Premier’s Standards Decline and Tasmania is the Loser

The standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and Tasmania is now witnessing the consequences of accepting a decline in governance, fiscal responsibility and proper planning in relation to the controversial Macquarie Point Stadium proposal, writes Dr Kate Shield.

The Standard You Walk Past is the Standard You Accept

The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.

When then Chief of the Army, Lieutenant-General David Morrison, uttered those words in 2013, it was in response to a recently exposed scandal involving sexual misconduct and degradation in the ADF, but they took on a life of their own, awakening the sleeping conscience of leaders in all walks of life.

While the Lieutenant-General was making a point about the armed forces hierarchy, his words rang true for leadership everywhere, whether in politics, business or any community organisation. His thesis – that leaders are ultimately responsible for the care of everyone under their leadership, to eliminate discrimination, and to stand up for perceived injustices or inequality, and to say that “This is not acceptable”. Things can change for the better, justice can prevail, and standards can be raised if the leadership is in the hands of one who adheres to a strong moral code with honesty and integrity. However, if a leader behaves without these qualities or witnesses poor behaviour in others and does not say or do anything to take action against it, they become part of the problem. They set the precedent; the standard they walk past becomes the norm, and the bar is slowly lowered.

From its inception, I have been following the proposal to force a roofed AFL playing field into a contaminated and restricted site on Hobart’s waterfront in complete disregard for its impact on Aboriginal Tasmanians, colonial heritage, the Cenotaph’s sacred sightlines, the TSO, the residents of Wapping, Evans Street and the Glebe, and public health of the wider Hobart community, and I have heard Morrison’s words echoing in my mind.

Standards of Governance

Whatever his motivation, when the Premier signed a secret ‘contract’ with the AFL in our name, without reference to his Cabinet, his Treasury, his Attorney General, even his Political Party, let alone Parliament and the broader Tasmanian community, he made a significant error of judgement. An error that no-one could consider good governance or an example of democratic leadership. Yet that is now the standard he has set.

If we simply walk past this standard, we are accepting that the state’s future can be signed away with the stroke of a pen by one individual. We are condoning that behaviour. We are saying that this sets an acceptable precedent for all future major infrastructure projects and ‘negotiations’. It’s a precedent for any future Premier, even in minority, to dictate planning decisions regardless of community need or sentiment.

Since that first fateful error, the Premier has simply dug in or, depending on which metaphor you prefer, has continued painting himself and his politically wounded minority government into an ever-diminishing corner. His pathological aversion to admitting he may have acted in error has meant that, rather than standing up for Tasmanians who saw immediately how blatantly unfair the ‘deal’ he had struck with the AFL was, he has resorted to rhetoric that only serves to divide us – “builders not blockers” – to demean our rightful interrogations as negativity and NIMBYism.

His actions have rejected any attempt to retrieve a social licence for his folly through community engagement, and instead he’s resorted to the same ultimatums and hard-headed bullying tactics as perpetrated by the AFL against him. He has repeatedly kicked the can down the road by acceding to enquiry after enquiry in order to stay in power, albeit in minority, only to then repudiate the enquiry’s findings, and denigrate the expertise and integrity of the professional contracted to perform the analysis.

That he gets away with this says much about the Fourth Estate in Tasmania, journalists from the ABC down who have largely cushioned his landing while he bounced from one calumny to the next as highly regarded economists, architects, planners, Indigenous elders, RSL veterans, community rights lawyers, artistic directors and festival promoters have been serially abused in the process.

Standards of Fiscal Responsibility

In economic terms this is a choice of public money being used to achieve the common good VS public money flowing into private pockets. The concept of socialised losses and capitalised profits may run in his Party’s DNA but it’s clearly not in the best interests of the wider Tasmanian community. We are being asked to put our faith in a government (and an ‘Opposition’ who promised to hold it to account) who forgot to measure a wharf, now being able to achieve something that no other state in Australia, and no other publicly funded stadium in the world could achieve, i.e. earn a positive NET benefit from its investment of public money in a multi-purpose sporting facility. Overwhelmingly, all Tasmanians, even poor ones, will pay to make individuals and corporations elsewhere in the country and overseas richer. Very little of this ‘investment’ will remain in the state and it’s unproven that it will attract any net benefit.

Proper Planning Standards

In planning terms, it is the scale of the proposal that is at the core of all planning issues. Scale refers to the relative size of the stadium compared with the size of the site upon which it is to be built and the nature of its surroundings. The fact that this oversized edifice has to be shoehorned into an undersized area of land, chosen by two amateurs on a whim, shows just how proper planning process has been inverted – i.e. that the building was chosen first, then the site, and then the instruction was to ‘make it fit’.

That initial decision, seemingly carved in stone in May 2023, contravenes everything planning experts understand about good process. We’ve ended up with a structure that is too tall (5th highest in the city); too heavy for the unstable foundation upon which it sits; too hemmed-in to allow comfortable crowd control or even safe access and egress; too bulky to avoid overwhelming the surrounding heritage structures; too incongruent in form and materials with its giant plastic dome, enormous steel arches and vast swathes of glass, conflicting with the geometry of extant waterfront architecture and heritage sandstone masonry. These issues, in turn, impact on the cost and add to the potential for major cost blowouts.

