…but I wanted to tell you about the rally I went to here in Hobart on Saturday. In Australia we have Aussie Rules football that is quite popular in several states, though not all as others prefer rugby. Each state has one stadium to accommodate football, cricket or rugby. However Tasmania has two stadiums. One in the north that is currently under renovation and one in the south of the state. Several states have one or more football teams. Tasmania does not have a team. Tasmanians have wanted a team for years but usually support a favourite team in another state. We would like one.

Now the head of the AFL, Aus Football League got together with our state premiere and said we will give you a team. All you have to do is build a covered stadium for 750 million dollars. We will chip in 15 million and your taxpayers can pay the rest. Our premiere and this head guy from Melbourne went into a room and signed a secret deal approving this. No one else in parliament was allowed to learn the terms of this contract and still don’t. Then our prime minister weighed in and said, “We’ll give you 240 million dollars if you follow these redevelopment rules in this area of old warehouses, etc on your waterfront” . However all predictions indicate costs will blow out to a billion dollars and where are the engineers and builders coming from who will build it? Where will the traffic go? There is one main road that flows by the site. Not to mention it will be 10 stories high and overshadow the Cenotaph, the ground the war and veterans memorials are on. The mayor and city council don’t know the details either. It was a done deal and then announced in the media that this stadium will be built on the waterfront of Hobart. Right in town. Again, Ten stories high-highest building in Hobart. And it is on Indigenous historic land.

Well, the proverbial shit hit the fan throughout the state. Everyone wants a team but this is blackmail. We have homeless on our winter streets. We have people dying in ambulances. We have a mental health hospital closing its doors as the building is too old. We have environmental issues. We also have 70% of people in our state not wanting a third stadium in a state with 500,000 people. We are a small state.

On Saturday a protest as called for on Parliament House lawns after 7 days of organisation. 6,000 people from all over the state arrived at noon. Every branch of government was there. Two of the party our premiere belongs two resigned and became independents as they are against the whole thing. Tasmania’s liberal government is now in minority. They did have majority. For my North American friends the liberal party here is the conservative party unlike liberals in the USA being more to the left.

So now, no one knows what will happen but the protest was great and I went to it with my camera and took photos. The only book related bit of this post is that Richard Flanagan, a Booker prize winning author and homegrown here who loves this state, introduced the speakers.

I don’t get political in my blog but I want to share my photos and if this goes ahead Tasmania will have 3 large stadiums and maybe no team.

When you visit here be careful not to step over a cut down tree in the rainforest, step over a homeless person or get in the way of a ramped ambulance who cannot unload their patient for another few hours.

Members of the other political parties all sent messages that were read against the stadium by Australian actor Essie Davis.

Now a new week is underway and time will tell what the future holds. Until next time.

I will leave you with the proposed image. Not my photo🙄🙄