Our Place – Hobart has condemned the government’s response to the Tasmanian Planning Commission’s report on the Mac Point stadium as an insult to both the Tasmanian Planning Commission and to every Tasmanian worried about Tasmania’s future.
Spokesperson Roland Browne said:
Read the government response
This blancmange of fabrication, disproven arguments and pure nonsense was comprehensively rejected by the government’s own Planning Commission report; and yet the government seems to think if it just keeps repeating the same old lies, they will be believed. It trots out the very imagery and arguments rejected by the TPC expert Panel and fails to confront the many complex planning and economic issues raised by the TPC over a period of 2 years of its assessment.
The TPC report was released at about 9:30 AM on 17 September 2025. The Premier had rejected the report it by 10:00 am that day, before he could possibly have ever have read it. But then, he signed the agreement with the AFL in May 2023 without having read that massive document, either.
This is a government equally unconcerned by truth, process, or bankrupting Tasmania for the sake of Jeremy Rockliff’s vanity. The TPC made clear taxes will go up to pay for the stadium and that it will cost every Tasmanian household $5,900.
The government response to the TPC is no more than a glossy promotional document from a real estate developer where the land-owner is the builder, funder and regulator, and where private equity was utterly disinterested.
Report after report after report by everyone from Saul Eslake to the Tasmanian Treasury has made it clear that these vanity infrastructure projects must stop or the axe will fall ever harder on jobs and services while taxes will rise.
For what is now looking to be a $2billion development, the response document is best described not as simply an embarrassment, but a great work of fiction.
There are many questions about the cost of this project, and its process, that remain unanswered by the government. This brochure tells us nothing. The 20 questions circulated by Our Place – Hobart this week remain to be addressed.
