‘The Fix Is In’: Barrambin and Government by Exception
How Queensland rewrote ordinary safeguards for Olympic development — and how the Commonwealth environmental process failed to restore the scrutiny removed at state level.
In April 2026 I called my analysis of the proposed stadium at Barrambin / Victoria Park The Fix Is In. The title was deliberately provocative. Four months later, I would formulate the argument somewhat differently — and more seriously.
What happened at Barrambin was not simply a questionable environmental decision. It was an exercise in government by exception.
Over decades, planning law, environmental law, heritage protection, public consultation and mechanisms of review have developed precisely because major projects affect interests far beyond those of the government that wants to build them. Such processes are inconvenient by design. They require governments and proponents to disclose, consult, justify, modify and sometimes abandon what they would otherwise prefer to do.
At Barrambin, inconvenience increasingly came to be treated as obstruction.
The Queensland Government did not simply argue its case within the ordinary system. It changed the system. Games infrastructure was placed within a special statutory pathway in which specified development, use and activity is expressly taken to be lawful despite fifteen Queensland Acts, including the Environmental Protection Act 1994, the Planning Act 2016, the Queensland Heritage Act 1992 and the Nature Conservation Act 1992. The same legislation created an alternative process for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural heritage management and prevents stop orders under the cultural heritage Acts once the Games process is engaged.1
The government's own political language was explicit. In February 2026 it described further Games amendments as measures to “accelerate planning and delivery” and to ensure “streamlined approvals and faster delivery”.2
The strongest criticism is not that Queensland secretly broke its own laws. It legislated so that important parts of the ordinary law would cease to stand in its way.
Barrambin therefore raises a larger democratic question than whether one stadium should have received one particular environmental approval:
What becomes of public safeguards when the government responsible for observing them also possesses the parliamentary power to remove or narrow them whenever they obstruct a project it has already decided must proceed?
1. The decision came first; the regulatory pathway was reorganised around delivery
The public argument around Barrambin often became trapped in a narrow question: stadium or no stadium. That misses the institutional point.
The deeper issue is what happens after government has made a politically decisive commitment to a project and then confronts legal and procedural structures designed to test that commitment.
Queensland's Games legislation made the priority clear. The statutory authority charged with delivery is required to deliver its venues in time for Brisbane 2032. The legislation then created special rules for Games development that displaced or modified ordinary planning, environmental, heritage and cultural heritage mechanisms.1
In February 2026, further amendments resolved the tenure arrangements needed to give the Games Independent Infrastructure and Coordination Authority access to Victoria Park. In an official parliamentary answer, the government stated that GIICA required access from 1 June, that the existing tenure arrangements needed to be resolved before then, and that GIICA would hold the land on behalf of the State so that it could “efficiently deliver Games infrastructure”.3
The government was entitled to make a political case for speed. Olympic deadlines are real. But urgency is not neutral. When the state defines delay itself as failure, every independent process capable of saying wait, consult further, assess more deeply or do not proceed here begins to look like an obstacle to delivery.
That is why the phrase government by exception matters. The exception does not necessarily abolish law. It changes which law applies, what questions can be asked, who can intervene and how much practical power consultation and review retain.
2. The Commonwealth was left as a crucial remaining environmental gate
Once Queensland had narrowed the ordinary state pathway, the federal referral under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 assumed unusual importance.
GIICA referred the Brisbane Stadium, National Aquatic Centre and precinct-related works to the Commonwealth and submitted that the proposal should be treated as not a controlled action. On 5 May 2026, that is the decision the Commonwealth made. The project was found not to require further assessment and approval under the EPBC Act because significant impacts on Matters of National Environmental Significance were considered unlikely.4
That determination does not establish corruption. It does not prove that someone secretly dictated the answer. The later Statement of Reasons is valuable precisely because it allows us to see how the decision was reached within the law.
And what it reveals is, in my view, more important than a conspiracy theory.
The federal system did not restore the broad scrutiny that Queensland had weakened. It applied its own narrower statutory test. The consequences of that narrowing are now visible in the official record.
3. The public objected overwhelmingly — but the law was not a plebiscite
The public response was substantial. The Department received 835 comments on the referral. Of those, 816 said the project should be a controlled action, eight supported a finding that it should not be controlled, and eleven did not specify either outcome. The decision-maker recorded that the public comments were considered.5
Environmental law should not operate by simple vote. Eight hundred and sixteen submissions do not legally outweigh eight because they are numerically larger.
But the comments matter for another reason. They identified concrete problems: the scale of the referred area, uncertainty about tree and habitat loss, impacts on protected species, incomplete design, the character of consultation, Indigenous cultural heritage and the relationship between the project and the whole Barrambin landscape. The Statement of Reasons records many of those concerns in detail.5
The issue, therefore, is not that public participation was literally absent. It is that participation can be formally present while having limited power over the governing trajectory of a project.
4. The 99.5 hectares became part of the official record
One of the most contested points in my April paper concerned the scale of the federal referral.
