Don’t ignore financial return an AFL stadium can produce for Tasmania: Gerard Whateley and Mark Robinson

Mac Point stadium opponents are using financial “distortion” in an attempt to torpedo what would be a city-defining project and ultimately cost Tasmania its AFL team, high-profile commentators say as Gill McLachlan weighs into the politics.

OPPONENTS of the Macquarie Point stadium are using financial “misrepresentation” and “distortion” in an attempt to torpedo what would be a city-defining project and ultimately cost Tasmania its AFL team.

That’s the view of long-time football observers and commentators Gerard Whateley and Mark Robinson, who hit back against protesters seeking to stop the Macquarie Point urban renewal project with a stadium as a centrepiece on their AFL 360 show on Tuesday night.

Gerard Whateley & Mark Robinson on their *AFL 360 *set.

“It is simply ignoring the return [Mac Point would generate] and the best model is Adelaide,” Whateley said.

“I vividly recall South Australians pushing back against the Adelaide Oval redevelopment and they will tell you now, and they were telling me this morning on radio, we were wrong.

“We’ve seen what it has done for this city and the financial returns that you get from it.”

Robinson said a stadium at Macquarie Point “would be fantastic for the city”.

Gerard Whateley and Mark Robinson, hosts of AFL 360 on Fox Footy.

“I look at the photos of all the protesters and I’m thinking to myself ‘what are you thinking, why the angst’,” he said.

“This is not a slight on Tasmania but there are some people down there who don’t like change, they don’t want it.

“I’m not calling them backwards, but there’s a lot of people in this world who don’t like change and unfortunately the world moves at such a pace, you’ve got to keep up.”

What Hobart's new AFL stadium at Macquarie Point could look like. Images supplied by AFL

AFL boss Gillon McLachlan stuck to the “no stadium, no team” mantra of the AFL Commission and 18 clubs while telling Tasmanians not to miss the opportunity as the state’s parliamentary pandemonium unfolds.

“There’s clearly some heavy politics going on down there and it’s reasonable for individuals and others to have their views,” McLachlan said.

“I would think the deal, the opportunity to have a Tasmanian team is significant and right before the people of Tasmania.

“It’s now an arrangement that if you want an AFL team, it comes with a stadium.

“People have their views about that, but it’s now funded and funded by the state government in part, which is what people are talking about.

“There’s $360m going down there [into Tasmanian football] from the AFL, there’s $305m coming from the Federal Government, and it is something that comes together, you can’t have one without the other and it’s actually a moment that will actually change Tasmania.”

For Whateley, there was room for sport in government budgets.

“If you measure government money dedicated to sport and you compare it to education and health, sport will always lose,” Whateley said.

“Sport is an essential part of Australian life and it has enormous benefit and great returns back to community and to budgets.

“There has to be a pot of money for sport that exists separately to the money that is needed in education and housing and health.

“To line them up against each other, it is inflammatory and actually a misrepresentation and a distortion around the way taxpayer money has been used – there is a place for sport.”