These are the concerns that occupy the minds of planners and stakeholders, but the government has eschewed stakeholder engagement unless forced to undertake it, then done everything it could to avoid addressing its outcomes.

The TPC’s Final Integrated Assessment Report (FIAR) concluded upon consideration of all costs and benefits, that the disbenefits outweigh the benefits. Yet the Government’s meagre response has simply played up the benefits, particularly those that are conveniently unquantifiable, and used ‘intangibles’ to dismiss the quantifiable disbenefits as if they simply don’t exist. It then mixed all the benefits together in a publicity blurb that ignores or dismisses the TPC’s year-long considerations and expertise completely. This is NOT a proper response to a planning document. Things are not made manifest, or spring fully formed from a few words on the pages of a glossy brochure. Is this a standard we are willing to accept?

MPs were recently asked to make a planning decision. The Stadium Order was essentially a planning decision. They were expected to have reviewed all the documentation that it took the Planning Commission a year to analyse. But they were expected to do this with the added burden of the ‘dream team’.

Whether or not Tasmania got an AFL Team licence was immaterial to the Planning Commission’s deliberations. They were asked to assess the suitability of the Mac Point precinct for an AFL sized roofed stadium and its associated infrastructure and they concluded that it wasn’t suitable. The motivation for the stadium was not relevant, nor should it have been for MPs. Neither the TPC nor the rest of Parliament should be held responsible for the Premier’s wrong-headed promises.

THE NEW NORMS

We have witnessed throughout this whole sorry saga a slow decline in standards:

• Standards of Governance – the new norm states that it’s OK for a premier to singlehandedly dictate the course of the state’s future and hand it over to corporate capture. To act without any social licence and to prioritise the commercial interests of a few over the social and economic welfare of all Tasmanians.
• Standards of Public Debate – the new norm states that it’s OK to denigrate, demean and divide the community, especially those who object to dictatorial ways. To write off considered analysis by experts as mere personal opinion when it doesn’t agree with the Premier’s narrative.
• Standards of Economic Management – the new norm states that it’s OK to ignore expert advice and cast around for any piece of shonky economic modelling that might confect an outcome that serves the proponent’s position, to paper over a hidden agenda whereby public monies are transferred into private pockets.
• Standards of Good Planning Process – the new norm states that it’s OK to overturn good process on a whim and for an individual minister to take complete control of all matters arising as this proposal proceeds, regardless of how ignorant or lacking in vision that minister may be. Remember, the current minister is the 8th in a line of Infrastructure and Urban Renewal Ministers who have overseen this portfolio while Macquarie Point remained a “wasteland” for over a decade.
• Standards of Moral Leadership – the new norm states that it’s OK to promote division, to disparage wisdom and commend folly, to counter considered debate with ill-considered insults and three-word slogans, to deceive with fanciful imagery and bamboozle with rubbery figures, and that it’s within the bounds of reason to make Tasmania a vassal state to a corporatocracy, to a point where we’ve become an international academic case study in corruption.

Accepting this decline in standards sets the precedent for these new norms.

Those who voted in favour of the Order, who waved it through, effectively condoned all the behaviours that have brought us to this point. They walked past standards that they accepted.

They will now watch as those standards they walked past become our future norms.

When the Premier promotes his ‘vision’ of Macquarie Point as being about ‘more than a stadium’ it’s possibly the one truth we can all agree on. It IS about more than a stadium. It’s about the kind of future we want for our state.

Sadly, in passing the Stadium Order, a majority of MPs in both houses decided that our future will not be one of good governance, good economic management, adherence to proper process, under the guiding hand of good moral leadership, and a fair go for all Tasmanians, including those (probably the majority) who dare to dream of a career outside of ‘professional sports’.

It’s not in our future to see all our citizens – indigenous and non-indigenous, young and old, male and female, artists, professionals and tradespeople, urban and rural dwellers, the well-off and the financially challenged – feel heard, acknowledged, respected and valued, or to have equal access to the common good and feel secure in the knowledge that they share in this state’s unique bounty. That future is no longer possible under these new standards.

It took great strength of character to stand against the juggernaut of self-interest backed by mistruths, misdirection, deflection and deceit promulgated by the Premier and his media backers.

Thankyou Cassie O’Connor, Meg Webb, Rosemary Armitage, Ruth Forrest, Mike Gaffney, Rosalie Woodruff, Vica Bayley, Helen Burnet, Tabatha Badger, Cecily Rosal, Craig Garland, Peter George, and Kristie Johnston for showing such strength of character and performing your roles with due diligence.

To those of you who lacked that strength, and walked past as the standards progressively declined, may you be forever condemned for your folly and cowardice. Oh, and watch your step on your way out, that low bar you’ve been instrumental in setting so close to the floor is a trip hazard.

Dr Kate Shield is a Hobart city resident, with qualifications and experience in education, interior design, office administration, venue management and professional development. 

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