Transcript of media conference with Roland Browne, spokesperson for community group Our Place, Hadleys Hotel, Hobart, 7 May 2025

Roland Browne

My name is Roland Browne. I’m a representative of Our Place Hobart, which has been a fervent opponent of the stadium proposed for Macquarie point.

Once the planning commission process was underway, we engaged a professional planning team from Melbourne, which included a planner by the name of Tim Biles. Tim was born in Hobart and spent his first 10 years in Hobart and lived over in Lindisfarne. And he brought to our planning team considerable expertise, because in 2013 he was part of a planning team that did a major assessment of the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. And the Shrine, of course, is the equivalent of the Cenotaph in Hobart. So he’s very well experienced to understand the impact on such a memorial from a major development.

The process for us was that Tim came back to Hobart with his team in April and spent 10 days here, going over the site, around the suburbs, around the area, and becoming very familiar with it again. At the same time, another process was underway, which is we had a graduate architect who prepared a digital model of the stadium. And the way that works is that he used the geo-referenced data from the proponent to precisely place the stadium in the landscape, and then by the use of photographs, also placed precisely in the landscape, by the GPS references when the photographs were taken, allows the stadium to be portrayed from appointing the landscape with accuracy.

What I’m going to do is go through a couple of things here today, there’s two groups of images that I want to show you. The first six images are going to be images of the first six images I’m going to show you are going to be images of the stadium from places around Hobart and the vicinity of Macquarie point. The second group of images are discrete and arise from the second report that Mr Biles has prepared with his team analysing how the renders or images that Macquarie Point Development Corporation fold with the planning commission are basically misleading because of the way they have been set up and the camera angle, and I’ll explain those in a little bit more detail.

The Planning Commission, in its guidelines, specifically asked and directed Macquarie Point to provide visualisations from nearby, surrounding, sorry, nearby suburban residential areas and from the city and from the western shore as well. Macquarie Point has not provided any visualisations from the western shore residential areas or from residential areas in Hobart. And so some of the images I’m about to show you are quite important in that way, because they are going to be, at this stage, the only images that the planning commission will have of the stadium viewed from the residential areas of Hobart.

So here we go. This is image number one, which is taken in Davies Avenue, just above the Aquatic Centre, and shows the stadium there, obscured by the trees in that area.

Image number two, which I’ll portray now, is an image taken from Constitution Dock, showing the stadium portrayed as our experts have visualised it. I also want to make the Point that the Planning Commission, and I refer to this in the media statement, the Planning Commission has very particular requirements for photographs or visualisations They need to be with a 50 millimetre lens, they need to be taken from a height of 1.6 meters, and they need to be taken flat. Our our visualisations comply with those requirements.

This next visualisation is taken from near the ABC near the Baha’i centre on the Brooker highway, just near Collins Street in the foreground, you can see the Engineers Building. It speaks for itself, it’s being absolutely dwarfed by the stadium behind it.

This now is image number four: again, the Engineers Building with the proposed stadium behind it. This is viewed from the Tasman Highway, just adjacent, as you can see, to the Engineers Building, and again, adjacent to the Baha’i centre.

This now image number six is another image from a residential area. This is from the corner of Aberdeen and Edward Street in the Glebe just showing the perspective and magnitude of the proposed stadium as it will fill up so much of the viewscape from that location. So that’s the first group of images that we’ve lodged with the planning commission.

Other images are dealt with in Tim Bile’s second report, which is Volume Two, but I’m going to go to them now, and there’s two. In each case, there’s two images that need to be compared. And this is to demonstrate, and does demonstrate, how the visual impact of the stadium has been diminished by the choice of lens that has been used by Macquarie Point.

Now this is the corner of Davey and Argyle Street looking towards the west and the proposed stadium can just be seen rising above the buildings in Hunter Street that’s been taken with a 22 millimetre lens, which is a wide angle lens, not the 50 millimetres that has been required by the Planning Commission. And I should say the reason that a 50 millimetre lens is required is because what is viewed through a 50 millimetre lens is the closest approximation of what the human eye will see. Hence, the significance of that.

