Tasmania Cannot Afford a $3.5 Billion Stadium for the AFL

This is just madness. Even Rob Sitch and Utopia could not come close to this.

Andrew Wilkie in parliament today criticised the AFL’s demand for Tasmania to build a third AFL stadium at Macquarie Point, highlighting the state’s existing facilities in Launceston and Hobart. He noted the initial cost of $715 million had escalated to $1.13 billion, with a projected total cost to taxpayers of $3.5 billion over a decade. Wilkie cited the Tasmanian Planning Commission’s report, which recommended against the project, and criticised the government and opposition for ignoring expert advice.

He emphasised Tasmania’s pressing needs in housing and healthcare, with 5,000 on the social housing waitlist and a median wait time for public dentistry of nearly four years. He argued the state is being “bullied,” already has two suitable AFL venues and is on the verge of bankruptcy all while essential services like housing and health crumble.

Deputy Speaker the majority of Tasmanians have a monumental grievance right now, and that is that the AFL’s demand that Tasmania build a third AFL grade Stadium in a state of about half a million people, when we already have two stadiums on which AFL games are played.

For a start, there’s the very good facility up in Launceston, which has a capacity of just shy of 20,000 spectators. And across the river from the electorate of Clark, of course, the stadium in Bellerive, which has a capacity, again, of about 20,000 spectators.

So why on earth the AFL would bully the Tasmanian Government and through it the Tasmanian community, the way it has done, that we should build not just a third stadium Deputy Speaker, but at beautiful Macquarie point, and not just a third Stadium at beautiful Macquarie point, but with a roof. For heaven’s sakes why does the AFL insist that Tasmania spend all of that money to have a third Stadium at Macquarie point with the roof? It beggars belief. Deputy Speaker.

No wonder a clear majority of Tasmanians think that this proposal, well, this demand by the AFL is not needed.

They don’t want it and they can’t afford it.

I make the point repeatedly, Deputy Speaker, we already have two stadiums on which AFL games are played very, very successfully and, frankly, rarely filled. Why they would want a third stadium with only a capacity of 3000 extra seats, it beggars belief.

I say the majority of Tasmanians don’t want it Deputy Speaker and there has been poll after poll after poll which has shown clearly that just about everyone in Tasmania wants a team. Just about everyone in Tasmania reckons we deserve a team. I mean, we’re one of the we’re one of the foundation states when it comes to providing players to the AFL, but a clear majority of Tasmanians think we shouldn’t go ahead with this. We shouldn’t buckle to the demands of the AFL. We shouldn’t be spending billion dollars, billions of dollars, on a stadium at a time like this.

Now, Deputy Speaker let me dwell on the issue of the cost. When the Tasmanian Government agreed to the AFL demand for a stadium the Tasmanian Government said it would originally cost $715 million of which only $375 million would be taxpayers money. And the premier famously said the taxpayer would not spend, quote, not one red cent more. But what’s happened since that announcement Deputy Speaker.

Well, for a start, the Tasmanian Government hasn’t been able to find a single equity investor from the private sector. And why would they? Because detailed analysis shows the return on the investment for an investor, whether it be the private sector or the public sector, will be about 50 cents in the dollar. No wonder the whole idea of a private investment in this was a nonsense from the start. Anyway, time goes on, so now we’re up for the whole $715 million but as time went on, the cost has increased to $755 million it was then put at $945 million all from the taxpayer. And then just recently, the Tasmanian Planning Commission has had a detailed look at this, and it puts the cost of the stadium at $1.13 billion and when they calculate the cost of debt over a decade, the cost all to the taxpayer will be an estimated $1.8 billion, I mean, this is just going through the roof.

This is a state of half a million people.

Mind you, to complicate things even further, Deputy Speaker, I can’t find a competent engineer or architect in Hobart who says you can build a 23,000 seat roofed AFL Stadium in Tasmania, where the costs of building are higher than the mainland for anything less than $2 billion. So if you add the cost of debt over 10 years, we’re now looking at a total cost to the taxpayer, wait for it, about three and a half billion dollars, about 10 times what Tasmanian taxpayers were originally promised would be the bill to them.

No wonder the majority of Tasmanians think we can’t afford it, because we can’t afford it. The state’s broke.

