Is the QPAC delay a bad omen?
It takes time to build good infrastructure, but time moves quickly.
I’m a stickler for deadlines. As a journalist, the ability to meet a deadline has been my bread and butter for my entire working life.
Sometimes those deadlines have been unreasonable, but they’ve almost always been met. When I worked on the “stone” — the production floor — of Sydney’s mass-selling afternoon paper, the Daily Mirror, in the mid-1980s, I was told that every minute late to press could cost hundreds of dollars in sales. Far be it for me to deprive Rupert Murdoch of this valuable income, let alone imperil my own employment.
Nowadays, when news can be posted online the minute it happens, deadlines in journalism are moot.
Elsewhere, deadlines seem to be nonexistent or irrelevant because there’s no imperative. If it’s not done today, it’ll be done tomorrow. Maybe.
The construction industry has always been notorious for delays. As Jamie Dunn, the radio presenter who often has his hand up Agro’s rear entrance, once told me when one of his houses was being renovated: “There are only two problems with builders: waiting for them to start the job and waiting for them to finish it.”
It’s the same when it comes to important public infrastructure. Nothing is ever finished on time. And it always ends up being far more expensive than originally intended.
Because of this, it’s no surprise, but it is a disappointment, that the already-much-delayed new theatre at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, which was expected to open this year, won’t be ready to welcome its first audiences until 2026.
Now, despite what I said about having to meet deadlines all my life, I am one of the world’s greatest procrastinators. If it were an Olympic sport — and you may already see where I’m going with this — I could probably get a gold medal in procrastination.
If you really want me to do something, set me a deadline. In you don’t, I’ll have to set one for myself. Otherwise, I’ll just faff about doing unimportant (but enjoyable) stuff instead of doing what I need to do.
This approach has served me well over the years. It’s not only the imperative of finishing the job on time, but also the satisfaction and personal pride in being able to do so, that’s kept me in work and, until relatively recently, in demand.
Back to QPAC. The earlier delays were blamed on “major flooding in 2022, several contractor insolvencies, bad weather and global supply chain issues”. All reasonable excuses, I suppose, and some of them unforeseeable.
The latest delay is, as far as I can gather, the trickiness of putting together the 2400-square-metre facade comprising 217 glass panels. Which, presumably, was in the original design and probably should have been factored in.
My question is: Is this a bad omen for the Olympics and Paralympics?
The Games are due to be held in 2032. That might seem comfortably distant, but is it really? Especially since we’ve hardly started building a thing.
The State Government, Brisbane City and nearby councils, and other involved parties are still arguing the toss over what to build and where.
There’s an election in October and the alternative state government wants a further 100 days after that to “fix the mess”. Unless David Crisafulli could somehow magic up the necessary stadiums and swimming pools, he’d be pushing a tight deadline even further.
All it would take is bad weather, a few contractor insolvencies and some global supply chain difficulties (let alone cost blowouts and a smattering of industrial action) to mess things up to the point where the 2032 Games will be ready for delivery in 2034. Maybe.
I sincerely hope they can get it all together* because I’d hate to think of what’s happened at QPAC as a normalisation of the kind of sloppy practice that has put every major public project well behind time and way over budget.
As well as going for gold at the Olympics, we should be achieving gold standards when it comes to the delivery of infrastructure and services.
On our current track record — Crossrail, anybody? — we’re not even looking at a bronze medal. We wouldn’t even qualify for the finals.
P.S. For a less cynical assessment of the QPAC situation, I recommend you read this article by my friend and former colleague Phil Brown.
*Actually, I’d prefer it if they called the whole thing off and diverted the funds into affordable housing and better public amenities, but it’s too late for that now.
Meh. Until recently, the Olympic host city was announced only seven years prior to the Games in question. We’ve already had a couple years of talkcrastination. Now, we still have eight years, so I’m not going to predict doom just yet. Having said that, we have a housing crisis. Crisis. It’s not a housing shortage, or a housing deficit or a housing challenge. It’s a full-blown solid-gold, fur-lined ocean going crisis. I can’t justify spending a cent on another sports venue or another performing arts space while families are living in cars and under bridges. It’s shameful. Embarrassing.