Brisbane's historic win is being soured by controversy, after Olympic boss John Coates seemingly ordered the Premier to attend Tokyo's Opening Ceremony.

Now, he has revealed it was all part of a plan to help the Premier break her promise and see the show. @ajhegarty9 #9News pic.twitter.com/N3GSXctNDE

— 9News Queensland (@9NewsQueensland) July 22, 2021

As we suggested here earlier, it was a set up to give Palaszczuk political coverage to attend the event.

Reluctantly, Annastacia 'forced' to attend glitzy, $75M ceremony & not sit in hotel room doing her knitting

Sickening that they think we are so thick.

Ms Palaszczuk, whose trip to Tokyo had proved unpopular in the context of Queensland’s border closures, had been attempting to navigate a political minefield by saying she would not attend the ceremony and would instead watch on TV from her hotel room.

The intervention from Mr Coates has proved controversial, but the sports supremo said Ms Palaszczuk was happy with his intervention, and that the public couldn’t see he was smiling behind his face-mask.

“I was doing her a favour. She’s very happy with me. I went to help her,’’ he said.

Mr Coates said his “direction’’ had been a joke and “people had taken it the wrong way.’’

“The point I was making was she, the minister and the Lord Mayor should go,’’ he said.

“I’m so close to her (Ms Palaszczuk). She’s totally relaxed. Ask her.

“We came back here (to the hotel) together. She came up to my room with the rest of the team.’’