Let’s salvage the City Deal

The ever-energetic Labor frontbencher David O’Byrne was right when he declared yesterday that the Hobart City Deal was a “stinker” for southern Tasmania.

The Bridgewater bridge.

THE ever-energetic Labor frontbencher David O’Byrne was right when he declared yesterday that the Hobart City Deal was a “stinker” for southern Tasmania. It was clear from the moment it was unveiled that the package of federal funding commitments for Tasmania’s capital city had simply been former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s baby, a baby that was then seriously neglected after Mr Turnbull was rolled last August. What ended up being unveiled in Hobart six months after Mr Turnbull’s forced resignation was little more than a series of prior commitments bundled up into a glossy document.

It was such a stinker that new Prime Minister Scott Morrison didn’t even bother leaving the airport when he flew in to “sign” the deal (with the airport ostensibly the right place to unveil it because of the $82 million in it for potential border security services there).

The Deal unveiled that day only managed to hit its headline figure of $1.43 billion because spending in the Antarctic was included, alongside the cash that had already been announced to replace the Bridgewater Bridge. Take out all that spending and the deal amounted to a cash injection from the Federal Government equivalent to less than $14 million a year over 10 years — or about $50 per resident annually.

The only significant new announcement in it was $25 million to “activate” the northern suburbs transit corridor, but nobody was ever able to explain what exactly that money would be used on.

Six months on and even local Liberals will admit — perhaps only privately — that it wasn’t exactly the greatest of outcomes for our capital city, and that it fell far short of expectations. Is it any wonder, then, that the City Deal implementation plan is still being “negotiated” between the governments and councils?

But maybe there’s a silver lining in all this. If we accept that southern Tasmania is never going to get a more significant funding injection than this while the only marginal electorates here are those in the North, perhaps we should look at the cash that’s in the City Deal and think about how we might better allocate it.

Assuming the Antarctic money will be spent regardless, what is left in terms of federal cash is $30 million for affordable housing, that $25 million for the northern suburbs transit corridor, the $82 million set aside for future border security operations at the airport, and $461 million for the Bridgewater Bridge. The housing cash is important, and the border security money is locked in for that purpose. And so what is left is $486 million. And as we pointed out in this column last week, the experts at the Federal Government’s Infrastructure Australia have raised fears the full replacement of the Bridgewater Bridge might prove to be a white elephant, with the costs outweighing the benefits. Maybe there’s a way we could just fix up the existing bridge for less money and push Canberra to reallocate the funding to other stuff in Hobart itself?

Perhaps we should hit pause on the City Deal implementation plan and consider a different approach. When first proposed, this Deal was seen as an exciting way to transform Hobart — a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rethink our capital city. That horse having now bolted, should we maybe stop and have a think about how we can best salvage what we can from this, yes, stinker of a deal for Tasmania?