A viral picture has perfectly captured the rage felt by countless Aussie taxpayers who are forking out millions for an “appalling” reason.
A viral picture has perfectly captured the rage felt by countless Aussie taxpayers who are forking out millions of dollars for a new Tasmanian stadium despite an ongoing housing crisis.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Macquarie Point in Hobart late last month to announce an investment into a “one-in-a-generation” urban renewal project, which will include a new, multipurpose stadium that will pave the way for Tasmania to enter the AFL.
The Albanese Government committed $240 million towards the proposed Macquarie Point stadium, out of a total projected cost of $750 million, Tuesday’s budget papers revealed.
However, the plan has sparked considerable backlash in the Tasmanian capital, which is currently in the midst of a housing crisis.
While Mr Albanese said the cash would include a private-public partnership to develop housing along the precinct – including affordable homes for “critical health workers and veterans” – critics say that promise does not go far enough.
And now, the mood on the ground has been perfectly summed up by a viral Twitter post which includes a picture of the proposed stadium precinct next to an alternative vision for the site which would focus on building hundreds of much-needed homes.
“Compare the pair. One thousand homes or 23,000 seats sitting empty for 350 days of the year,” the tweet reads.
The alternative plan for Macquarie Point has been developed by architects and is being pushed by Booker Prize-winning author Richard Flanagan, former governor Kate Warner, lawyer Roland Browne and renters’ advocate Ben Bartl.
It would include 1000 homes, which would house up to 3000 people, and would come with a $400 million price tag – a bargain at around half the cost of the stadium plan.
“The question for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is, does he want to be remembered as the man who funded a white elephant Tasmanians didn’t want? Or the man who funded the 1000 homes that Tasmanians needed?” Mr Flanagan recently told the ABC.
Meanwhile, the viral tweet has been flooded with comments from similarly outraged residents who branded the project “appalling” and “bonkers”, while one Twitter user said: “I can’t see it being anything but a spectacular fail.”
“There are so many better ways that the $ could be spent,” another wrote.
The tweet comes hot on the heels of Anglicare Tasmania’s annual Rental Affordability Snapshot for 2023, which revealed last month that rents were rising 10 times faster than income support payments, alongside soaring interest rates and devastating cost of living pressures.
“The snapshot reveals a widening gap between the rents being charged and the amount that people on low incomes can afford,” Anglicare Social Action and Research Centre co-ordinator Mary Bennett said.
In response to the damning findings, Anglicare Tasmania pushed the State Government to build a “transparent” investment framework to ensure affordable housing supply.
Meanwhile, leaked polling obtained by The Australian in 2022 suggested that 67 per cent of Tasmanians opposed plans to build the stadium at Macquarie Point.
A group of protesters, armed with umpires’ whistlers and banners, disrupted Mr Albanese’s announcement. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Alastair Bett
That sentiment was on display during Mr Albanese’s visit, when he was interrupted by hecklers and protesters armed with banners declaring: “No stadium!”
“We want affordable housing, not a stadium. Affordable housing!” a man shouted from the crowd.
“Priorities Albo, please,” another woman yelled, adding: “The big picture is housing.”
Other critics of the new stadium are convinced that Hobart’s Bellerive Oval and Launceston’s York Park are currently fit for purpose, and that a new stadium is an unnecessary cost during Tasmania’s ongoing cost of living crisis.
Tasmanian Greens leader Cassy O’Connor also told parliament last month that the AFL should give Tasmania the 19th licence without a new stadium.
“Tasmania is one of the founding football states and has a long history of making rich contributions to the national game,” she said.
“We deserve a team of our own without having to make taxpayers pay for a stadium – something no other state has had to do to get a team.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has pledged $240 million for the stadium project. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones
“We deserve our own teams and we deserve not to be saddled with a billion-dollar stadium, a half-billion-dollar debt, an eyesore on the waterfront and two existing, perfectly good stadiums that become white elephants.”
At the same time, John Quiggin, a professor at The University of Queensland’s School of Economics, recently explained in The Conversation that the “economic case for the Hobart Stadium is startlingly thin” and that it “can only make Tasmania’s housing crisis worse”.
“The numbers here are quite startling. The centrepiece of federal Labor’s election platform was a $10 billion fund for housing, providing $500 million year to support social housing,” he wrote.
“If this $500 million were allocated proportionally by population, Tasmania would get about $10 million a year. The Commonwealth’s $240 million contribution to the stadium would cover this expenditure until nearly 2050. The total public outlay on the Hobart stadium (with $375 million from the Tasmanian Government) would cover most of this century.
“At a time of extreme fiscal stringency, such a massive outlay on a luxury project is very hard to justify.”
Prof Quiggin added that claims the project would create 4200 jobs during construction and 950 afterwards were “questionable” given Tasmania’s unemployment rate is 3.8 per cent.
“In such circumstances, creating a job means luring a worker away from another. If the new job is on a major construction project, that means one less worker available to build housing,” he said.
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