Media release – Shane Broad MP, Shadow Treasurer, 9 May 2023
Tasmanians to pay for almost all of Rockliff’s stadium
Premier Jeremy Rockliff’s failure to negotiate for $240 million of Federal Government funding for Macquarie Point to be excluded from future calculations of GST contributions is reckless and irresponsible, and will ensure that Tasmanians are paying virtually the entire cost of his stadium.
The Premier’s secret deal with the AFL will leave Tasmanian taxpayers on the hook for more than 97 per cent of the total cost of his stadium because we will effectively be paying nearly all of it back through lower GST receipts.
Hypocritically, the Premier’s own government called someone out for doing exactly the same thing in 2019, when then Treasurer Peter Gutwein blasted Federal MP Andrew Wilkie for failing to ensure the $340 million in funding he obtained for the Royal Hobart Hospital would be exempt from calculations of Tasmania’s GST share.
“Because of Mr Wilkie’s limited understanding of how the GST works, Tasmania has funded almost the entirety of the $780 million cost to build the new Royal Hobart Hospital because of Mr Wilkie’s ignorance,” Mr Gutwein said at the time.
If, as we expect, Jeremy Rockliff has shown the same ‘limited understanding’ of GST, his secret deal with the AFL to build a stadium is worse than we first thought.
To make things even worse, he also failed to answer questions about whether Tasmania will be on the hook for the inevitable cost-blowouts of this project.
If the final costs of other stadia across the nation are anything to go by, Tasmanian taxpayers could be slugged more than $1 billion for Rockliff’s stadium – not the $375 million he wants us to believe.
