---

The Stadium Tasmania Cannot Afford to Build — Yet Cannot Refuse

Tasmania is preparing to borrow close to a billion dollars to build a stadium the state will not own, on recycled land it does not control, for a league it cannot negotiate with, to host little more than a dozen games a year.

This is not infrastructure. It is tribute. The AFL has made it clear: build a brand new stadium or forget ever joining the competition. The message could have arrived in a brown paper envelope stapled to a horse’s head.

Join us if you pay for your own initiation.

The Reports They Paid For — Then Ignored

The AFL ultimatum arrived after not one but two detailed viability studies. Both concluded that a stadium on the Macquarie Point site was economically doubtful, environmentally complex, and required a lot of remediation before anyone could pour concrete. The reports cost time, expertise and public money. They showed the project was uncertain, risky and burdened by inflated expectations.

The Premier read them, nodded, filed them, and declared, “build it and they will come.”

The AFL blinked, smiled and waited for the cheque.

A Stadium That Will Sit Idle

They will not come. A twelve game schedule does not create a year round economy. A stadium is not a seaport, a hospital or a university campus. It is an events space that lies idle for most of the calendar, servicing elite corporate hospitality twice a month. Yet Tasmania is being told to imagine a stadium as a windfall, a tide that will lift all boats, as though a retractable roof can raise household incomes, as though a corporate box can shorten emergency room queues, as though a fan precinct can replace a school.

The AFL Model: Weaponised Loyalty

Sport no longer asks Premiers to invest. It instructs them. The AFL has learned to weaponise loyalty. It offers identity for sale, but demands infrastructure in return. It is more like a Harvey Norman franchise than a sporting code. It does not negotiate with premiers. It issues terms. It does not court supporters. It invoices them. And governments comply because tribalism is political currency. A premier who cuts hospital funding can survive. A premier who loses a football team is up shit creek forever.

Public Debt for Private Profit

Public money is sucked into an arena designed for private profit, a virtual shrine to corporate greed. Remediation costs to fix the harbour land fit to build on, will not be cheap, yet these burdens fall on taxpayers, not on the league that demands the stadium. Commands it also. Naming rights, broadcast revenue and corporate hospitality will enrich the AFL and its commercial partners. Tasmania will own the debt, not the dividends. It will pay for the circus while the ringmasters keep the takings.

• Tasmania has Australia’s lowest median household income.
• More than 40,000 Tasmanians are on elective surgery waiting lists annually.
• Public hospital bed ratios lag the national average.

---

A Monument to Captivity

The stadium is sold as “nation building”, as though a grandstand can heal a broken health system. AFL shills are conning us that a stadium is on a par with schools, transport, housing and hospitals.

Instead it offers loan funded LED signage and premium seating. The stadium is not being built to serve Tasmanians. It is being built to serve a league that treats states as franchises and governments as captive markets. Yet Jeremy Rockliff has tied his premiership to the stadium, insisting it will deliver jobs, tourism and Tasmania’s long-awaited AFL/AFLW teams.

Jeremy Rockliff isn’t just building a stadium; he’s building a monument to captivity. It’s a Tassie speciality. The AFL dangled Tasmania’s team like a ransom note, and the Premier signed the cheque with a smile. Call it vision, call it desperation, or maybe just Stockholm syndrome in a suit.

The Premier in the AFL’s Pocket

This is corporate bullying sanitised as civic pride. Tasmania cannot afford the stadium and its premier cannot afford to refuse it. That is the fix Jeremy Rockliff finds himself in. A billion dollar debt to secure a dozen games is not investment. It is extortion dressed in club colours. The Premier is not a rookie; he is a seasoned backbencher promoted to captain just as the ship hit the iceberg.

Circuses Without Bread

Rome had bread and circuses. Tasmania gets pies, torpedo punts and long term repayments. The crowd will cheer, the apps will invite bets and the AFL will pocket every cent its ultimatums have earned. Stadiums do not unite communities. They bind them to the code that demanded them.

Sports may bring us together. But in Tasmania it will do so inside a stadium built on debt, delivered through corporate threats, sold as heritage and financed by generations yet to be born.

Tasmania is not buying infrastructure. It is buying admission.

The AFL will own the profits.

Tasmanians will own the debt.

Coda: The Apple Isle as an Orchard for Others

The AFL did not come to Tasmania offering opportunity. It came seeking yield. It knew a small government could be bullied more easily than a big one. It knew a state with low wages and high pride would reach for identity even if it meant reaching into debt. It knew nostalgia was a more powerful bargaining chip than logic. And it knew that Tasmania would pay more dearly for that nostalgia than any mainland state ever would. That is why the AFL made the stadium a condition, not a partnership.

This is not sport expanding. This is capital predating. The league’s investors, broadcasters and corporate partners will not risk a cent. They will reap the returns from ticketing, broadcast rights, corporate boxes and naming deals while Tasmanians inherit decades of repayments and remediation costs for contaminated land they did not contaminate.

A billion dollars for a dozen games. Infrastructure that belongs to no one who pays for it. Returns captured by those who demanded it. Debt assigned to those who cannot refuse it.

The AFL will congratulate itself for “bringing the game home” while its investment class quietly extracts value from the island they claim to celebrate. They will call it heritage. They will call it community. They will call it belonging. But a stadium that bankrupts the public to enrich private interests has no loyalty to the place it occupies. It is not homecoming. It is harvest.

Tasmania is not the beneficiary of this deal. It is the orchard.

And the AFL did not come to pick fruit.

It came for the trees.

---

Additional Data and Context

• The new Macquarie Point Stadium in Hobart has been officially approved by the Tasmanian parliament; the latest cost estimate is AU$1.13 billion.
• Earlier estimates (2025) had already risen from AU$715 million → AU$755 million → AU$945 million.
• Under the plan, most of the build-cost will be borne by Tasmanian taxpayers. The state government must fill a financing gap (estimated at nearly AU$490.7 million) rather than pursuing a public-private partnership.
• Independent critics, including an economic review commissioned under a political agreement, judged the returns poor: the projected benefit-cost ratio was low and the stadium’s long-term debt burden may outweigh benefits.
• The stadium is explicitly a condition of entry to the national league for the island’s new team (Tasmania Devils), demonstrating how the AFL used its bargaining power: no stadium, no membership.
• The first games in the new stadium may be delayed; the club may continue playing at existing venues through 2029 and possibly 2030. Everything always costs more and takes longer when you sign with your eyes shut.

---