I mean, for a conservative government, you’d think they would take financial management more seriously than others. But you know, the state, at the moment, is heading for a forecast debt of about $14 billion over the forward estimates, and then you got to add a couple of billion dollars for this stadium. Heaven sakes Deputy Speaker, now, one of the most upsetting things in recent time was this Tasmanian Planning Commission Report. Knowing that the Tasmanian Planning Commission was looking into this in some detail, those of us who don’t want the stadium thought, okay, well finally, we’ll have a detailed report, common sense will break out, and the government will use it as an opportunity to reverse out of this agreement with the AFL, or to at least renegotiate the agreement with the AFL, to at least not have a roof on the on the stadium. That’ll probably save about $700 million I’m told, by engineers and architects.

But what did the Tasmanian Government do on the day the report was released? The premier thanked the commission for their work and said that they would ignore the report, and then, after a couple of days of soul searching, the labor opposition came out as well and thanked the commission for its work and said they would ignore the report, that politicians know better than engineers than architects and professional project managers, so we’re going ahead with the report, and the TPC are going ahead with the stadium, and the TPC report is being ignored.

Now, we might cut the Tasmanian Government some slack if they had a clean track record, that they were competent at developing projects, or delivering projects, and we could have some confidence that they would do this right.

But those of you who have been paying attention to the media in recent times, probably have been unable to avoid the fiasco with the new Spirit of Tasmanian III and Spirit of Tasmanian IV ferries. Let me tell you what happened with them.

The cost for them was additionally put at $850 million for both vessels, it then blew out by another $94 million because the cost of steel went up, and the contractor went broke, and the Tasmanian taxpayer had to pay the foreign shipyard a bailout. And then we’ve learned, just in the last couple of weeks, it was one of those ‘whoops a daisy’ moments, the Tasmanian Government has just announced the hull is not strong enough. The hulls on both vessels need to be strengthened.

And it’s anyone’s guess what that’s going to cost? Heaven’s two large Bass Strait ferries have got to have their hulls strengthened.

What is that going to cost? For a start, they’ll have to sail their ships to somewhere like Singapore. They’ll have to slip and put them in a dry dock. And what, I don’t know, what re plate the hull. How many hundreds of millions of dollars is that going to cost? But that, of course, is not the end of the ferry saga. It turns out that when the ferries had been built, someone realised they’d forgotten to build appropriate berthing for the ferries in Devonport. The ship is twice the size as the old the old spirits. They need totally new births. They were initially estimated before they’ve got to build them at $90 million and to be completed by 2024, the cost of births, which they’ve now started to build, has blown out.

Wait for it, as I say, Deputy Speaker, this is one of those ‘whoops a daisy’ moments, $493 million is now the cost to build the berth, and they won’t be completed until 2027 if you believe the state government’s current figures.

For heaven’s sakes Deputy Speaker, and this is the state government that reckons they’re going to build a stadium, well, they’re now saying $1.13 billion, and I reckon, and a lot of other people reckon with the cost of debt over a decade, it’s going to be more like three and a half billion dollars. And it’s not like everything else in the state’s fine.

It’s not like we’ve got nothing better to spend our dough on down in Tasmania.

There are currently over 5,000 applicants on the waiting list for social housing. That’s up 10% in the last 12 months. There’s an estimated 600 applicants on the public housing waiting list that are entirely without housing, ie sleeping in a tent or in a car. That’s in a state of about half a million people.

But yet, the state government thinks it’s okay to spend billions of dollars to buckle to a demand from the AFL to build a third AFL stadium within sight of one of the existing AFL stadiums with a additional capacity of only 3000 more spectators.

This is just madness, and it’s not just housing Deputy Speaker that’s in strife in Tasmania, look at health. Our elective surgery waiting list as at August this year is over 9,000 people out of a state of half a million people. That’s up 11% over the last 12 months. The median wait times in Tasmania for the public dentist currently average 1,366 days, nearly four years to see a dentist if you got a toothache and you can’t afford to go to the private sector.

For heaven’s sakes Deputy Speaker, have we got a grievance?

Yes, we’ve got a hell of a grievance, and I’m giving voice to a great many Tasmanians when I say, of course, we want a team, but we won’t be bullied by the AFL and we won’t send the state further into bankruptcy by building this ridiculous stadium that the Premier and the opposition leader, I’m sorry to say, have turned into a vanity project that they will build against the advice of all the experts, and who knows where the money is going to come from, from my children and their children.

Thank you very much.

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