And it’s not just salmon.

From imaginary revenue forecasts to wild tourism fantasies. From brazen architectural deception to public executions of unobliging messengers.

For more than two years, Premier Rockliff – backed by a compliant band of deplorables – has been lying to Tasmanians over his unsolicited Macquarie Point stadium procurement.

To date, more than fifty million taxpayers’ dollars have been shovelled into Rockliff’s AFL money pit – a mournful gravesite – destined to be adorned with a headstoned epitaph to a weak man’s subservience.

For those Tasmanians with short memories, here are some recollections:

Hansard (23 March 2023)

DEAN WINTER MP – “It is a ridiculous priority for this state. Utterly ridiculous that we would be proposing to put that amount of money into a stadium in Hobart when we already have two great stadiums in Tasmania, at York Park and at Bellerive Oval. That is the Government’s priorities, and they are wrong. You have them basically tearing up the entire (precinct) plan so that they can build a second stadium that you will see from the stadium we already have. The way to pay back this debt is not to build billion-dollar stadiums in Hobart as vanity projects for the Premier.”

ELLA HADDAD MP – “It should worry Tasmanians that the Government is mismanaging the Budget to such an extent that they are likely to hand down the worst deficit in Tasmania’s history, all the while talking about investing close to $1 billion in an unneeded and unwanted football stadium in Hobart when we have two perfectly good football stadiums in the south and north. This Government has its priorities completely wrong. They are letting down Tasmanians and are not focusing on the things that matter the most to the people we represent in our communities.”

REBECCA WHITE MP – “It’s disgusting that Tasmanians were never told the truth about the Government’s plans to build a billion-dollar stadium at Macquarie Point. Jeremy Rockliff needs to explain how he thinks it was reasonable for him to pretend the stadium was not part of the bid for the license for so long when the Public Accounts Committee hearing today exposed the awful truth.

“The stadium was not part of our bid”, he [the Premier] said.

Jeremy Rockliff is on the record multiple times saying the stadium wasn’t part of the bid and independent reviewer Colin Carter is also on the public record saying Tasmania’s AFL bid should not be contingent on a stadium. Guy Barnett’s disastrous performance in today’s stadium Public Accounts Committee (PAC) hearing proves what a complete mess this issue has become. Mr Barnett couldn’t answer simple questions about the stadium and at one stage lost his temper. He couldn’t answer questions about how the stadium will support health and housing, like the Government has repeatedly claimed it will. He couldn’t answer who will pay for the inevitable cost blow outs, but his department confirmed that under existing infrastructure arrangements the state government and the Tasmanian taxpayer would be on the hook. He also couldn’t answer basic questions about the height of the stadium, how it will impact the cenotaph and why it needs a roof. The whole issue is so dodgy that the AFL even helped Jeremy Rockliff write a letter from himself to AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan. Tasmanians have been lied to by the government and the Premier about the stadium for too long. Tasmania deserves its own AFL and AFLW team, but it shouldn’t come with stadiums and strings attached. Former Geelong president Colin Carter, who authored an independent report into the viability of a Tasmanian side, believes the bid should not be contingent on a new stadium.

“Tasmanian grounds are regarded as perfectly adequate for playing AFL football. The AFL will not be a truly national competition without Tasmania,” he said.

Hansard (24 March 2023)

CASSY O’CONNOR MP – “In our discussions with the Premier about the Greens joining a tri-partisan push for Tasmania to join the national league, we sought an assurance the stadium and the bid were not contingent on each other.”

“Jeremy Rockliff looked me in the eye in April, and then again in May last year and said, “don’t worry Cass, the stadium is not part of the bid.”

“It was on that basis we agreed to sign on, because we believe Tasmania deserves to be part of the national league, and because the AFL wanted to be sure there was tri-partisan support and no sovereign risk to the license in the future. We would not have signed up to the bid if we knew a stadium was ‘a prerequisite’ set down by the AFL and Gill McLachlan – especially if we knew it had already been agreed to. The AFL Taskforce, which handed down its report in December 2019, did not recommend a brand-new stadium as a condition of the license. The new stadium was cooked up between Gill McLachlan and Jeremy Rockliff, in secret. The Premier also told Parliament last September the stadium was not part of the bid. Kim Evans indicated today it has been since the beginning. Who is telling the truth here? Kim Evans in sworn testimony to PAC, or Jeremy Rockliff to Parliament? The Greens remain fiercely, adamantly opposed to a new billion-dollar stadium on nipaluna/Hobart’s waterfront. Tasmania can’t afford and doesn’t need a new stadium.”

