Picture this. Instead of the magnificent sails of the Sydney Opera House gracing Bennelong Point on Sydney Harbour, a colossal, view-sapping, banal football stadium. Instead of a world-recognised architectural masterpiece, an inward-looking, oversized hulk.
I realise I’m on delicate ground here as football is the national religion, but to my mind the prospect is absurd. And yet, this type of absurdity is exactly what the Tasmanian government has planned for the last large tract of prize waterfront land in central Hobart – Macquarie Point.
An artist’s impression of the new sporting stadium proposed in Hobart.
And why? Because Melbourne’s all-powerful AFL has muscled into town and demanded the waterfront location for its empire. Tasmanian footy fans have long wanted a team to call their own and the AFL has made that dream conditional on a new stadium being built at Macquarie Point.
The Tasmanian Government has fallen into line, claiming the project will transform Hobart into a sporting capital to rival any on the mainland or indeed the world. But how many cities do you know where international tourists flock to see a stadium? I’ll grant you Rome.
Never mind that Hobart has a stadium, the Blundstone Arena, on the eastern shore, opposite the proposed stadium, with capacity for 19,500 people, already used for AFL games. It could be upgraded for a fraction of the $750 million being touted as the cost of a new 23,000 to 27,000 seat stadium. Consider too that $750 million is more than four times the cost of MONA, the privately owned and funded art museum which indisputably transformed Tasmania and put it on the world map for tourists.
But most depressing of all is that Macquarie Point had been earmarked for far more visionary and city-shaping ideas – a Truth and Reconciliation Art Park acknowledging 40,000 years of Tasmanian Aboriginal culture and the atrocities of colonial warfare, and an Antarctic and Science Precinct. These were ideas of international resonance and authentic to the culture and history of Hobart. Given the opportunity to create something extraordinary as a gateway to the city, the Tasmanian government is going with a football stadium. The mediocrity is staggering.
The government has assured that the reconciliation park and science precinct will go ahead, but there are valid fears that in the stadium’s shadow they will be little more than tokenistic.
Hobart’s existing stadium, the smaller Blundstone Arena (Bellerive Oval).Credit:Getty Images
This is the latest debacle in the saga of Macquarie Point, a former industrial site that has been languishing for years. Melburnians might know it from past Dark Mofo festivals as the gritty Dark Park, ablaze with open fires and dazzling light and sound installations.
In fact, it was a team from MONA, headed by Dark Mofo creative director Leigh Carmichael, that originally proposed the Truth and Reconciliation Art Park. The MONA vision, revealed in December 2016, was conceived with the input of Tasmanian Aboriginal writer and academic Greg Lehman.
Carmichael now says that a football stadium and reconciliation park could co-exist, and that the stadium could be a way of getting the reconciliation park “back on track” after years of delay. But Lehman is less convinced, arguing that a stadium is “a million miles away” from the original vision.
Reconciliation Tasmania chief executive Mark Redmond says that a reconciliation park co-existing with a football stadium could allow a mainstream audience “to be exposed to some real truth-telling”. His preference, though, is for the original MONA vision which placed the reconciliation park at the heart of Macquarie Point. Redmond is frustrated about the way the AFL has bulldozed its way into town, calling it “very colonial”.
“For them to expect to move the truth-telling park aside so a football stadium can be put on that site, is pretty brutal,” he told me.
Hobart Independent MP Andrew Wilkie was instrumental in securing $50 million in federal money for remediation works at Macquarie Point a decade ago. But Wilkie will oppose any funding requests to the feds for a new stadium. The Tasmanian government has committed to footing half of the $750 million – the rest will need to come from somewhere. As Wilkie told me: “I want a team, everybody wants a footy team, but for the life of me I don’t understand why that needs another stadium.”
That’s it. Why can’t Tasmania have a football team without having to sacrifice Macquarie Point to the AFL? As club presidents deliberated these past two weeks on whether to grant Tasmania an AFL licence, I trust they bore this in mind.
Hobart does not need a Melbourne-style Docklands disfigurement. And, with the recent troubles at Hawthorn and its alleged treatment of some of its Indigenous players, the AFL surely doesn’t need another instance of its priorities appearing to override those of our First Nations people.
