OUR PLACE HOBART has announced it has engaged respected independent economist, Dr Nicholas Gruen, to provide an update to his 2025 Independent Review of the Macquarie Point Stadium.
It is expected the report will be available in June 2026.
Spokesperson for OUR PLACE, Roland Browne, said:
In March 2024 the Premier promised Tasmania the cost of the proposed stadium to the State would be “Not one red cent more than $375 million.”
By December 2025, he gave undertakings to some Upper House members that Tasmania’s contribution would be no more than $875 million.
That is a staggering jump of $500 million, i.e. half a billion dollars in 18 months.
Even now, we don’t know the true or real cost of the stadium.
The current estimate of $1.13 billion is well and truly out of date. And it fails to include the cost of interest to fund the borrowings, or the cost of the AFL and Cricket high-performance centres, or the turf centre of excellence, or a bus fleet, or massive roadworks, or power upgrades. The list is significant.
In September 2025 the Planning Commission put the cost at $1.8 billion over 10 years. And that was based on the government’s then outdated June 2025 figures.
In this information vacuum, OUR PLACE decided we should engage an expert ourselves, to get the best advice and to do what the government refuses to do: to inform the community and the AFL of the true cost. And we’re launching a crowd funder to pay for the report.
This updated report will be critical to inform the Tasmanian community, and the AFL, just what the current true costs of the proposed Rockliff stadium will be to Tasmania, and more, in the context of a drastically changing world economy.
Lateral Economics has been engaged by Macquarie Point Vision to update my January 2025 report on the cost of the proposed Macquarie Point stadium in Hobart.
— Nicholas Gruen (@NGruen1) April 22, 2026
Much has occurred in the last 15 months at a state, national and international scale which can affect the cost of major…