REBECCA WHITE MP – “Madam Deputy Speaker, trust is in very short order in this parliament when it comes to believing anything that you say, Treasurer, on this matter. That is because we have been burnt a number of times. We now know from the record of Mr Kim Evans, through the Public Accounts Committee, that the decision to go ahead with the stadium prior to an announcement to the public was taken. What we wanted to know – and what we still want to know is – was there ever any information and briefing advice provided from Treasury to the Government on this matter. What the House has been able to determine to this point on the information that the Government has provided, kicking and screaming at every opportunity resisting providing information even when ordered to by the House, it appears that there was not any information and advice provided at all.

DR ROSALIE WOODRUFF, MP (Hansard, 9 August 2023) – “If this morning’s sworn testimony to the Public Accounts Committee of State Growth Secretary, Kim Evans, is true, then the Greens were lied to by Jeremy Rockliff in order to secure our support for the state’s AFL bid. Mr Evans told PAC that, from day one, it was the AFL’s expectation that a new, greenfield stadium would be a prerequisite of Tasmania being granted an AFL license. Not only that, but it also now seems the State agreed to this condition long before Premier Jeremy Rockliff sought the recess.

On 24 May, the House ordered the Premier to table all the signed agreements and documents relating to the AFL agreement to the House by 1 June, as well as all departmental and departmental commissioned assessments, advice and reports relating to Macquarie Point stadium by the same date, Thursday 1 June. That was an order of the House. It was not something that the Premier got to decide whether he did or not. It was a matter of this House ordering the Government to undertake an action. That was meant to happen on 1 June 2023, and it was not until 20 June that the Premier tabled some documents. Some of the documents – all the documents – that he provided at that point were on the public record and were already in the public domain.

We knew that was the case. We did not know how much of that information that the Government withheld was from the Treasury, or not, but we certainly knew the Government had not done what the House had ordered them to do and had not provided a full list. It was then the Premier used a blanket claim of cabinet-in-confidence to try to justify not revealing any deliberations that came to Cabinet, and on not providing the House with information that went to Cabinet.

The Government is misusing the Westminster tradition of cabinet-in-confidence to apply to anything that might come into the Cabinet’s room, or any part of the conversation about a deliberation on a matter. That is not the practice of cabinet-in-confidence. What we are finding is the extent to which this Liberal Government is abusing the tradition of cabinet-in-confidence and purposely using it to make sure Tasmanians do not know what is happening. What we received from the Premier on 22 June, the day before parliament rose, was a short list – not the complete list. It was clear at that point, from that list, that the Department of Treasury and Finance could not have provided advice to the Cabinet prior to the known date when a decision had been made internally – by at least the Premier, or a subsection of the Cabinet, if not the whole Cabinet – to go ahead with the stadium. We know the Government is now, by their own evidence, making decisions on individual large pieces of infrastructure without advice from Treasury. In the fiscal sustainability report of two years ago, there are huge fingers of concern pointed at the Liberal Government’s mismanagement of the state of our finances – very huge concerns.

We are putting on the record that we are really concerned that this Government is driving us to a state of extreme debt. Potentially, within a five-year period, according to some commentators, the state could be looking at bankruptcy. I do not use that term lightly. I am putting it on the record today because we need to understand and investigate what has been happening. We have to understand what Treasury really thinks about the level of debt the Liberal Government has been walking us into over the last eight years, and what they have planned ahead, because what they are doing now is signing deals for an AFL licence that is contingent on them spending likely $1.5 billion – and they did not get advice from Treasury about what would happen to the state debt. Instead, what they are doing is pretending, without advice from Treasury, that we can build a stadium by October 2028, which has a time line of two to four years; that is the average time if it went through the Tasmanian Planning Commission as a project of state significance, an integrated assessment project.”

“Then it has to get built – and if it does not, we will start having to pay millions of dollars to the AFL, just for the pleasure of them getting the stadium that they want, in their timeframe.”

“People have a right to know. They are sick to their back teeth about these huge issues of fiscal responsibilities being hidden from them and being treated like they are children who do not know, do not care and do not understand. People really understand there is limited money in the bucket. It is not a magic pudding. We need to use it responsibly and they want to know what the Government is signing us up for.”

“Jeremy Rockliff has officially taken Tasmania to an even worse place than Paul Lennon did with his Pulp Mill legislation. The Premier’s announcement to push through special fast-track legislation for the Macquarie Point stadium is an act of utter desperation and gutter politics, designed to avoid genuine assessment in the process he himself championed.”

