Brisbane is under six years from lighting an Olympic cauldron. Yet the loudest voice shaping how the city gets ready is not a sports scientist or a public health strategist. It is Bernie Hogan, chief executive of the Queensland Hotels Association. His flagship ask is 24 hour alcohol trading across the state. In a recent Courier Mail interview, journalist Jeremy Pierce caught Hogan making his case over lunch at the Kirra Beach Hotel. There, he framed round the clock pub access as an overdue modernisation. Strip away the charm and the rib eye, though, and what remains is simpler. An industry wants more hours to sell more alcohol, dressed up as economic readiness for a global sporting event.

The Lobbyist’s Pitch For 24 Hour Alcohol Trading

Hogan is candid about what he does for a living. “You never really leave sales,” he told the Courier Mail, and it shows. He has worked as a sales rep for a string of newspapers and as a mining industry lobbyist. During four years living in Washington DC, he served as security director for the Australian Embassy. It was only after returning to Australia that he moved into a run of advocacy, lobbying and government relations roles, the kind of positions he says taught him that diplomacy is basically lobbying, advocacy, call it what you want. That skill set now points squarely at Queensland’s alcohol trading laws.

His pitch is careful. He does not simply demand extended alcohol trading hours everywhere, every night. Instead, he singles out the Liquor Act. It was written in 1994, he says, by people “who grew up in the 1970s… who were informed by their parents in the 1950s,” and he calls the framework outdated. Meanwhile, he points to the state government’s night life economy action plan as proof the door is already opening. That plan endorsed or noted 50 of 62 recommendations from a committee chaired by musician John Collins. He then names the Mount Isa rodeo, the Ekka and an upcoming Rugby World Cup, with more than 10 games in Queensland, as the soft entry points. Once trading hours bend for a festival or a fixture, after all, they rarely snap back.

Elite Sport Sells Health, So Why Does Policy Sell Alcohol

There is a contradiction sitting in plain sight. The Olympic movement trades on peak human performance, discipline and physical wellbeing. Alcohol, by contrast, is widely understood to work against all three, impairing coordination, disrupting sleep and undermining the fitness culture an Olympic host city is meant to project. Still, the policy conversation ahead of 2032 has a pub lobby steering it, not a public health voice. That lobby is arguing for fewer limits on when a licensed venue can pour a drink.

This is not a hypothetical slippery slope, either. Hogan already secured a trading exemption during the FIFA World Cup. It let venues sell alcohol in the early hours for Australia’s match against Egypt. One tournament, one carve out. Now the same logic stretches towards Olympic size ambitions. It is presented not as a permanent change but as flexibility for big moments. That framing matters, because each exemption sets precedent for the next. In turn, precedent is how extended alcohol trading hours quietly become the default rather than the exception.

The Community Connector Myth

Hogan’s most persuasive line is also his least examined. He calls the pub “the de facto mental health clinic” in regional and rural Queensland. It is, in his words, a place where “people get to share their woes and to celebrate their joys.” It is a warm image. In fact, it borrows a real truth about isolation and connection to sell something else entirely.

A pub can genuinely be a community hub. The alcohol sold inside it, however, is not what makes that possible. Treating the two as inseparable is precisely the framing the alcohol industry relies on to justify expansion. Genuine mental health support looks different again. It means trained clinicians, funded services and sustained investment, not longer bar hours dressed up as connection. So when a lobbyist for an industry that profits from consumption becomes the public face of a mental health argument, that argument deserves scrutiny rather than applause.

Policy Drift And The Cost Nobody Puts On The Ledger

Even Hogan undercuts his own urgency. He concedes that even if regulators “allowed” every venue in Queensland to trade around the clock, it does not mean they will. That is a telling admission. After all, if most publicans would not actually use 24 hour alcohol trading, the case for scrapping the restriction stops being about genuine demand. Instead, it becomes an argument for optionality, from an industry that simply prefers fewer rules to more of them.

Something else is missing from the whole conversation, at least as reported. No public health voice appears anywhere in the coverage of Hogan’s push. Nor does anyone mention alcohol related harm, violence or hospital admissions. Nobody acknowledges, either, that trading hour limits exist precisely because unrestricted access carries consequences that outlast a good night out. The government sells its night life economy action plan as revitalisation. In reality, it looks more like policy drift. One exemption and one endorsed recommendation at a time, it erodes the evidence based guardrails that trading hour restrictions were built to provide.

Prevention, Not 24 Hour Alcohol Trading, Is What 2032 Actually Needs

Hosting the world in 2032 is a genuine opportunity, but not the one Hogan is selling. Instead, it is a chance to show visitors a state that has moved past treating alcohol access as the default answer to entertainment and connection. Queensland does not need more hours in which to sell alcohol. Instead, it needs sustained investment in prevention education and accessible mental health services. A genuine night life economy also measures success by more than how late the taps stay open.

Alcohol related harm is not an inevitable cost of a good time. It is preventable, and prevention starts with refusing to let an industry lobbyist’s sales pitch pass as public policy. Six years out from Brisbane 2032, Queensland faces a choice between demand reduction and demand expansion. Only one of those choices, ultimately, is worth building an Olympic legacy on.

Source: High Steaks: Queensland pubs boss calls for 24-hour trading ahead of 2032 Olympics