It’s probably a matter of time before some troglodont blames the new(old) 35-seat House of Assembly for Tasmania’s current political dumpster fire.
I blame a lack of respect for democracy.
In particular the two largest parties are yet to grok the political realities of Australia circa 2025.
At the recent federal elections and in Tasmania in 2024, the Liberal, Labor and ‘everyone else’ blocs are now roughly a third each.
In single seat electorates, preferences can still deliver a majority as we saw Anthony Albanese benefit from Greens’ preferences to build his side of the chamber. But he’d better not get carried away, as he is still governing with the express #1 vote of under 35% of the electorate nationally. The Coalition (as it contested the vote) garnered about 32%.
The May EMRS poll for Tasmania puts the Liberals at 29% and Labor at 31%. The Greens, Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN) and independents make up at least 37% of the vote.
Under the Hare-Clark proportional representation system for a Tasmanian House of Assembly election, neither Labor nor Liberal have anything like a pathway to a majority.
But back to respect or R-E-S-P-E-C-T as Aretha sang.
Last year’s state election produced a clear majority of representatives against the stadium. That included Labor (10), Greens (5), JLN (3) plus independents Garland and Johnston, totalling 20 of the 35 votes. Labor candidates even drove around the state in cars emblazoned with NO $TADIUM bumper stickers printed and distributed by the party itself.
We elected a no-stadium Parliament, which has since betrayed us.
Soon after the election, Rebecca White resigned and Dean Winter took over as Labor Leader. He flipped like a pancake at kinder gym and took a pro-stadium position.
While no-one begrudges a new leader the right to reset, this was a betrayal of the mandate belonging to the bloc of 10 he leads. It was a betrayal of the vote of the Tasmanian people.
Significantly, the Winter-weaselling postdated the various Liberal-crossbench agreements for supply and confidence. If it hadn’t, those agreements would surely have demanded the stadium be dumped as a condition of support.
Accordingly, instead of the stadium folly being decisively quashed as it should have been, as the Tasmanian people instructed it to be, Winter has kept it on life support.
Winter’s anti-democratic streak is so strong that it even extends to supporting the Liberals’ anti-democratic streak.
We have seen this recently with the introduction of so-called enabling legislation to try to approve the stadium. This is an attempt to circumvent the Project of State Significance (POSS) assessment process which appears likely to decide against the stadium on multiple significant grounds.
Remember that the POSS was approved by both Houses of the Tasmanian Parliament and is a staturory process managed by qualified experts.
The enabling legislation on the other hand is a ‘stuff you, just wave it through’ process. Winter, Leader of the so-called Opposition, waved like a wavy-haired waverider waveboarding at Shipstern Bluff.
Even worse, while the exposure draft was still open for consultation, the Liberal minority government tabled the actual Bill this week. This signalled unequivocally that all comments were pointless.
Have a say? Provide feedback? Suggest a point of improvement? You might as well tell the possum in the Parliament House roof.
Again, Winter was happy to see undemocracy in action and cheer it on.
It was all too much for Andrew Jenner, the last-man-standing JLN true believer who at least comes across as having a genuine interest in accountability.
He withdrew his confidence in Rockliff and hence the initially speculative – my reading – no confidence motion was able to pass 18-17.
Here we are.
But the lessons of democracy are seemingly hard to learn for Jeremy Rockliff, now outgoing Premier.
He has thrice been rolled by his backing of the stadium.
First he was rolled when backbenchers John Tucker and Lara Alexander were so disenchanted with the proposal he lost a working majority in the prevous Parliament.
To avoid being an embarrassing defeat on the floor of the House of Assembly, Rockliff dashed to the polls two years early in 2024.
His majority bid – every statement in the campaign contained the words ‘a Liberal majority Government will’ – was rolled again. He lost seats to the crossbench with whom he then had to cobble together a raft of please-let-me-governs.
Now he’s been rolled a third time. Yet, crazily – this is Tasmania calling – he was still talking smack about the stadium as he fought back tears following the want of confidence vote.
“If we cannot invest in a team, in the infrastructure required, in an industrial wasteland next to a sewerage works, then what the hell are we doing?” he said.
Simply put, that’s taradiddle. Macquarie Point was not an ‘industrial wasteland’ at the time the secret stadium deal was done. It was a site under remediation that already had a master plan approved and partially-implemented.
Indeed Macquarie Point Development Corporation had already sold off ‘The Escarpment’ parcel of land for development into housing, established a bike path, built The Longhouse which was home to Indigenous activities, activated some of the old railway sheds, hosted events such as Dark MOFO and much more.
‘Required infrastructure’ is also a bit rich. The Tasmanian Government owns and operates two stadiums in York Park and Bellerive Oval that regularly host AFL games.
