Scrap the stadia, let's have a lean, green Games
All infrastructure projects blow out; the Olympics may be the ultimate fiscal nightmare.
Journalists love a good spill. And in Brisbane the political hacks smell blood.
The move is on, led by those outside of government but within the Labor Party fold (including, per Channel 9 News reports, former Ministers Robert Schwarten and Bob Gibbs), to replace Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
There are myriad reasons why Labor is worried: festering sores such as youth crime and hospital ramping are a threat to the party’s reelection hopes come next October.
But the big issue right now is infrastructure spending, especially infrastructure related to the 2032 Olympic Games.
It’s no secret that it costs lots of money to build the stuff that powers a modern city and state: roads, bridges, schools, hospitals and so on.
Every major project, going back even before Campbell Newman’s notorious tunnels, has overrun its budget. Big time.
With Cross River Rail, it seems like initial estimates were way too low, and there was, and is, no mechanism in place to stop the costs from continuing to escalate wildly.
They may as well have just thought of a number and doubled it. Except that it wouldn’t have been enough.
Now, Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner, who is also facing the electorate next year, has announced [paywalled] that he’s quit the Games delivery body and withdrawn his support for the redevelopment of the Gabba as the main 2032 Olympics and Paralympics venue. Its estimated costs have blown out to a staggeringly large number — and it hasn’t even begun yet.
The State Government also plans to spend a nine-figure sum on “redeveloping” (read: stuffing-up) the uniquely beautiful Exhibition showground to accommodate cricket and AFL games while the Gabba is torn down and rebuilt.
Cr Schrinner took to social media to post an image of the front page of The Sunday Mail, which reported his decision, and declare:
The State Government has completely lost its way on the road to the #Brisbane2032 Games. The Games are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but they’ve become more about over-priced stadiums rather than the promise of vital transport solutions.
I tweeted (Xed?) in response:
I’m going to go further on this. We don’t need a multi-billion Gabba rebuild, nor should we ruin the charm and heritage of the Ekka stadium. If we must host the Olympics, it can be done with mostly existing facilities. Let’s have a “green” Games and save the $$$ for housing.
We know thousands of people are descending on Queensland; we know mortgages are sky-high; we know rents are completely out of hand; we know we have a homelessness problem. We also know we have an uptick in anti-social and criminal behaviour in many places.
We have more things for government to worry about than putting on a show for the rest of the world.
Families are living on the edge while our government fiddles around with what’s looking very much like a vanity project for the premier.
If it were running the show, I’d scrap the Games altogether.
That’s not possible, so I think we should go for the cheapest model, reusing the high-standard venues we already have already — even if, God forbid, that means moving some events to other parts of the state or the nation that can better accommodate them.
We should re-use, recycle, reimagine the Games so they don’t break the bank.
I view with immense skepticism the too-oft-repeated claims that other cities have hugely benefitted, largely in terms of ongoing tourism, from holding the Olympics and Paralympics. Claims that “it’s worth X billion tourist dollars” — are either willfully overstated or simply made up.
Yes, people do visit former Olympics host city Sydney in great numbers. But they’re not going there to see any of the Olympic facilities; they’re going there to see sites that were already in place before 2000, like the Harbour Bridge, Opera House and Bondi Beach.
Yes, constructing Games infrastructure will create work — but so would a huge social housing project, and it would have greater and longer-lasting benefits for the population of the city and the state.
They could also throw in a few million to support tourism businesses focussed on our existing world-class attractions. And to sustain our natural assets.
In terms of long-term tourism, Brisbane’s point of difference is never going to be as a “former Olympics host city”.
But it could be as the city that showed the way and put the people first through the provision of much-needed infrastructure and the careful maintenance of the non-built environment and its heritage assets.
Is it too late for the premier to turn the conversation about the Olympics around? Would the Opposition do things differently?
What do you think?
I’d be happy to see Annastacia toss the games. I doubt that there would be much blowback, other than the LNP counting up how much money has already been wasted. I’d like to see more social housing and more satellite hospitals, both of which are a better, more inclusive use of the “Olympics” funding.