Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 1) 2008-2009 and related bills. While I can say that this budget has dealt fairly with my state of Tasmania, there is one field of endeavour where that is definitely not the case. Australian Rules football in Tasmania has a proud history. It was not long after the game’s earliest origins in 1858 that it was embraced by the sporting population of my state—the state that I have the honour to represent here in this place. A club existed in Hobart as early as 1864, and the state’s oldest continuing club, Launceston, was formed in 1875. Leagues and associations flourished throughout the state, more often than not providing the social and sporting lifeblood of our geographically diverse population.

This enthusiasm remains the case today. Tasmania enjoys the highest participation rate of any state in the sport of Australian Rules football. Despite only having 2.4 per cent of the Australian population, Tasmania provides 5.35 per cent of Auskick participants, 4.12 per cent of clubs and 6.77 per cent of school based football nationally. But it appears that the people of Tasmania must suffer a significant penalty for their enthusiastic embrace of the national game. Like Victoria, Western Australia and South Australia, our relative participation in Australian football exceeds our relative population level, but Tasmania exceeds by more. It is quite the opposite in New South Wales and Queensland. It appears that Tasmanians are too committed to AFL football, so much so that in fact it seems to have caused the Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Football League and his advisers to reach the conclusion that there is such little room for further expansion of the game in Tasmania that we should not be considered for one of the two new team licences to be issued. This is an extraordinary premise, one which completely ignores a rich history of commitment to the game and which surely prevents the AFL from achieving its stated aim of having a truly national league. Let us examine a few raw facts.

The proposed team on the Gold Coast has effectively nowhere to play and limited available existing support, based mainly on those who have moved to the area from the established Australian football states. The team planned for Western Sydney has a stadium at which it can play but whether in the short or even long term it can go anywhere near even partially filling it must remain the big question, as it has no supporter base at all. Meanwhile, Tasmania has an existing AFL stadium and a large and committed support base which all but fills that stadium’s seats on a regular basis for those AFL games that do come our way.

The Australian Football League is a successful sporting body and business enterprise. It is arguably the standard bearer for achievement in sporting excellence in this country. It has much of which it can be proud, both on and off the field. It is entitled to continue its work and achievements to strive for even more growth and success. But surely it also has an obligation to respect, honour and reward the most committed members of the Australian football family, especially when there is no good reason why it should not. Since the clubs Hawthorn and St Kilda began to play regular roster matches at Aurora Stadium at York Park in Launceston, Tasmanians have made it clear that they want the game played at the highest level in their home state. Whilst they have always demonstrated a tremendous culture for the game, it now materialises in an additional manner through enthusiastic attendance at AFL games on their own patch.

The Tasmanian connection with the game in the past has been substantial; the contribution extraordinary. There are only 21 legends in the AFL Hall of Fame; three of them are Tasmanians: Daryl Baldock, Peter Hudson and Ian Stewart. The Tasmanian AFL ‘Team of the century’ is full of those who are wonderful exponents of the game and stands favourably alongside similar teams selected by the AFL clubs themselves, many of which, in turn, include Tasmanians who played for them. And it continues in 2008. Rodney Eade is now the coach of the Western Bulldogs. More than 20 Tasmanians are currently on AFL senior lists, and five umpire at AFL level. Matthew Richardson is playing at his very best in the twilight of his career, while Brendan Gale heads up the AFL Players Association.

The Tasmanian talent pathway continues to prepare and deliver up its young men for the AFL draft. Earlier this year, the state was victorious in the national division 2 under-18 championship, defeating both Queensland and New South Wales. The question must therefore be asked, given an apparent capability to field a team in the highest competition in the land, why Tasmania should be cast aside without even the slightest chance to mount a case, let alone be encouraged or assisted to do so. The answer may well lie in the chairman’s contribution to the AFL 2007 report. In it Mike Fitzpatrick said:

Next Generation: Securing the Future of Australian Football was adopted by the AFL ... in 2006 and $1.4 billion was allocated to all levels of the game during the next five years.

A key component of that strategy is to have an AFL premiership season match played in south-east Queensland and Sydney each week by 2015.

I note that this target date seems to have been rushed forward considerably since the presentation of the report. It might well be argued that one of the reasons for this is the continued embarrassment of having to explain the exclusion of Tasmania from the process. In the same report, Mr Fitzpatrick commented:

To assist the AFL Commission, a Gold Coast advisory group was established among local business, community and government leaders to put forward the case for an AFL club to be based on the Gold Coast.

The case put forward by the Gold Coast group to establish an AFL club on the coast was compelling.

The Gold Coast region is Australia’s premier tourist destination, attracting more than 10 million overnight and daytrip visitors each year.

