Vica Bayley MP, Greens Veterans Affairs spokesperson, 1 August 2024
Stadium Renders Flout Planning Rules
After weeks of waiting, renders of the Macquarie Point stadium from the Cenotaph have finally been released. They definitively show the unacceptable impact this development will have on the ambience and sightlines of this significant site – in violation of the planning rules established to protect its values.
Sadly, the Project of State Significance Process abandons all planning criteria and leaves approval to the discretion of an assessment panel, and ultimately the parliament. That is why, at the request of RSL Tasmania, the Greens will table legislation that enshrines those values, and the protections they deserve, in law.
Even from these sanitised renders, it is clear that priority sightlines will be completely obstructed by a stadium that is 25% higher than previously announced.
Important views to the River Derwent, Sullivans Cove and St George’s Church in Battery Point will be lost and the height and bulk of the stadium, so close to the Cenotaph itself, will dominate the space and desecrate the ‘reverential ambience’ of the shrine.
The Cenotaph is Australia’s oldest state war memorial and will have its centenary next year. Its location was deliberately chosen for the commanding views across the city, Sullivans Cove and the Derwent River mouth, echoing the final view of Hobart soldiers would have seen before they were shipped off to war.
The Macquarie Point stadium is a development that Tasmanians don’t want and can’t afford, and its condition in the AFL licence agreement currently presents the greatest risk to the realisation of the AFL and AFLW teams. A specific stadium on a specific site, ahead of any consultation or assessment process, was never Premier Rockliff’s to give away.
These renders demonstrate what the RSL and the public have known all along – the stadium is a development that should not be approved.