Now that is the corresponding image taken from exactly the same location as the earlier image, but with a 50 millimetre lens, you can see the road there probably needs to be just shrunk a little bit so it fits in.

And this photograph, as I said, taken with a 50 millimetre lens shows the bulk and enormity of the stadium in a way that significantly contrasts with the image that the proponent has lodged with the Planning Commission in its materials, and it is the basis for the criticism that’s made by Mr Biles and his team, including a landscape architect and an architect that the renders these images from Macquarie Point significantly diminish the impact of the stadium.

The next one I’d like to go to is an image provided by Macquarie Point Development Corporation, and Mr Biles and his team are particularly critical of this image for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it’s taken from a location where people are not going to be viewing the Engineers Building or the proposed stadium, because on that side of the road, people are driving away from it. And more significantly, there’s really no pedestrian traffic. It’s really a dud view, but it needs to be compared to the image taken from the other side of the road (see image 4 above), where drivers will have the full view of the stadium, of the proposed stadium as they come into Hobart. And of course, Another difference is that this image is not obscured by trees, as was the case with the last image.

So our place, Hobart, hopes and look forward to the Planning Commission getting hearings underway. They still propose to do it in July. Whether that’s going to happen, we don’t know, but our team is ready for those hearings and looking forward to it. We think there’s going to be more that will come out in the course of evidence, as the hearing unfolds, and also as the community responds through the representation period, which, as I’m sure you all know, ends tomorrow.

Journalist – Georgie Burgess

So I suppose Roland, you believe that the any images put out by the Macquarie Point Development Corporation are misleading, and you think that these images better represent how the stadium will look?

Roland Browne

I’m not saying any images they’ve produced are misleading. On the basis of the report of Mr Biles, targeted two particular images that are grossly misleading. In some cases, they’ve acknowledged that. They’ve used different lenses, they’ve sewn together panoramas. They’ve acknowledged that, but in two cases, their their images are just simply misleading. They underplay the impact of the stadium deliberately.

Journalist – unidentified

Do you feel like, I guess the everyday person that’s seen the other images, that this might change their minds on the stadium?

Roland Browne

Well, I’m hopeful that it will, because what the Planning Commission process is designed to achieve – like all planning processes, whether it’s in a council, whether it’s in the planning tribunal – is public participation, public involvement and public input, and that involves people knowing what the particular development is here. People need to understand the enormity of this building to really form their opinion on the basis of accurate facts. The materials that Macquarie Point have put forward to date have in part been misleading. We’re correcting that. Our images are taken in accordance with the Planning Commission’s protocols, and there’s a transparent process happening explaining how they’ve been developed.

Journalist – Georgie Burgess

The POS process is looking like it’s probably going to be redundant, given the Premier’s pushing ahead with legislation to Parliament, with the decision likely riding on a couple of Upper House independent MPs. Will you be sort of planning to brief them using this information, given that the public hearings might not happen with the with the Planning Commission?

Roland Browne

We’ll certainly be taking this information to the Upper House MPs. They’re going to have a very important role to play. But it’s not just about the MPs in the Upper House. This is about the whole community. This is a decision that everybody needs to be abreast of, because the consequences of this stadium project starting construction is going to be bankruptcy of the Tasmanian community, because the Planning Commission has estimated $1.86 billion over 10 years of money Tasmanian doesn’t have.

We were looking up until a few days ago, that that money was going to come from a public private partnership in part anyway. Well, that’s not going to happen either. So it’s all going to come out of the Tasmanian budget, one way or the other, it’s going to be disastrous. And it was interesting to see another story on the ABC today about the impact on homeless people of the lack of housing in Tasmania. Why are we putting our money into a $1.86 billion stadium when we should be putting it into housing?

