Brisbane 2032 on track but with little wiggle room seven years out

BRISBANE :Andrew Liveris is happy with the progress organisers of the 2032 Brisbane Olympics have made so far but concedes they will have little wiggle room if they experience delays while implementing the plans they have been working on for the last three years.

The opening ceremony of Australia's third Summer Games will take place exactly seven years from Wednesday, the same period of time that most host cities in the modern era have had from winning the bid to staging the Olympics.

Under the International Olympic Committee's New Norm policy, however, Brisbane won hosting rights in 2021 only for political wrangling over the venues to delay the decision on the final plans until March this year.

"The venues got a lot of noise," Liveris, president of the Brisbane Organising Committee for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, told Reuters this week.

"The political body was disagreeing on a couple of very big ones and that didn't help, but they got that out of the way and frankly, seven years to go, we have our plans, and I'm happy with where we are ...

"Seven years is enough time, but we don't have a lot of wiggle room."

Liveris is cautious about what impact global economic changes and trends over the next few years might have on the budgets and timelines for the main venue construction projects.

"With 84 per cent of our venues being existing or temporary, we're mostly in good shape," he added. "But the 16 per cent includes the stadium, includes the aquatic centre, it includes a few very important venues. That would be the biggest challenge we have."

There was little evidence around the city this week that the world's biggest sporting event was coming to southeast Queensland in seven years' time.

At the Centenary Pool,