Media Release: Our Place Responds to Minister Abetz’s Comments on Proposed Private Partnership

Media Release
21 January 2025

OUR PLACE – HOBART has responded to Minster Abetz’s comments trumpeting public private partnerships for the Macquarie Point Stadium.

Spokesperson Roland Browne said Eric Abetz’s announcement of what Mr Abetz termed “strong, positive interest’ by the private market in investing in the Macquarie Point stadium showed the government of Premier Rockliff and Minister for Business, Industry and Resources, Mr Abetz, had learnt nothing from the Gruen Report and was really a case of dumb and dumber.

“It’s unlikely Minister Abetz has even read the Gruen report”.

“Having been exposed by the Gruen report as fundamentally mismanaging the stadium process, incurring substantial cost blowouts to the point where the stadium will now cost over a billion dollars, and hiding both the real costs and exaggerating the economic benefits, the government is now going to do exactly what the Gruen Report said they should not do: set up a private partnership.”

“Dr Gruen could not have been clearer: he explicitly warned that the ‘adoption of inefficient partnerships’ was not in the best interests of the Tasmanian taxpayer, because ‘this apparent saving’ will end up ‘costing the government more than it saves’.”

“Will the private partnership meet national guidelines as Dr Gruen recommended? You can guarantee it won’t. This is the same government that forgot to build the jetty for the Bass Strait ferries, with a North-West based Premier, having driven over the Devonport bridge hundreds of times during the years when construction was supposedly underway, failing to notice that there was nothing there. And so, we the taxpayers will pay yet again for their incompetence and utter irresponsibility, only this time we will pay with health, housing and job cuts that will be felt for decades.”