Tasmanian Times

Mark Pooley – who, as you know, is a retired architect and has written a few pieces for us about the visual impact of the stadium – has called for a plebiscite statewide on the stadium issue. Does Our Place as an organisation support that call, or would you prefer for the planning process to do its work.

Roland Browne

Well, both, really. The planning process is critical because it’s going to see a whole lot of information coming forward. If we have hearings, it’ll see cross examination and questioning of witnesses for the proponent, and they’re going to have to explain some of these renders. For example, they’re going to have to explain their crazy economics. They’re going to have to explain how they’re going to deal with this terribly contaminated site. So that’s very important.

As far as a plebiscite goes, the Tasmanian people have been written out of decision making for this stadium. Everybody went to an election in February 2024 with a Labor Party that was opposed to the stadium. The Tasmanian Liberal Party at the time, lost that election in the sense that they lost their majority in parliament, couldn’t get it back in the election, and then we’ve seen the Labor Party do a complete somersault. So the community was dudded at that election in respect to the stadium. And any opportunity for people to have a say is probably going to be a good thing. I would expect it will reflect just what the polling has reflected consistently since 2023: that is, around 60% of people in Tasmanian do not want a stadium. And up in the north, it’s even more significant, over 70% and we’re told it’s growing.

Journalist – unidentified

What do you make of Labor’s position, given that it’s given unconditional support for the stadium, and regardless of the cost or anything like that?

Roland Browne

I can’t understand Labor’s position. They recently forwarded a letter to the Premier condemning the project, its funding, its arrangements, its lack of transparency, all of that, and then at the end of that letter, after talking about the budget problems that will be caused by the stadium, they’ve turned around and said, ‘We’re going to support it unreservedly.’

Their position is crazy, and hopefully they’re going to hear from the community that it’s time for them to lead the way out, because the government’s painted itself into a corner. The Premier has staked his reputation and the future of his government on the stadium. That was a foolish thing to do, but he’s done it, and the opportunity now is for Dean Winter to say to the Labor Party and to lead the community by going back to the AFL and saying, ‘we need to renegotiate the agreement. Macquarie Point is not going to work. We need to find a way through this.’ And one obvious solution, of course, is for further development of a stadium in York Park, which is for those of you who haven’t been there, quite a good location.

Journalist – Georgie Burgess

Has the Macquarie Point Development Corporations seen these images, and do they accept them?

Roland Browne

They couldn’t have seen them because they’re only being produced today and gone to the Planning Commission today. Whether they accept them or not isn’t going to make any difference at all, because Macquarie Point has shown itself to be adept at just producing misleading materials. Their economic analysis of the stadium has been misleading, the assumptions have been poor. We know the photographs are poor, so what they have to say is not going to carry any weight with us.

Journalist – unidentified

What do you make of the Premier’s statement saying that the partnership, the private partnership, falling through, will actually see more support for the stadium, and they will give Tasmanians more choice in the stadium’s destiny.

Roland Browne

Well, that’s a good question. But when does Jeremy Rockliff become accountable for what he what he says He promised us the stadium was not going to be more than 40 meters high. He’s broken that. He’s promised us that the government was not going to put in more than $375 million, he’s broken that. In February of 2024 when he announced the election, he also said that the stadium was going to be funded by a public private partnership. Well, that’s gone as well. So he can’t be trusted. They are changing course at every moment to try and find a way to facilitate this stadium to save his political career. And it’s not going to work.

Journalist – unidentified

The Premier says feedback will be listened to and Tasmanians have expressed their concerns over the years. Do you think he’s listening?

Roland Browne

No, absolutely not. When it comes to community feedback about the stadium, the premier is not listening at all. For example, the RSL said it’s going to seriously damage the cement Cenotaph. Premier said, Well, it’s not going to be more than 40 meters high. And what happens? It’s coming at over 50 meters now. He’s not listening to the RSL, he’s not listening to Federal Hotels. He’s not listening to the TSO. He’s not listening to the residential groups. He’s only listening to the AFL who, as we know, are in partnership with the gaming lobby, who about a month before the announcement of the stadium in August 2022 made a donation of over $20,000 to the Tasmanian Liberal Party. So there’s a real question about the influence the AFL gaming lobby is exerting over the Tasmanian Liberal Party, and thus this government.

