Queensland’s Olympic review misses the target

While new Queensland Premier Steven Miles should be congratulated for appointing an “independent review” into the proposed 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games’ venues concerning their “value for money, fitness of purpose, deliverability and community legacy,” its rigour must be immediately questioned.

For instance, the Review is only looking at proposed infrastructure it is not an assessment of the Olympics’ overall costs and benefits to Queensland and especially for Brisbane.

Although its chair, Graham Quirk, is not a Labor crony, being a former successful Liberal Brisbane City Council Lord Mayor (2015-2019), he nevertheless has been a long-term advocate of the Olympic Games. Other review members include a former senior NSW public servant now consultant with infrastructure experience and a management consultant whose firm specialises in sporting events. There does not appear to have a member with clear economic expertise.

Indeed, it is unclear who is providing the secretariat and research support for the review – parts of the self-interested tourism bureaucracy, the discredited Queensland Treasury or is some outside team being brought in to assist? After all, it is the inquiry secretariats which do the necessary research, collect and sift the evidence and help prepare the report.

Further, the review’s timeframe of 60 days is very short if there is to be anything like genuine community consultation. It is unclear to date if there is to be open public hearings or roundtable discussions or is this review, like so much in Queensland, to be conducted behind closed doors?

Although a final report will be publicly released, more importantly is the evidence on which it is based, also going to be released as is best practice with public inquiries?

What makes the Queensland Government’s motivation in appointing this Review suspect is that previously it argued that its decisions about the Olympic Games and infrastructure were based on “expert advice” from its public service.

So, does that the appointment of this Review mean that such advice was wrong or deficient? Or did it just reflect the very problem the 2022 Coaldrake Inquiry into Integrity identified that Queensland’s politicised public service just gives the advice government wants to hear rather than the advice it needs to hear?

The appointment of this ad hoc, temporary, review with limited economic expertise highlights a glaring gap in Queensland’s system of public administration. Since the Palaszczuk Government abolished in 2021 the Queensland Productivity Commission Queensland, Queensland lacks an independent, economically competent body of experts to inform the electorate about the real cost and benefits of events like the Olympics.

Consequently, in Queensland there is no-one to speak truth to the people – to tell us the real facts and figures. Instead, we have to rely on ministerial statements and related spin generated by the government’s media units.

Re-establishing a properly constitute, independent Productivity Commission should be a priority for the Liberal National Party Opposition should in win office later this year.    

And despite Queensland Government’s denials that there will be no interference, is not this Review just a fig leaf to justify the dumping the former Premier’s controversial and increasingly unpopular $2.7 billion Gabba sports stadium expansion?

This Review is more about getting rid of a political barnacle and embarrassment in an election year than about a thorough reassessment of an event eight years hence.

What is really needed is a proper, independent cost-benefit review of the whole Brisbane Olympic Games proposal so that if it does proceed we go into to it with eyes wide open and proper processes in place rather than just wishful thinking that all would be well.

After all, the record of these ever expanding and expensive sporting extravaganzas is poor.

Most recent Olympic Games have run at huge losses exceeding original estimates, leaving cities and governments, sometimes bankrupt and with purpose-built infrastructure of often little lasting practical value. Between 1960 to 2016 the average cost overruns for the Games was 156 per cent.

Promises that Olympic Games are economic bonanzas do not hold up. Look at the results from Montreal in 1976 to Athens, London, Sydney and most recently Tokyo.

And let’s not forget all the disruptions, road closures, traffic delays, pollution, and inevitable enforced relocations of families during the preparation of the Games that Brisbane citizens will have to endure.

Most importantly, events the size and complexity of the modern Olympics distract the government’s attention from its prime responsibility of running the state – providing key services like maternity wards across the regions, bringing Queensland’s poorly performing education and health systems up to scratch, tackling our future energy and water problems, ensuring our forensic testing services work effectively and reducing juvenile crime.

More would also be achieved for the health and well-being of Queenslanders if some of the energy and resources now being invested in the Olympic Games was diverted into community health programs and tackling head on major, preventable threats to health like diabetes.