No formal Tasmanian Government assessment of the suitability, either as is or with upgrade options, of Bellerive was ever done. Nor of the financial consequences to the state of effectively nixing the sunk capital and being up for the costs of remediation. Maybe it could be turned into something else, but show us the numbers. Do the work.
Due diligence is expected on major infrastructure projects. Not Premiers pulling stadium promises out of their clacker without even having them assessed by Treasury or approved by Cabinet.
So we here are on stunned-mullet Sunday wondering exactly how this plays out.
The Liberals could well attempt to cobble together enough support from the crossbench, if they so wished, to govern with a new Premier. That’s a big if.
The price of such support would definitely include abandoning the Macquarie Point stadium concept as is and renegotiating with the AFL.
Ditto with any kind of Greens-Labor deal, though it seems Greens’ yearning is unrequited.
But, ahh, sweet negotiation. Revising plans in the light of realities. It’s how things actually get done, yanno. Like the Government has done on Marinus Link, like the Government has done on berthing for the new Spirit of Tasmania ferries.
But the AFL deal, apparently, is holier than the stone tablet handed down by God to Moses: behold Andrew Dillon and the 18 apostles who issueth Commandments to Tasmania.
The Liberals have had multiple occasions at which they could have acknowledged the massive public opposition to a new stadium.
Over two years, opinion polls and indeed votes at the 2024 election show 35-40% suport and 60-65% opposition.
It would be democratic to listen to that opinion. Even former Test cricketer Tim Paine, whose playing days nose-dived after a sex scandal and who is now carving a career as a C-grade radio jock, should acknowledge that.
The stadium decision was illegitimate, and the public have called it out. Every stand up civil organisation in Tasmania – heritage, architecture, planning, RSL, integrity, you name it – has called it out.
Thus far, despite multiple Wrong Way Go Back signs, the Liberals have never missed an opportunity to miss the opportunity to get the Devils FC on the right track with a renegotiated deal.
Well blue ties buddies, here’s another one.
All the people of Tasmania want is to be heard.
Alan Whykes is Chief Editor of Tasmanian Times. And weary of this shit.
Tasmanian Times (TT) is a community-based news and current affairs service covering the island state of Tasmania. It exists to provide a diverse view of Tasmanian issues. TT creates and supports independent media content utilising the best of modern technologies and tried-and-true practices of public-interest journalism.
Support us in expanding our coverage and developing new content by and for Tasmanians.
New initiatives on the way include:
- a weekly podcast covering current affairs
- a revamped website
- a monthly cartoon competition
- a user-friendly app for both Android and Apple devices
- a weekly roundup of key stories
Ben Marshall
June 8, 2025 at 11:06
Tasmania’s politicians of the two major parties are utterly indifferent to democratic ethics and principles, and they’ll readily ditch relevant legislative checks and balances when confronted by independent expert evidence or community resistance to bad corporate-state planning.
Neither Labor nor Liberal deserve anyone’s vote at this point, and whether you lean left or right, neither party is actually capable of good, reasonable governance in this era with its two-party system, its neoliberal values and its utterly corrupt Game of Mates continuing from our colonial past, thus ensuring that individual politicians serve their own interests and those of their party, and also those of their (corporate) “mates”. Actual representative democracy – serving the ‘greater good’ – is an obstacle to those priorities, and governments cannot serve the people unless they first serve the interests of the power brokers and wealthy investors.
Meanwhile, they’re eager to dismantle democratic checks and balances to an absurd degree. Claiming to care about ‘efficiency’ (cf* Elon Musk’s DOGE strategy) they’ll claim that culling our public services is essential, while major corporate infrastructure that we don’t need and can’t afford – for example Project Marinus, the NWTD, the stadium, the gambling industry and the overextraction and pollution of our rivers and coastal waterways – is serving the greater good aka “jobs ‘n’ growth”.
The lies pile up, but with no public media or opposition to hold them to account, the Lib-Labs can continue with the status quo.
I doubt anyone, even Labor voters, think things would improve if Labor won a majority – implausible as that scenario is. Labor doesn’t even want to govern in a system where they’d have to negotiate in a democratic fashion and be forced to hear the voices of the minor parties, Independents and communities. Likewise, when the Liberals win, probably on a majority basis because we think poorly of Dean Whinger and feel sorry for poor Rocky, nothing will improve or change.
I cordially urge us all to put Liberal and Labor last on our ballots, even below parties we dislike or feel uneasy about, because only by doing so can we begin to break the system that is working against our interests.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* cf .. meaning:
The abbreviation cf (short for either Latinconfer or conferatur, both meaning ‘compare’) is generally used in writing to refer the reader to other material to make a comparison with the topic being discussed.
— Wikipedia