Greg Hall & Ivan Dean Savage Stadium: ‘Truly A Shocker’

Despite the Premier’s posturing in the Tasmanian Parliament this week, the Project of State Significance process is still ongoing.

Submissions are still being made to the Tasmanian Planning Commission.

Where we see interesting ones, we will report on them.

Former Legislative Council Members Greg Hall and Ivan Dean put in a submission that is strongly supportive of the main themes in the Draft Integrated Assessment Report: the stadium is too big for the site, too costly and hostile to the local context.

The Tasmania Devils Football Club have recently put in their own submission which, unsurprisingly, claims that the stadium is a ‘necessity’ to support the team’s success.

The document however is full of dubious and palpably false claims such as this: “Organisations and experts much better placed than the TFC to evaluate the economic impact of the stadium have consistently maintained that the stadium and the introduction of the TFC will have a profound positive economic benefit on Tasmania.”

In reality, the official business cases plus analyses by economists Saul Eslake and Nicholas Gruen and the Tasmanian Planning Commission have all found a negative benefit from the stadium project, generally agreeing that the return on investment is around 50 cents in the dollar or less.

Read more below.

Submission to Tasmanian Planning Commisson – Greg Hall & Ivan Dean, May 2025

Response to Draft Integrated Assessment Report – Macquarie Point Multipurpose Stadium Project of State Significance

We are making this submission as long-serving former members of the Legislative Council to congratulate the Macquarie Point assessment panel on the forensic analysis of its Draft Integrated Assessment Report, and to encourage you to ignore the appalling, unwarranted and baseless claims of bias from those desperate to derail proper planning process.

We are also returned servicemen and long-standing members of the RSL, and we welcome the draft assessment report’s attention to the terrible impact that the stadium will have on the Hobart Cenotaph. The Cenotaph is arguably the closest thing we have to a sacred site in this state. It stands as a perpetual memorial to those who gave their lives for our country and should never be disrespected by anyone under any circumstances. We fully agree with the panel’s interim finding that there would be no way the Cenotaph can be protected if the stadium is imposed next door, virtually at the foot of the obelisk. On that ground alone we urge you to recommend rejection of this project on the Macquarie Point site.

As the issues raised in the draft assessment report reveal, there are many others.

We have long experience of assessment of public finances and major projects as members for many years of Parliament’s Public Accounts and Public Works committees. In our judgment, the attempt by the Liberal and Labor parties to bypass due process by sidelining the Planning Commission assessment would lock 21st century Tasmania into Third World governance standards.

This appears a deliberate attempt to avoid the careful scrutiny of the legislated process.

The result is that, instead of bringing Tasmanians together in what should have been one of the great unifying moments of our history – attaining our own AFL side – the continued mismanagement of the stadium project is driving deep division through our community.

Our orderly planning system has been designed by Parliament to give everyone, from investors to developers to other interested parties and the Tasmanian public, confidence that ground rules apply and that development will be in accordance with the rules. In this case, the Government with Opposition support is proposing to corrupt its own process in favour of returning to the bad old days of unrestrained political patronage where approval for prestige projects is available at any price, regardless of cost and regardless of the rules applying to everyone else.

It is crystal clear from the financial detail in the draft assessment that the joke – and the bills – if the parliamentary bypass surgery succeeds, will be on the taxpayers of Tasmania. The panel’s revelation that the state’s debt servicing costs for the first 10 years of stadium operation will be $76 million a year higher than if the project does not proceed, is truly a shocker.

Almost the entire case for the stadium is that it is a non-negotiable requirement for Tasmania to obtain an AFL licence. Both the Government and the Labor Party have sought to justify their pro-stadium position by endlessly repeating the mantra: No Stadium No Team. But with four of the 11 home games already agreed to be played in Launceston, that leaves just seven matches a season in Hobart. Divide the $76 million a year in higher debt costs by seven home games and that means taxpayers will be forking out almost $11 million per game in what will be effectively a hidden football subsidy. That is on top of the publicly-declared $12 million per season direct subsidy to finance the club.

Delve into the details a little deeper and this enormous hidden subsidy becomes even more absurd. From the start it has been acknowledged that the ‘Tasmanian’ team will be made up mostly of players from other states. The AFL Taskforce which built the case for a Tasmanian licence, said in its 2019 report: “It is highly likely that the majority of the playing roster will be from interstate”.

Former Geelong president and AFL commissioner Colin Carter, asked by the AFL to review the case for Tasmania’s inclusion, warned in his 2021 report: “Some have a romantic view about the number of Tasmanians in the team.

On a proportionate population basis, Tasmania will do well to have two draftees each year. Its players will mostly come from other states.”

Colin Carter was the key strategist behind the AFL’s equalisation and draft system. He knows what he is talking about.

