Brisbane

I know it's not popular in the online Brisbane community, but I do.

I don't agree with all the specifics about how it's being done (like EBSS being moved outside of its own catchment to make way for a warm-up track), but I think hosting the Games themselves is an amazing privilege. I don't think that everything we do should be in the pursuit of maximum profit, and so the arguments about how it doesn't end up being profitable for many cities don't persuade me. And that's without remembering that Brisbane will be one of the first of the new Olympics intending to be less expensive to run—a claim I'm sceptical will actually bring it into profit, but should at least make it less unprofitable than some of the most notable failures.

We need to have room for things that are just fun and exciting, or things that can bring a collective sense of pride. And there's not much bigger than the Olympics as far as that goes.

Governments can and should do more than one thing, and I think pointing to the Olympics as the excuse for why they're not doing more about housing, or pointing to the housing crisis as a reason we shouldn't host the Olympics, is a pretty lazy approach.

From a purely practical standpoint, hosting the Olympics is also a great way for us to get more funding for important projects in our region. This shouldn't be the case, and we should get the funding we need regardless of whether we have the Olympics or not. But realistically that's unfortunately just not how it works, and we can use the fact that we're hosting the Olympics as a way to push for some much-needed improvements. Including, I hope, more decisive and wide-sweeping action on housing.

I'm just a bit peeved that the triathlon is gonna be down the Gold Coast. Gold Coast doesn't even have an annual Olympic-distance triathlon. Mooloolaba or Noosa would be so great as hosts.