Full Chambers Meeting - General Business - Pools

Councillor Seal Chong Wah – Paddington Ward

Delivered in Council Chambers, 1st September 2026

I rise to speak on the closure of Centenary Pool, the QUT Kelvin Grove pool and Victoria Park / Barrambin.

Today marks a sad day in history. This LNP Council is transferring Centenary pool to the Games Independent Infrastructure and Co-ordination Authority, GIICA. Centenary pool has spent 67 years as a public asset, and saw roughly a quarter of a million visitors last financial year. The community groups Save Victoria Park and Games Watchdog 2032 have been very vocal trying to save this pool. 

But this LNP Council administration and their state colleagues have decided to knock it down for the Olympics.

The LNP made this decision despite GIICA’s own hundred day review finding that the site wouldn’t be suitable for a venue, flagging a need for major earthworks, and the risk of buried asbestos and an underground transmission line. 

The Centenary pool and surrounding park is also heritage-listed with many old and ancient trees nearby that will be bulldozed. This is a huge loss of tree canopy, habitat and wildlife. 

This LNP administration has blatantly lied to our faces before, we have no way of knowing if the public will have access to swim in the new aquatics centre.

To add more grief to our community, today also marks the permanent closure of the publicly-accessible swimming pool at QUT Kelvin Grove. While it isn’t a Council pool, it’s a public pool owned by a public university which has received both federal and state funding. I want to acknowledge and thank the Friends of Local Aquatic Training, or FLOAT, who are fighting hard to save the QUT Kelvin Grove pool! 

This Council administration is spruiking 2 dollar summer dips and some greatly needed upgrades and refurbs to our pools, but that’s a weak vision for this city’s future.

In a city of roughly 1.4 million people, there are only 22 Council-owned pools. That’s roughly 9 suburbs, or 64 thousand people, per pool. That doesn’t account for any growth across Brisbane. And because this LNP administration gave developers a tax cut, they can’t fund more of these community facilities.

This means that thousands of homes, and hundreds of apartment buildings lose money and green space building and maintaining private pools. And the hundreds of thousands who can’t build themselves a pool miss out entirely, because they can’t afford entry, or can’t get to them.

But if we make developers pay their fair share, we can build a better city. A city for people.

The Greens want everybody to have convenient local access to a swimming spot where you can cool off, whether that’s a conventional pool, or a natural creek or water reservoir that’s clean enough to swim in. One day, even the Maiwar Brisbane River might again become clean enough to swim in safely, with the help of swimming enclosures to keep out the bull sharks. 

Because on increasingly hotter summer days, everyone should have somewhere to swim.

The Greens want a Brisbane with more Council pools, and free pool entry. We want a Brisbane with more swimming holes, and a clean, swimmable river. 

Swimming spots aren’t just a space for exercise and physical activity: they’re a community hub, they’re a place of learning, rest, and rehabilitation, and they’re a sanctuary from the blistering summer heat. 

They should be treated as a public place, just like libraries and parks. And everyone should be able to access them.