So when you add it all up, the desire to have a ‘Tasmanian’ team playing in a new covered stadium on the Hobart waterfront will come at a cost of $11 million per Hobart home game, to provide a platform for a potential two Tasmanian draftees each year. For Australia’s poorest state, and with the earnings gap to the rest of the country the biggest it has been in more than 30 years, that is an extraordinary extravagance for what is effectively an AFL entry fee that has not been demanded from any other team in any other state.

That massive cost will come at the expense of other parts of the community who miss out. While funding is lavished on the AFL bid, we have recently seen the closure of the Launceston learn to swim pool and the hydrotherapy pool at the Burnie hospital because the government says we can no longer afford to maintain them.

Grassroots sports, including soccer – our largest participation team sport – and basketball, are suffering because of a severe shortage of facilities. Combined, those two sports have more than 50,000 players. Many other sports also are missing out.

The independent Eslake Report showed that our public finances are in the worst shape of any of the states, including the previous basket case Victoria, and warned that we could not afford to continue to run Australia’s largest infrastructure program relative to the size of our economy.  The independent Gruen Report highlighted major shortcomings in the business case for the Macquarie Point project. Gruen warned that costs had been under-estimated and benefits over-estimated. Every single economic analysis has shown the stadium project would lose money – the only question being how much. The panel’s draft assessment is that the loss would be 47 cents in the dollar – almost half the billion-dollar-plus outlay down the drain.

That should be no surprise. The 2019 Taskforce Report, in considering the merits of a ‘clean sheet’ roofed stadium, said: “Within Australia it is not commercially feasible to operate major sports facilities to recover the cost of capital and to generate a return on investment”. A definitive finding from a Taskforce which included prominent business chiefs Brett Godfrey, Grant O’Brien and Errol Stewart.

Yet we continually have the Premier claiming that the State Government will invest “$375 million and not one red cent more” in the stadium, and that private investors will stump up any shortfall after accounting for the federal contribution of $240 million, up to $85 million in borrowings by the Macquarie Point Development Corporation, and the AFL’s paltry $15 million. Given the Panel’s assessment that the real cost will be well north of $1 billion, that is just not credible.  Private investors do not sink money into projects with no prospect of delivering a reasonable sound return on investment.

Tasmanians do not trust their political leadership when it comes to the stadium. We know the original stadium plan was not put to the people before it was announced. We know the Premier signed the AFL deal without taking the contract to Cabinet and without taking formal advice from the Treasury.

We know the initial costings were knocked up on the back of the proverbial envelope and haven’t changed substantively in years while costs for everything else, and particularly building costs, have been skyrocketing right across Australia. We know the Government’s claims about costs and financing do not stack up.

Tasmanians have shown repeatedly that they do not support the Macquarie Point stadium. They voted strongly against it at the 2024 state election and the Liberal Party lost its parliamentary majority. Opinion polling has indicated a large majority of Tasmanians, including two thirds of voters across the north, remain opposed to the stadium.  However, the objectors suffered a severe democracy deficit when the Labor Party, having campaigned against the stadium, after the election suddenly announced a unity ticket with the Government to support it. This was a betrayal of historic proportion. Consider these statements by the Labor Party.

Former Labor leader Rebecca White: “It is clear the stadium will end up costing Tasmania more than $1 billion – and with annual interest payments of $50 million. That’s money that could be used to pay for 500 nurses to help our neglected health system – every year. Or 500 teachers to give out children the best start in life – every year. It’s completely the wrong priority and Tasmanian Labor will continue to stand up for our state and to stand against the stadium.” Dean Winter, commenting on criticism of the stadium project by Tasmania’s longest-serving Liberal Premier Robin Gray: “Robin Gray has backed in everything the Labor Party has been saying about this reckless project … during a health, housing and cost of living crisis, Premier Rockliff has decided that building another stadium in Hobart is his top priority. He wouldn’t be more out of touch if he was living on the moon.”

That was then. Labor has now joined the Government on the far side of the moon. It says it will support any approval proposal the Premier puts forward, including by-passing the Project of State Significance assessment mandated by the Parliament. No wonder Tasmanians and the crossbench in both Houses are feeling confused, let down and looking for sound advice free from political games on which to base a responsible judgment.

We are confident the crossbench and minor parties will stand strong for proper process to protect the public interest and that in the Legislative Council this stand will be decisive.

That will mean that the statutory responsibility of the Tasmanian Planning Commission and the conclusions of the Macquarie Point assessment panel will be vital in informing the final decision by Parliament on the stadium. We have great respect for your Draft Integrated Assessment Report, and full confidence that you will continue to act with independence and integrity in the interests of the Tasmanian community.

 

Ivan Dean is Hobart-born and served as an independent member of the Tasmanian Legislative Council from 2003 to 2021, representing the electorate of Windermere. He was also Mayor of Launceston from 2005 to 2007.