The Commonwealth's project record describes a site of approximately 99.5 hectares. The later Statement of Reasons records public concern that the referral documentation covered the entirety of Victoria Park / Barrambin while political assurances had referred to a much smaller proportion being occupied by built infrastructure.5
This does not mean that 99.5 hectares will all be concreted or cleared. That would overstate the evidence. The more important fact is that the federal referral had to assess potential effects across the whole referred area at a time when detailed project planning was still incomplete.
The institutional question is straightforward: when a gatekeeping decision determines whether a project needs deeper assessment, what should happen when significant aspects of the final design and environmental management framework remain unsettled?
At Barrambin the answer was not: we need to know more before the project leaves the federal gate.
It was: no further EPBC assessment required.
5. Habitat could be ‘critical to survival’ and still fail the significance threshold
The Grey-headed Flying-fox is perhaps the clearest illustration of how a narrow statutory test can produce a result that surprises ordinary language.
The Statement of Reasons accepted that the proposed action area contains 14.6 hectares of Grey-headed Flying-fox foraging habitat considered to be habitat critical to the survival of the species. It also accepted direct impacts through clearance of that habitat.5
Yet the decision-maker concluded that the impact was unlikely to be legally significant. The reasons included the urban context, the availability of foraging habitat within 25 kilometres, the capacity of flying-foxes to travel considerable distances and the Department's view that the Barrambin resource was low-value in the broader regional context. The 14.6 hectares was calculated as approximately 0.026 per cent of available foraging resources within 25 kilometres.5
So the official finding was not that Barrambin contained no important flying-fox habitat.
It was that habitat formally meeting the definition of critical to the survival of the species could be removed without the effect crossing the EPBC Act's threshold of a likely significant impact.
That distinction is legally coherent. It is also politically and ethically revealing.
6. Threatened plants were present; their provenance reduced their statutory weight
The same pattern appears in the treatment of threatened plant species.
The Statement of Reasons records twenty-two Small-leaved Tamarind individuals within the project area, including eighteen near the BMX track, as well as Macadamia Nut and Rose Apple specimens. Public comments argued that the trees should not simply be discounted because they may have been planted.5
The Commonwealth reasoning was not that the specimens did not exist. It was that the site was unlikely historically to have supported the rainforest habitat in which those species naturally occur, that the specimens were therefore probably planted, and that their removal was unlikely to reduce the species' natural distribution or genetic diversity.5
Again, this is an example of the difference between ordinary environmental value and statutory significance. A mature threatened tree can matter greatly to a place while counting for relatively little in a legal test directed to the survival and distribution of the species as a whole.
7. The environmental management framework was still being promised
My April paper was especially concerned that important environmental safeguards appeared in the referral as management measures that had yet to be developed in detail.
The later Statement of Reasons confirms that there was no specific detail on the location and size of Grey-headed Flying-fox habitat retention or revegetation because planning remained preliminary. It referred instead to proposed measures including a Construction Environmental Management Plan, a Vegetation and Fauna Management Plan and an Erosion and Sediment Control Plan.5
More strikingly, the decision-maker accepted that significant impacts were unlikely even without those mitigation measures in place.5
This is where the April warning survives almost intact. The federal gatekeeping decision occurred before the detailed environmental management framework was complete. The absence of those details did not trigger a fuller assessment. The project instead passed through the gate on the conclusion that the statutory significance threshold was unlikely to be crossed in any event.
8. Cultural heritage was acknowledged — and then placed outside the environmental question
This is the most important institutional divide in the record.
For First Nations Country, the bureaucratic distinction between “environment” and “cultural heritage” can be profoundly distorting. Water, trees, animals, ceremony, ancestral presence, story and law do not become separate realities merely because legislation assigns them to different administrative categories.
The Commonwealth Statement of Reasons records substantial public concern about Indigenous cultural heritage and the lack of detail concerning cultural values. It also records that, because no World Heritage property or National Heritage place existed at the project area at the time of decision, the site's potential Indigenous cultural heritage was not a Matter of National Environmental Significance for that EPBC decision and therefore did not need to be considered further under that part of the statutory test.5
That was not an accidental omission. It was a consequence of the architecture of the legislation.
At the same time, separate applications under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 were seeking federal protection for Barrambin. In January 2026 the Environment Minister acknowledged the area's particular significance to the Turrbal and Yagara peoples while declining an emergency section 9 declaration and continuing to assess section 10 applications.6
By 31 May, the Minister stated that ten applications had been received in relation to Barrambin, that another section 9 application and four section 10 applications remained under assessment, and that a section 10 reporter had been appointed to undertake a more detailed review before decisions on longer-term protection.7
So two federal realities were allowed to coexist.
One process continued to examine whether Barrambin warranted longer-term Aboriginal cultural heritage protection. Another had already concluded that the stadium and associated works required no further assessment under the national environmental law.
Both positions can coexist legally. Whether they constitute coherent public policy is another question.
9. Then the works began
The consequence of the May decision was not theoretical.
Brisbane City Council records that on 1 June 2026 parts of the Herston side of Victoria Park / Barrambin were transferred to GIICA for construction and delivery of the new venues.8
At Queensland Parliament estimates hearings on 22 July, GIICA chief executive Simon Crooks said that multiple contracts had been let for earthworks and early engagement on the Victoria Park site, including archaeological investigations, geotechnical work and piling, and that BMD had been appointed for the initial major earthworks.9
The thing the April paper had been written to prevent had therefore happened: the federal environmental referral did not lead to a full EPBC assessment, and physical works proceeded while the separate cultural heritage process remained unresolved.
