Not enough tradies for Brisbane 2032: auditors warn Olympics could slip
It is starting to feel uncomfortable. With years still to go, the Brisbane Olympics are already running into the same problem hammering construction across Australia: there are not enough tradies to go around. A new audit from Queensland’s Auditor-General is now raising the alarm, warning that labour shortages could put Olympic construction timelines under real pressure well before 2032.
The deadline is locked. The workforce isn’t.
The shortage itself is not breaking news. What changes here is the scale of what is at stake. The Queensland Auditor-General is already warning that delays are likely. Olympic construction timelines are under serious pressure, and if the current pace continues with the workforce gap unchanged, setbacks are almost guaranteed.
The projections in the report land hard. Queensland is facing a shortfall of more than 18,000 workers per year through to 2030. The real danger zone sits between 2026 and 2027, exactly when projects are meant to ramp up and early deliveries need to be locked in. At that point, the numbers become uncomfortable. The gap could blow out to around 50,000 tradies. That is a brutal figure.
The problem is not 2032, it is everything before it
The issue is that this is not just another build. The Olympics are locked in for July 2032, and that date does not budge. The pressure already feels close, because many of the biggest projects are still in early planning stages. That means every single day matters from here on out.
If the tradie shortage lines up with that critical window, and all signs point to it doing exactly that, things get ugly fast. Projects start competing for the same workers. Schedules get rewritten on the fly. Costs creep up as builders try to keep momentum. This is not the Auditor-General exaggerating. This is what happens on site when timelines tighten and labour runs thin.
“When there are no tradies, time becomes the most expensive thing on site.”
More pressure, thinner margins and nowhere to hide
The Auditor-General has already flagged that competition between public projects, private builds and Olympic works increases the risk of delays and cost blowouts, especially while the broader infrastructure pipeline refuses to slow down.
Put simply, there is no natural pause to claw time back. An early delay does not sit in isolation. It chains forward and starts hitting critical milestones later on. On complex builds with strict sequencing and multiple contractors, that pressure compounds fast.
The message between the lines: plan now or scramble later
Brisbane 2032 is not doomed, but the window to get ahead of the problem is narrowing. The toughest years of the labour shortage are still ahead, and the mix is becoming dangerous. A persistent shortage, projects struggling to start, and a fixed deadline is a recipe that has blown up plenty of builds before.
The concern is real. The tradie shortage now carries more weight than ever. Ambitious projects are lined up, budgets are allocated, but there are not enough hands to mix, pour and build. The calendar cannot move. And right now, that shortage is sending a chill straight through government offices across Queensland, because the clock is already ticking.
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