Journalist – unidentified

He described it as a common sense project in parliament this morning. What’s your response to that?

Roland Browne

Well, the Premier is apt to come up with crazy descriptions for this project for those of us who are opposing the project, he had a go at us. He said people are either builders or blockers. Well, as it turns out, the Tasmanian Planning Commission is going to be a blocker, so his throwaway lines count for nothing. What common sense is there in bankrupting the Tasmanian economy?

The Planning Commission made an excellent Point about the jobs that are supposedly going to be generated by this project. They said there might be 100 full time jobs generated. And then said, that pales into insignificance compared to what might be generated in the way of full time jobs if $1.86 billion was spent on job creation projects.

And in fact, to directly answer your question, Hayden, there is no common sense in this stadium proposal. It fails on planning grounds, environmental grounds, economic grounds, heritage grounds. Just read the Planning Commission’s draft report. It’s irredeemable. It can’t be resolved. It can’t be approved, because everything about it is wrong, and that’s why the government’s now said, ‘well, the planning commission doesn’t know what it’s talking about, so we’ll legislate.’ The Premier, in his lack of wisdom, is now saying that the Liberal and Labor parties have now got more planning nous than an expert panel assembled by the Planning Commission.

Tasmanian Times

You’ve quoted Tim Wiles as saying: ‘the stadium asserts its presence like a school yard bully.’ Now, the cynic in me suggests that the AFL marketing people are absolutely salivating at that prospect, that they want it to be big and ugly. In the image you have behind you, who knows it’s going to have a 10 meter high illuminated AFL logo on it. So as far as I know, the AFL haven’t made a submission to that TPC process. At they cowards are not actually speaking up about their true position?

Roland Browne

Well, it’s hard to know what their true position is in terms of the stadium design that’s come forward, Alan, however, what is clear is they’ve manoeuvred themselves into an extraordinary position where they’re going to make a lot of money out of this stadium, out of gaming revenue that it generates. If the games aren’t more than half full, I think it is, the Tasmanian Government will be subsidising the AFL and paying it money. If there’s delays in the construction, the Tasmanian government’s going to pick it up. This is a dream for the AFL, and I don’t think they care what happens in Hobart, because they can’t lose.

Journalist – unidentified

There might be pro stadium people who say these images here are potentially misleading as well. That’s a similar criticism in the past, like the full wall, the final design won’t look like that. Is that a fair criticism?

Roland Browne

That is not a fair criticism at all. These renders are produced from the information that Macquarie Point has lodged with the Planning Commission. This is what they say they’re going to build, and it’s up to them to come forward with images that might be reflective of exactly what it’s going to look like. Just as an aside, Our Place has involved consultants in constructing a 3D model of the stadium. It was a big job for a small community group. The Planning Commission has asked MPDC on two occasions to provide its 3D model to the Planning Commission so the Planning Commission can put its own consultants onto it, and Macquarie Point has refused to do that. So in those circumstances, Macquarie Point and its acolytes aren’t in any position to criticise our renders.

Carly Allen – Greens candidate for Pembroke

The effects of lighting as well haven’t been disclosed on these renders. From an eastern shore perspective, I know the effect the lighting from Bellerive Stadium has on the residents. So something this size, do you know, has that information been outlined?

Roland Browne

I don’t know Carly, I’m not aware if anything’s come forward. Obviously, with a translucent room with big lights inside, it’ll probably glow like a radioactive beacon when it’s on, when games are on.

Tasmanian Times

Just to clarify that, there hasn’t been any renders done that show that visual impact at night? From any perspective?

Roland Browne

I’m not aware of any, no.

 

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