Last protesters cleared from Victoria Park ahead of stadium construction | ABC NEWS

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]Construction of a 63,000 seat Olympic Stadium is set to begin in Brisbane today after police removed protesters in the middle of the night. The protest camp in Victoria Park was disbanded by officers with the 2032 Olympic Games Infrastructure Authority taking control of the site for the $3.6 billion project.

[00:00:20]Let's get more on this. I'm joined now by our reporter Lucy Lorriman who's at Victoria Park there.

[00:00:26]Lucy, what's happened there overnight?

[00:00:29]>> Well, as you can see, there's a bit of a police presence here behind me at Victoria Park and that's because last night at midnight the Games Independent Infrastructure Committee took over the land here at Victoria Park. We understand it was about an hour later that those last remaining protesters were approached and moved on putting an end to weeks worth of demonstrations here at Victoria Park to try and preserve this site's cultural significance. Now, police told us there was no arrests made last night. Nobody was charged, but emotions were still of course high here.

[00:01:12]It came after protests earlier in the day on Sunday.

[00:01:17]Some 400 people marched through Victoria Park.

[00:01:22]They went along up the street behind me and down across the greens for what, you know, is realistically the last time they will be able to do so as as well as members of the public as this site has certainly been fenced off today. We saw some protests on Friday as well.

[00:01:41]Tensions there boiled over during confrontations between those protesters and police. Now, despite these ongoing efforts, the state government insists that construction will go ahead. We understand the Premier David Crisafulli is still inside there at Victoria Park now, but we did catch up with him earlier at Parliament House. Here's a bit about what he had to say off the back of these recent occurrences.

[00:02:10]>> Everyone's got the right for a democratic expression of their views.

[00:02:13]The the difference in this case is it is going to be a construction site, so it's not safe for them. It's not safe for the workers and that's the reason why the fence has been put around there, but they're free to express their views outside of that.

[00:02:27]>> So Lucy, when will construction begin?

[00:02:31]>> Well Gemma, it can really begin anytime from today. We were here earlier this morning as well as the heavy police present presence. Giga employees were on site. We've seen those fences well and truly be put up over the past few days, but when you know, soil or sod will be turned remains unclear at this point.

[00:02:54]Yesterday we heard from Senator Murray Watt, who said he had received 10 applications under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act to try and stop works here. He told us yesterday that two of those applications had been knocked back yesterday. Several had been knocked back in the past. We believe there's three that are outstanding, but that act doesn't carry stop work powers, so construction can still forge ahead despite these ongoing protests like the ones you can sort of see gathering behind me this morning.