold Coast would necessarily welcome the extra traffic and disruption that hosting athletics and swimming in the city would bring. In that respect, the Commonwealth Games was not kind on locals, something many have not forgotten.
But neither do people here want to see their tax dollars evaporate into a giant hole in the ground in Brisbane. That benefits almost no one in the state.
As Mayor Tom Tate said last year while pushing the case for the Gold Coast: “If you are going to burn dollars left, right and centre, people will look at you with disdain.
“... I say they need to be respectful of taxpayers’ money. We already have a lot of the facilities such as Olympic pools, hockey fields and BMX, to name a few.
“Let’s focus on value-for-money and legacy for the whole of southeast Queensland. After all, this all started out as a southeast Queensland bid.’’ Amen to that.
Oddly enough, the transport solution may actually be in place by 2032 in any case, with the Coomera Connector – already under construction – due to deliver traffic pretty much to the front door of the Heritage Bank Stadium.
Yet all we hear about is more grandiose plans, and more massive spends, for Brisbane.
A cost-neutral, carbon-neutral Queensland Olympics is still more than possible.
It’s the obvious way forward and it’s right under their noses.
SIGN OF THE TIMES
An anonymous message on a northern Gold Coast community group on social media on Monday: “Does anyone know of a safe place to sleep overnight please”.
The worst thing about this? Such queries are now so common that nobody is shocked any more.
In fact, there were multiple helpful replies – from people who already had the experience.