CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The Queensland Labor government are still pulling teeth over this weird decision pandemic-era decision to host the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane.
With 7 years to go, and not one shovel breaking ground, the only thing that has been confirmed is these games will be not be held in a brand-new stadium.
As the window to actually give the inner-city a much needed face lift begins closing, the entire state of Queensland is now sweating over the very real possibility of embarrassing themselves on the world stage after a dream run of Rio, Tokyo, Paris and LA.
The opposition leader, David Crisafulli MP, has broken his own party’s radio silence regarding their own Olympics development plan – giving not much more than the promise that there will be NO new stadium.
However, he has also ruled out cancelling the Games. So basically, if elected later this year, his party are still going to have to spend billions of dollars on this fucking thing. Just with less time at their disposal.
Realistically we only have 6 years to go. And in the current labour market, the average house build can take longer than 6 years.
Let alone the running tracks, indoor sporting facilities, transport infrastructure and nightlife precincts that Brisbane desperately needs with or without an Olympics in 2032.
But in true LNP fashion, the stalling and undermining of Premier Steven Miles is the priority right now. Even if it means making life harder for themselves in the future.
That means the multi-billion dollar plan to revamp the extremely clunky Victoria Park and RNA showgrounds, which was recommended by Graham Quirk on Monday is dead in the water. Regardless of who who wins the October election.
A Gabba rebuild is also dead in the water – because a half-acre primary school with 100 students seems to have some very noisy parents running PR for them.
Crisafulli has thankfully also rubbished the shittest plan of them all, which is to invite the world to QSAAC stadium in the city’s inaccessible outer-metropolitan fringe.
But it seems he also doesn’t like the Hamilton North Shore plan.
The LNP will unveil their own shitty Olympics plan if they can get elected by running down every other proposal that the current government puts forward. The election is in late October, so the contracts won’t really be signed until midway through 2025. After all of the red-tape and compulsory acquisitions of existing properties, that should give us a good 4 years.
Queensland waits with baited breath to see how many more billion of dollars the LNP will be spending in this particular timeline.
