East Brisbane community leaders are quietly confident the $2.7bn plan to demolish and rebuild Brisbane’s Gabba stadium will not go ahead, after Olympics bosses withdrew support for the plan.
On Tuesday, a delegation including International Olympic Committee vice-president John Coates told the Queensland government’s review of games infrastructure that the rebuild had become a “distraction” and risked turning people against the Games. They recommended using other venues instead, including Suncorp Stadium for the opening and closing ceremonies and the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre in Nathan for athletics.
In one of his first acts in the role, the premier, Steven Miles, paused the Gabba rebuild plan and in January ordered a review by former Brisbane mayor Graham Quirk.
In a statement on Thursday, the Brisbane 2032 organising committee president, Andrew Liveris, declared Coates’ views “should be listened to very carefully”.
“I lament the loss of time, and the distraction that has taken a little away from the amazing accomplishment of winning these games,” Liveris said.
“We need to move forward post haste after this independent review is completed. We need to not re-litigate every decision on venues and infrastructure.”
The $2.7bn rebuild of the cricket and AFL stadium – the world’s third-most expensive stadium project – was to be met entirely by the state taxpayer. It would also require the demolition of a neighbouring heritage-listed primary school and the use of a nearby park for an athletics warmup track.
Melissa Occhipinti, from Rethink the Gabba said it was heartening to see momentum shifting against the stadium knock-down plan.
“To have [Coates] come out this morning and actually support all of the recommendations we’ve been putting to government for the last three years has been quite extraordinary,” she said.
The president of the East Brisbane state school parents and citizens association, Austin Gibbs, said they were quietly hopeful of a reprieve, but would await the final review.
“We’re very hopeful that whatever happens to the Gabba is not a complete knock down and rebuild, and instead is something more modest, that will incorporate a design that involves leaving the school where it is,” he said.
“That’s certainly the hope and [there is] cautious optimism among the community that that is where it’s headed.”
Ted O’Brien, the former Morrison government special envoy for the Olympics said the state government had “nearly killed” the city’s bid for the games when it “blind-sided” everyone with the Gabba proposal.
“It flew in the face of everything we were pitching to the IOC about avoiding a big spend on venues and it also broke faith with the people of Queensland who had been assured the 2032 Games would not become a spendathon with taxpayer money,” he said.
“Ever since, venue decisions such as the Gabba have failed any genuine public consultation process and instead they’ve been made in-house on a “government knows best” principle, in the offices of Anastacia Palaszczuk and Steven Miles.”
The Australian Olympic Committee CEO, Matt Carroll, told a Senate inquiry last year that the Gabba rebuild was not required by Olympics organising bodies in order to hold the games. Instead he said the reconstruction was for its day-to-day use as an AFL and cricket ground.
The Quirk review is set to make its recommendations to the state government on 18 March.
The state infrastructure minister, Grace Grace, said the views of Liveris and Coates would be taken on board, but she didn’t want to pre-empt the review by declaring the Gabba rebuild dead.
“We want to deliver legacy outcomes, transport and all those legacy fantastic projects that we’ve got on the list already, but we also have to deliver venues,” she said.
“And … if there’s a better way of doing it as a minister, I’m more than happy to plough ahead and deliver them along those lines.”
