Save Victoria Park Letter to Ian Thorpe

Save Victoria Park wrote the following letter to Ian Thorpe in response to his comments featured in the Brisbane Times article “Olympians sound alarm over Brisbane 2032 venues as government stands firm” on 16 April 2026.

Dear Mr Thorpe,

I am writing to you on behalf of “Save Victoria Park Inc” advocacy group in Brisbane, regarding the proposed National Aquatic Centre and main stadium planned for Victoria Park Barrambin as part of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games.

I recently read your comments about the proposed National Aquatic Centre, and I wanted to say at the outset that many of us would agree with the substance of what you are saying. Of course Olympic athletes need fit-for-purpose venues. Of course Brisbane should learn from past mistakes. And of course major sporting infrastructure should be designed with both elite competition and post-Games community use in mind. Those are sensible principles and no one who cares about sport would dismiss them.

But where many of us part ways with the current plan is on location.

Victoria Park Barrambin is not a blank canvas waiting for Olympic infrastructure. It is Brisbane’s largest inner-city green space, a heritage-listed public park, and a place of deep and ongoing First Nations cultural significance. It is also a rare breathing space in an increasingly dense city - a place used every day by walkers, families, hospital visitors, students, wildlife carers, cyclists and the broader community. If you have only seen the glossy renderings, you may not have been shown what the place actually is: a highly undulating landscape of hills, gullies, water bodies, old trees and layered histories that cannot simply be cleared, flattened and rebuilt somewhere else.

The current plan is not just for an aquatic venue. It is for a massive Olympic sports precinct spread across both sides of the park, which has been divided in days past by a railway line and a road.  

The National Aquatic Centre and precinct is on the Spring Hill side, which contains the iconic and heritage-listed Centenary Pool.  This complex is very busy: it is used constantly by swim clubs and exercise groups, by school and Olympic athletes training and by a large number of learn-to-swim groups.  It is a thriving community accessing great open-air facilities, a very ‘Queensland’ venue.  

The main stadium arena is planned for the heritage-listed Herston side of the park, and will include significant associated infrastructure including a warm-up track. This would fundamentally transform and consume over 70% of one of the very few substantial pieces of green open space left near inner-city Brisbane.

And this is where the issue becomes bigger than whether the pools themselves are well designed. Even if the National Aquatic Centre were technically excellent, Victoria Park Barrambin would still be the wrong place for it. 

A good venue in the wrong location can still be a very bad decision. 

The Spring Hill side of the park is not an isolated development parcel - it forms part of a broader cultural and environmental landscape that is already under immense pressure. 

The Herston side, where the main stadium is planned, sits beside Queensland's largest hospital, health facilities, schools, university campuses and already congested roads. For Brisbane locals, this proposal is not theoretical. We know exactly what this area is like, and how destructive years of major construction and event-day pressures would be.

There is also a profound cultural dimension to this site that should not be overlooked. Victoria Park Barrambin is a significant Aboriginal place, and First Nations elders are currently seeking its protection through formal legal avenues. Applications have been lodged under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act with the Federal Environment Minister, Murray Watt, and those applications are still under evaluation. That process exists for a reason: to consider whether places of particular Aboriginal significance are at risk of injury or desecration and should be protected. The fact that this legal action is underway underscores that Victoria Park Barrambin is not just another development site, but a place with deep cultural meaning that remains contested and unresolved. 

The recent erection of an Aboriginal Goori Tent Embassy in the park is a visible reminder that this is not merely a planning dispute. For many people, this is about protection of Country, cultural continuity, truth-telling and the refusal to allow one of Brisbane’s most significant places to be sacrificed in the name of Olympic infrastructure.

That is why so many people here are distressed by the framing of this proposal. It is often presented as though opposition to building in Victoria Park is somehow opposition to athletes or opposition to good venues. It is not. Save Victoria Park Inc supports properly planned, functional Olympic facilities. What we oppose is placing them in the wrong place - especially when that place is culturally significant, heritage-listed public parkland and especially when alternative approaches and locations exist.

Artists, architects, engineers, planners, environmentalists, local residents and First Nations advocates have all rallied around this issue because they understand what is at stake. Once a place like this is flattened and built over, it is gone forever. You do not get back the landform, the mature trees, the habitat, the public openness or the cultural integrity by adding some limited landscaping around a stadium precinct afterwards.

I appreciate that your role is to advocate for what athletes need, and that you are not the decision-maker on venue siting. But your voice carries immense weight in this country. If you are speaking publicly about what makes a good aquatic venue, I hope you might also consider the equally important question of what makes a good Olympic legacy and whether it is really compatible with destroying one of Brisbane’s most important inner-city legacy parks and cultural landscapes to achieve it.

Brisbane deserves excellent sporting infrastructure. But it also deserves wisdom about where that infrastructure belongs.

Yours sincerely,

Sue Bremner
President
Save Victoria Park Inc.