SHOOT THE MESSENGERS

DR ROSALIE WOODRUFF, MP (continued) – “Jeremy Rockliff has slandered independent experts, cooked up phony legal arguments, and deliberately tried to mislead Tasmanians – all in an attempt to justify his announcement to fast-track Parliament’s approval of the stadium. Nobody has asked for this – not even the AFL, who repeatedly said they were happy with the timeline underway. Obviously, the Premier has come to realise just how many major problems there are with his stadium, and knows he has no hope of getting approval from the Planning Commission’s experts. He also wants to avoid Tasmanian people having their say, and the scathing scrutiny his stadium will get through a public hearings process. His reckless approach will likely cost the state even more in the long run if the stadium is approved.

“Ramming the stadium through Parliament, and ignoring the insurmountable and unaddressed planning problems, will significantly increase the risk of cost blowouts, unforeseen problems, and mismanagement. If Tasmanians thought the Spirits fiasco was bad, they should brace themselves for a stadium saga that is much worse if this special legislation passes Parliament. Many will be furious about this shameful decision. Our state does not want a billion spent on a stadium we don’t need – instead of being invested in homes and healthcare. The Greens stand with the majority of Tasmanians who do not want this disastrous, wasteful, unnecessary stadium to be built. We will not give up in the fight, and Labor should grow a spine and stand with the majority of Tasmanians too.”

DEAN WINTER MP (Tasmanian Times, March 2024) – “We are focused on the priorities of Tasmanians and not on the priorities of Jeremy Rockliff. Jeremy Rockliff is obsessed by this stadium. This is the only thing that appears to matter to him. What we’re worried about are the priorities of Tasmanians, which is health, housing, and cost of living.”

CECILY ROSOL MP (Hansard, 27 November 2024) – “York Part stadium in Launceston provides a sensible alternative option to a stadium down here that is too expensive and not wanted by many Tasmanians I have spoken to. I have spoken to lots and lots of people over many campaigns and have heard from almost nobody who supported the stadium in that time. York Park stadium is a perfect place to go because it has already had a $130million upgrade committed and agreed to, with funding from both state and federal governments. It is a beautiful ground. I have been to games there on a number of occasions and it is such a pleasant space to be in and is well supported by the local community in Launceston.”

CASSY O’CONNOR MLC (22 April 2025) – “With Dean Winter’s Labor party cravenly backing a new stadium regardless of the cost and risk, the Legislative Council will be a critical backstop for the community to be properly represented. The legislation Jeremy Rockliff and Eric Abetz are working to jam through Parliament by July is a complete subversion of proper process. The process, approved by Parliament, is for the proposed stadium to be independently and rigorously assessed by the Tasmanian Planning Commission as a project of state significance. The Premier and his Cabinet just don’t like what they’re hearing from the TPC’s independent panel of experts. In its Draft Integrated Assessment Report, the panel found the stadium’s likely cost to be double what the Liberals are claiming, and its benefits wildly overstated. The panel also found the new stadium would require almost an extra $2billion in state debt within a decade and cause a potential credit downgrading.

The TPC Draft Integrated Assessment Report identified major, unresolvable emergency evacuation and pedestrian safety risks, the danger of environmental contamination during construction, threats to heritage including the Cenotaph, and noise impacts on the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra. A project of this scale, cost and complexity cannot be rubber-stamped by Parliament. MPs and MLCs are not planning experts. Any approval based on a subverted process, with identified, unresolvable risks and key, missing information would be irresponsible. The Greens remain strongly in favour of the Devils and equally opposed to the proposed Macquarie Point stadium, along with most Tasmanians. We won’t stand by while government seeks to undermine experts and corrupt the legislative process with lawyers and lies.” 

+     –     +     –     +     –     +     –     +

And now, short of a Parliament decreed referendum, Janice Overett’s petition is timely. Tasmanians are looking for a way to express their frustration with the Rockliff minority government and its Labor coalition partner ignoring expert independent assessments on the Mac Point stadium AFL mandate.

“We hope people statewide will sign on and make this one of the biggest Legislative Council petitions ever tabled.” (Janice Overett, 22 April 2025).

You can sign the petition via the following link.

Petition Details -The proposed Macquarie Point stadium – Tasmania Parliament E-Petitions

References: Tasmanian House of Assembly Hansard & Tasmanian Times

https://tasmaniantimes.com/2023/03/labor-greens-claim-premier-misled-them-over-stadium-promise/

Written and compiled by Mark Pooley

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