SPECIAL REPORT: THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE POWER OF SPORT
THE LASTING LEGACY OF THE COMMONWEALTH GAMES IN QUEENSLAND AND BEYOND Ahead of the Commonwealth Games 2022 in Birmingham, the Queensland Sports Minister reflects on hosting the Commonwealth Games Gold Coast in 2018, the lasting impact of sport and the future development opportunities it brings. Many countries are making significant strides to economic and health recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. We know the world still faces ongoing challenges to COVID-19 recovery and other global events, and that’s what makes the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games such an important event. For 54 Commonwealth countries and 18 territories, the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games represent a post-COVID opportunity to unite the Commonwealth on sport’s level playing field. The Commonwealth’s diverse collection of nations make up 30% of the global population and feature different faiths, ethnicities, languages, cultures and traditions. Birmingham’s 2022 Commonwealth Games will bring participating nations together as family in the spirit of goodwill and understanding, as they have every four years since 1930, when Canada hosted the first British Empire Games in Hamilton, Ontario. Queensland is honoured to have hosted the Commonwealth Games twice. The first was the 1982 Brisbane Commonwealth Games and the second was GC2018 on the Gold Coast. Although held 36 years apart, Queensland’s Commonwealth Games have been transformational for both host cities and the State. Years before the 1982 Commonwealth Games, the Lord Mayor of Brisbane at the time surprised many contemporaries with a frank assessment of the Queensland capital as ‘The Boring City’, a sleepy town of no more than one million residents. In the decades since, as the city has embraced many international influences, much has changed in Brisbane, and in Australia. The opening ceremony of the 1982 Commonwealth Games is widely accepted among Queenslanders as the moment Brisbane began its journey from big country town to world city. History remembers Brisbane’s Commonwealth Games for Matilda, the 13-metre-high winking kangaroo that was the 1982 Games’ official mascot. However, Brisbane’s Commonwealth Games legacy runs
far deeper through the region’s DNA as the agent of change that fast-tracked the transformational sporting, transport and cultural infrastructure that a growing Queensland capital, and aspiring world city, needed. The Commonwealth Games legacy has driven two important upgrades of South East Queensland’s urban rail network. The first stage of the network’s Commonwealth Games-inspired electrification opened in 1979, with three further sections of line energised by 1982 and matched by a 60% surge in passenger patronage. Queenslandbuilt electric train sets that had debuted among great fanfare in 1979 were withdrawn from service when New Generation Rollingstock joined the urban network fleet just before the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. The QEII Stadium was the main stadium and opening ceremony venue for the Commonwealth Games in 1982. Now known as the Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre, the venue’s Commonwealth Games legacy lives on as the State’s premier training hub for athletes of all ages, the headquarters of the Queensland Academy of Sport, and a popular entertainment space for touring international musicians. The legacy of Brisbane’s 1982 Commonwealth Games Athletes’ Village has been converted to student accommodation for the neighbouring Griffith University. The Sleeman Centre, incorporating the Brisbane Aquatic Centre and the Chandler Indoor Sport Centre, was built for the 1982 Commonwealth Games. The Anna Meares Velodrome - named in honour of the Queensland-born, Commonwealth and Olympic gold medal-winning track cyclist - was added to The Sleeman Centre in late 2016. The Velodrome and The Sleeman Centre’s Commonwealth Games legacy infrastructure will host Olympic gymnastics, cycling, diving, water polo, artistic swimming, and Paralympic wheelchair basketball and cycling competitions at Brisbane’s 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Hon. Stirling Hinchliffe, MP
is the State Member for Sandgate on Brisbane’s northern bayside and Queensland’s Minister for Tourism, Innovation and Sport and Minister Assisting the Premier on Olympic and Paralympic Sport Engagement. He served in previous Queensland Governments as the Minister for Infrastructure and Planning, Minister for Employment, Skills and Mining, Minister for Transport and the 2018 Commonwealth Games, and Minister for Local Government, Racing and Multicultural Affairs. He was elected to the Queensland Parliament in 2015 and previously served as a Member of Parliament from 2006 until 2012. 128 | The Parliamentarian | 2022: Issue Two | 100 years of publishing