Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein won’t back down in war with AFL as temperature rises

Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein was livid when he received the AFL’s stalling response to the state’s push for an AFL team on Friday night, and he wasn’t holding back today. His line in the sand has drawn the support of past and present Tasmanian AFL champions.

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NO clarity means no contracts for Hawthorn and North Melbourne as Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein continued his hard line stance after the AFL’s latest show of disrespect against the state.

And his line in the sand has drawn the support of past and present Tasmanian AFL champions.

Current Brisbane Lion star and passionate Tasmanian Mitch Robinson fully endorsed Mr Gutwein’s position after the AFL requested another 12 months to conduct a review of the state’s AFL Taskforce business case.

“Kudos Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein! Finally someone back home not bowing down and accepting the disrespect Tassie AFL has received for so long,” Robinson tweeted.

Mitch Robinson. Picture: Michael Klein

And former Melbourne captain Brad Green also stressed how high the stakes were for his home state.

“I love my home state, Tasmania is a beautiful place. Football is really struggling. Grassroots/development has been poor for years. Kids don’t wanna play AFL in Tas, soccer is the game. Boys/girls love to have dreams, at the moment it’s not AFL,” Green tweeted with a picture of yesterday’s Mercury front page.

Brad Green. Picture: AAP/Joe Castro

Despite having the state’s business case since February 2020, AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan said due to COVID the league has been unable to make a decision on Tasmania’s request for a timeline for a club or to be told it is never going to happen.

Mr Gutwein said another 12 months was simply too long and there was no way of starting talks with the Hawks and the Roos on their combined $8 million contracts that expire this year.

“They will remain on hold until we have clarity, I’ve made that perfectly clear,” he said.

“There is no way we can put in a place arrangements and contracts moving forward for another three to five years without an understanding what the AFL’s position is in terms of our licence and our business case when we are proposing we have a licence in 2025.”

Premier Peter Gutwein. Picture: Zak Simmonds

He called on Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett and North Melbourne chairman Ben Buckley to help push the AFL for a decision.

“What we will be useful for those two club presidents, Hawthorn and North Melbourne, who we’ve had a long relationship with, both of who have said publicly they support our aspirations for our own licence, they should be saying to the AFL as well, ‘come on, get on with it, let’s get an answer and get it earlier than 2022’.” he said.

In a statement to the Sunday Tasmanian, the Taskforce said all the state has sought was a “vision and timeline for inclusion” and the AFL’s “perpetual inaction” was killing the code in Tasmania.

“We’ve demonstrated that today it’s viable, but on the current independently provided projections the sport is heading towards the abyss,” the Taskforce said.

“The correlation between an AFL team and increased participation and engagement is proven — full stop.

“It appears there is both a lack of understanding and urgency within the wider AFL community as to the realities of its game in this state.”

Opposition sports spokesman David O’Byrne also described the AFL’s response as disrespectful but said now after upping the rhetoric it was up to the Premier to outline what he would replace the AFL content with, especially in Launceston.

David O'Byrne. Picture: Chris Kidd

“The Premier now needs to be clear with Tasmanians what his events strategy is,” Mr O’Byrne said.

“If it is more AFL football in the north he needs to be clear with Tasmanians because we know the (former Premier) Jim Bacon strategy of bringing in Hawthorn and football to Tasmania was about tourism and about jobs in the middle of winter when jobs were pretty scarce.”

Mr Gutwein said if there was no AFL content in the state, it would be a damming reflection of the sport’s governing body, not of Tasmania.

“If the AFL were to walk away from Tasmania, which is what it’s risking doing right now in terms of its recalcitrance, then that says a lot about the view the AFL holds Tasmania with,” Mr Gutwein said.

“To be frank, I would have thought as one of the major sponsors, which the state of Tasmania is of AFL, that they would treat us with respect and at the moment I am not seeing that.”

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