TAKE ACTION: Help us pressure our Legislative Council to put a stop to the Mac Point stadium being declared a Project of State Significance.

Help us pressure our Legislative Council to put a stop to the Mac Point stadium being declared a Project of State Significance.

Despite having no merit and warranting no further assessment, with the support of the two major parties, this project has already made its way through the Lower House as a PoSS, thus one step closer to being built.  Our Upper House is now the only thing standing in the path of Tasmania, once again, being dragged through a lengthy process that will do nothing more than promote division.

UPDATE: Legislative Council voted on Wednesday, 1st November to adjourn debate on the Mac Point stadium being declared a Project of State Significance (PoSS)

So don’t worry if you thought you had missed the deadline – there is still time to tell Members what you think.

We are asking you to contact all Members to urge them to vote against this declaration. We can flood their inboxes with messages. We can let them know that this is important to us and that we are tired of our community being subsumed by such divisive, costly and pointless exercises.

Send your Email

Dear Members,

I am writing to urge you to vote against the declaration of the proposed Macquarie Point Stadium as a Project of State Significance (PoSS).

A declaration of PoSS status shifts the Mac Point stadium into the realm of rarely used planning processes that exist solely for the purpose of bypassing council approvals and removing rights of appeal.

And this is proposed for a project that is unpopular, unnecessary and unsustainable on a site that already has a hard-won, now-shelved plan that had broad community support, offering the best elements of current thinking about placemaking.

The stadium

  • has not been adequately costed
  • comes to us at the dictate of the AFL, a multi-million dollar corporate
  • will lose $300 million over 10 years
  • is a financial risk for taxpayers (we will pay for overruns and time penalties – and a lengthy PoSS process itself will, in part, cause the delays that will incur those penalties)
  • dismisses Aboriginal reconciliation (perverts a site to jam in an “Aboriginal culturally informed zone” in place of a central truth and reconciliation art park)
  • will create a traffic nightmare
  • adversely impacts on the cultural heritage and reverential ambience of the Hobart Cenotaph
  • is illegal under the prevailing Planning Scheme, set up to protect the unique values of the Sullivans Cove area
  • does not fit on the site
  • robs Tasmanians of all opportunities provided by a prime waterfront site in their capital city.

The Rockliff stadium has nothing to commend it.  On current figures, Tasmanians are told $750 million will come out of the State budget to pay for the stadium.  This figure is already outdated.  Some economists estimate the project will blow out to cost approximately $1.2 billion.  Tasmania cannot afford it.  Tasmania should not want to afford it. 

Tasmanians want government funds directed towards addressing well-identified shortcomings in housing, health, education – not a stadium that has no grounding in community consultation and no connection with community need.

The PoSS process

  • is lengthy and costly
  • rewrites the planning rules
  • results in a decision that is not subject to any appeal rights on process or merit
  • will tie up critical agencies for months.

This project is marked by unprecedented failures in transparency, independence and vision.  Please ask yourself if you can do your job properly if you don’t have sufficient detail about the project in question.  Have we ever been presented with a project less defined, more poorly costed and less connected with what Tasmanians expressly stated they wanted for this site?

The PoSS process will suck time and energy from a community that has no heart for further division, all for nothing.  It is a process that would allow this project to be assessed even though it clearly fails to comply with the Sullivans Cove Planning Scheme.  It breaches many of the principles of the scheme, designed to protect the cultural heritage of Hobart’s waterfront precinct.  The scheme specifically precludes development that overwhelms the historic spaces and buildings.  By the government’s own assessment, it is over 40 metres high.  The latest version of the Draft Precinct Plan does not reveal the height of the stadium. This tells all of us that it is problematic.  Digitally-rendered images already published by Our Place reveal a build that fully overwhelms this historic site in our capital city.

The stadium precinct plan fails to include and accommodate an Aboriginal reconciliation component in a meaningful or sensitive way.  It will become a superficial interface between the stadium and the Tasman Highway, rather than a space for reflection or contemplation as originally conceived.  A recent proposal suggests the Macquarie Point site is given heritage listing.  Historically it is where Tasmania’s Aboriginal people first had contact with white people.  This gives the site considerable and greater significance for Aboriginal reconciliation.  Yet, no acknowledgement or recognition is given.

This could not be further removed from best practice planning.

The vote of each Upper House member is now the only thing standing in the path of our community being, once again, dragged through such divisive, costly and pointless exercises.

I urge you to vote against this declaration.