Toxic Stadium Denial Infects Tasmania’s Body Politic

The Rockliff Government’s dismissal of expert warnings about the Macquarie Point AFL stadium reflects a destructive level of denial, likened to an addict ignoring a life-threatening medical prognosis writes Mark Pooley.

STATE OF DENIAL

I recently attended the funeral of a friend in Sydney.

Chatting with his surviving children during the vigil, they told me that five years ago their father had been warned by his GP to quit smoking as x-rays had indicated the presence of abnormal cells in his lungs. He was referred to a Macquarie Street cardiologist who explained the condition often started from DNA mutations, leading to tumours and subsequent spreading (metastasis) and that quitting his habit would greatly increase his chances of a healthier and longer life.  Learning of the prognosis, the children confronted their father, insisting he quit smoking immediately, but his reaction was to say,

“That’s just their opinion”.

Back in Hobart, this response reminded me of how an addiction to anything can engender extraordinary levels of denial in otherwise reasonable people. This is the very definition of the disorder.

I’m certain I will be abused by many for leveraging this personal anecdote to illustrate the ASPD (sociopathy) we have witnessed during this year’s contagion of political and public disinformation surrounding the Macquarie Point AFL stadium. It’s pertinent to use my deceased friend’s first (GP) prognosis as metaphoric of Dr Nicholas Gruen’s warnings against the stadium proposal in that the Rockliff Government – together with one incurably addicted Independent – rallied a chorus of denialists to denigrate Dr Gruen’s warnings on the stadium as compromised, or otherwise as,

“Just one person’s opinion.”

As the months passed, and as the disease further metastasised to neighbouring organs within the body politic of Tasmania, a commissioned group of specialists, comprising five highly qualified delegates in town planning, architecture, and local government law, published their findings following a year-long assessment of the stadium proposal. Included among these specialists was Professor Shelley Penn, a former president of the Australian Institute of Architects with over 35 years’ experience encompassing architectural practice and senior strategic advisory roles supporting governments and the private sector to advance outcomes for all people through the quality of public architecture, urban design and the built environment. As was expected of them, these esteemed delegates delivered their findings in the form of a scrupulously detailed report recommending against a stadium of such scale on the chosen site, and emphasising the proposal would return less than fifty cents for each of the projected 1.8 billion dollars invested. This is also metaphoric of my friend’s Macquarie Street specialist’s prognosis. It would be difficult to imagine the Premier nor any of his Ministers had waded through the damning evidence of the 236-page Integrated Assessment Report when, hours later Premier Rockliff fronted cameras to declare,

“These are just matters of opinion and choice. There is nothing in the report that says the stadium CAN’T be built.”

Then, no more than a few metastatic days later, the addicted denialist overdosed, claiming,

“The report says the stadium CAN be built.”

Any unbiased reading of the exhaustive TPC assessment would decry those words as egregious falsity, but, within a croaking pond of wide-mouth frogs, it was elevated as a clarion call for the state’s political and football hooligans who, as though to support their addiction, claimed they were doing it for their children’s future and that no bunch of overeducated, overpaid academics would stand in the way of a monument to their dependency.

It’s a Tabcorp punt as to which individuals are most responsible for the sale of Tasmania to a football- gaming empire, but much of the blame can be directed at the weakest cabal of major party parliamentarians since the days of the Gordon below Franklin Dam, and it is worth remembering that ill-fated project had progressed further in it’s construction than the Mac Point stadium has to this date.

For the majority of drug-free Tasmanians, a thin sliver of hope may save the day. Another form of carcinogenic toxicity lurks beneath inches of black bitumen covering the site in readiness for the commencement of earthworks. As cautioned on page 133 of the TPC Assessment, this remediation layer will reveal 220,000 m3 of fermenting toxic fill into which the formwork piling for hundreds of concrete piers of varying depths will be driven to reach the bedrock, releasing invisible plumes of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) which the MPDC engineers and the EPA admit is impossible to harness or redirect due to the city’s capricious winds.

And herein lies the death trap for residents and for the stadium. Depending on the wind direction, these microscopic contaminants will drift across the city, the Derwent, and beyond Greater Hobart in the form of a carcinogenic haze causing immediate respiratory problems for asthma sufferers and longer-term lung infections for an incalculable number of Hobartians and visitors.

It is worth remembering the recent closures of schools across Tasmania due to concerns over sealed plastic bags containing coloured play-sand for fear of asbestos contamination. Those earnest community health precautions, on a scale of risk, would be as low as the MPDC/Liberal/Labor/AFL’s safeguards surrounding their toxic Mac Point money pit.

But not to worry. As my deceased friend would have said, these are just opinions.

Mark Pooley is a retired architect living in Hobart.

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