10. This is what government by exception looks like
Barrambin illustrates a form of governmental power that deserves attention well beyond Queensland and well beyond the Olympic Games.
Governments establish planning laws, heritage laws, consultation procedures and mechanisms of review because experience has demonstrated the danger of allowing those who promote major projects also to determine, without meaningful constraint, whether those projects should proceed.
But the protection those mechanisms provide is only as durable as government's willingness to remain bound by them.
At Barrambin, the political objective came first: the stadium would be delivered. The regulatory environment was then progressively organised around that objective. Queensland created a special Games pathway, expressly made specified development lawful despite fifteen ordinary Acts, modified cultural heritage processes and limited stop-order mechanisms. The Commonwealth environmental process did not restore the wider scrutiny that had been displaced. Instead, it applied a narrower national-significance test and determined that further EPBC assessment was unnecessary.
Queensland created the exception. Canberra did not correct its consequences.
This should trouble people regardless of whether they favour the stadium, oppose it, support the Olympic Games or have no interest in sport at all.
Because once the principle is accepted that ordinary safeguards can be displaced whenever government declares a project sufficiently urgent or important, the argument is no longer about one park.
It is about whether safeguards constrain political power at all — or merely constrain it until political power decides otherwise.
11. The problem is not that law disappeared. It is that law was redesigned
There is a temptation in political argument to describe what happened at Barrambin as lawlessness. I think that formulation is too easy.
The more disturbing fact is that the key moves were made through law.
Parliament can create exceptions. It can redefine the approval pathway. It can remove causes of action, narrow rights to intervene, substitute special procedures for ordinary ones and impose delivery structures that privilege speed and certainty. A government with a parliamentary majority can do much of this openly and legally.
That is why legality is not the end of the democratic inquiry.
A legal process can still be designed so that the range of permissible questions becomes progressively narrower. Consultation can occur after the central political commitment has already hardened. A regulator can faithfully apply its statute while being unable to ask whether the whole scheme of decision-making has become unreasonable. One level of government can dismantle scrutiny while another applies a test too narrow to replace it.
None of this requires a secret room or an unlawful instruction.
That is precisely why it matters.
What remains unresolved
Barrambin is no longer primarily a story about whether the EPBC referral will stop construction. It did not.
The outstanding federal cultural heritage process is therefore crucial. The most recent official ministerial statement I have located, dated 31 May 2026, said that four section 10 applications remained under assessment and that a section 10 reporter had been appointed to undertake a more detailed review before the Minister determines whether longer-term protection is required.7
Whatever that process ultimately produces, the environmental episode has already created a public record worth preserving.
In April, The Fix Is In was a warning about what might happen.
The warning was too narrow.
Barrambin has become a case study in something larger: how democratic safeguards can be weakened not by breaking the law, but by rewriting it; how consultation can remain formally present while losing practical power; and how one level of government can remove scrutiny without another restoring it.
The stadium may eventually rise above Barrambin.
What has already been excavated is a disturbing lesson about the fragility of the restraints we place upon government itself.
Archival document: The original April 2026 analysis was written during the EPBC public-comment period, before the federal decision was made.
Sources
- Queensland legislation: Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games Arrangements Act 2021, including the provisions making specified Games development lawful despite fifteen listed Acts, the alternative cultural heritage process, and limits on stop orders. Queensland Legislation.
- Queensland Government, 12 February 2026: “More fast-tracked Games venues to secure Queensland's long-term legacy,” describing amendments intended to accelerate planning and delivery and provide streamlined approvals and faster delivery. Ministerial Media Statement.
- Queensland Parliament, Question on Notice No. 175, 4 March 2026: government response on Victoria Park tenure arrangements, GIICA access and the 1 June commencement timetable. Parliamentary document.
- Australian Government, EPBC 2026/10472: Notification of referral decision — not a controlled action, 5 May 2026. Referral decision.
- Australian Government, EPBC 2026/10472: Statement of Reasons for the controlled-action decision, including public comments, project area, Grey-headed Flying-fox habitat, threatened plants, mitigation measures and cultural heritage. Statement of Reasons.
- Minister for the Environment and Water, 14 January 2026: ATSIHPA decision on Barrambin / Victoria Park, acknowledging particular significance to the Turrbal and Yagara peoples and continuing section 10 assessment. Ministerial statement.
- Minister for the Environment and Water, 31 May 2026: further ATSIHPA decisions; four section 10 applications remained under assessment and a section 10 reporter had been appointed. Ministerial statement.
- Brisbane City Council: Victoria Park / Barrambin page recording transfer of parts of the Herston side to GIICA on 1 June 2026 for construction and delivery of the new venues. Council page.
- Queensland Parliament, Estimates, 22 July 2026: evidence from GIICA concerning earthworks, archaeological investigations, geotechnical work, piling and the BMD initial earthworks contract. Estimates transcript.