“For example,the application of six-star ‘green star’ standards,which are quite new and untried,which we anticipate to cost in the order of $211 million to apply.”
Kaiser said those figures had been determined through the preparation of the project’s business case – a process that was ongoing.
Questioning Kaiser,Deputy Opposition Leader Jarrod Bleijie suggested the business case should have pre-empted the cost announcement.
“Surely your department would have done a business case before the announcement of $2.7 billion,learning from the mistakes of the billion-dollar announcement,” he said.
“Why is there a business case being conducted after the fact about the announcement?”
Kaiser replied:“A budget is only a relatively small component of a business case,so the budget was completed and it came in at $2.7 billion for the reasons that I outlined.”
Deputy Premier Steven Miles admitted the original $1 billion figure was rubbery.
“Initially,we had just a few weeks’ time provided by the IOC to complete the host questionnaire,so the information that needed to be prepared for the joint announcement with Prime Minister[Scott] Morrison and the premier was only a few weeks,” he said.
“We sought the best information that was available in those few weeks.”
At the time of the 2021 Gabba announcement,Palaszczuk said:“We are basically doing years and months of work in a very short timeframe to meet the deadlines the IOC has set us.”
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Since then,Miles said,planners had undertaken a much more detailed process,as part of the preparation of the business case.
“It assessed four different options,looked at the pros and cons of each of those options,costed them out,they all came out at between about $2.3 billion and about $3.2 billion,” he said.
“We selected the best option from those four.”
Miles said all were explored in detail before the government settled on the $2.7 billion plan.
“The other three options were costed at roughly the same amount as the option that has been settled upon,but with a far worse outcome,” he said.