That latter statistic may well be the case, but what we already know is that not too many of them bother to support or attend AFL games when they are played there. The AFL’s 2007 report reveals that an average of 11,319 people attended roster matches at Gold Coast Stadium compared with 17,403 at Aurora Stadium at York Park in Launceston, and it is nigh on impossible to buy an airline seat from Melbourne to Launceston on the weekend of one of those AFL matches. It is clear that it is as much the mainland tourist population as the locals which supports the playing of AFL at its highest level in Tasmania, and we are currently able to compare apples with apples because in both cases neither local crowd has a home team to support.

The comparative news has only got worse for the proponents of the Gold Coast in 2008. On 19 May a reported crowd of just 6,354 watched North Melbourne take on West Coast on the Gold Coast. Two weeks later 19,378 poured into York Park to watch the Western Bulldogs battle Hawthorn—maybe not apples with apples this time because the Kangaroos may have been on the nose up north and the West Coast may have had a few local fans, but it is hard to imagine that the AFL-committed Tasmania crowd would ever drop to the dismal depths experienced on that day. The last time the Eagles came to Launceston a crowd of 18,112 turned up. Maybe that is the real point: the AFL is so obsessed with growth above all else that it ignores the facts before its eyes. Referring to North Melbourne’s decision not to accept a $100 million package to relocate to the Gold Coast, Mr Fitzpatrick said:

Our major responsibility rests with continuing to grow the game and the national competition and given the Kangaroos’ decision, we will pursue the establishment of a new club on the Gold Coast. This work started in the past year and it will be a major focus of the AFL ... in 2008.

So obsessed, in fact, is the AFL that it seems that this might well be at any cost. In the Australian on 24 May journalist Patrick Smith wrote:

The Gold Coast franchise—set down for 2011—threatens to set back other sides in the competition, in some cases terminally. The AFL has drawn up generous benefits for the new side that most AFL club chiefs think will eventually hand the Gold Coast a superteam. As it stands, the Gold Coast recruiters have 80 picks to fill a 50 or so strong list. Only the baubles will be kept, the fool’s gold discarded. Clubs are finetuning their thoughts on the AFL blueprint and fans should expect a push to have the Gold Coast’s tip truck of draft picks traded for shots at uncontracted players.

There has been plenty of speculation that the AFL will also be prepared to invest whatever it takes in terms of raw cash, some say hundreds of millions, to make sure it works. This may even include building a stadium from scratch at the AFL’s expense because no-one else appears interested. Surely that must cause the odd penny to drop. Meanwhile a much surer shot lies ignored in the nation’s southernmost state.

Growth is not the only factor that ought to be applied in these situations. Key performance indicators are a feature of measuring success in today’s society and growth is always a favourite inclusion, but there is also much to be said for commitment and stability, particularly when variables such as long-term support by fans of a sporting team are thrown into the mix. It is most probably true that Tasmania would easily lose out in the potential for growth debate in any discussions on the expansion of the AFL. It is hard to grow when your level of commitment and participation is already at a high level. On the other hand, it should prove easy for the AFL to spin out plenty of data on growth in Sydney’s west and on the Gold Coast given the low base of current support. One hopes that statistics are not clouding this debate too much. As we know, it is too easy to manipulate them to get the result desired.

This is all a bit like the children’s fairy story about the bears, the chairs, the beds and the porridge. Poor old papa bear, Sydney, has a stadium but it is a bit too strong. Then there’s Goldie, the mama bear—hers is just not up to scratch and there were lots of problems when her relatives from Brisbane tried to make people sit in it a few years back. But baby bear, Tassie, has the facility that is just right, with plenty of potential for it to grow as time goes on and at not a ridiculous cost. Lots of people want to sit in Tassie bear’s stadium. The challenge it seems for the littlest bear is to find and convince Goldilocks.

But perhaps the most serious issue facing Tasmania’s push for a team in the AFL is making others, as well as its own, believe that it is serious. Perhaps until recently, any concept of an AFL team for Tasmania has been based mostly on emotion—that given the state’s history in and contribution to the national game it had a right to a team when the league expanded. And perhaps it was too easy to cast such expressions aside, largely on the basis of the state’s small and static population. But we now live in a very different world. Corporate investment transcends state and national boundaries. As far as I am aware, unless there has been a dramatic development in the past hour or so, my beloved Collingwood is not located in the Gulf States, yet it is sponsored by the national airline of the United Arab Emirates. It is not a prerequisite that sponsors have a geographical connection with the team or product that they sponsor, particularly in the 21st century. In fact, Tasmania proves exactly that by sponsoring a Melbourne based team. It makes sense because a commercial entity will often have very good reasons for promoting itself well outside its own backyard and through a popular third-party entity. I again quote Patrick Smith, who wrote in the Australian on 11 June:

It says everything about the ruthless AFL ... that when the competition is at its wealthiest—with much more to come—three Melbourne sides are threatened with all but instant execution.

At least those clubs have had the chance to put their case over a hundred years and more. Tasmania has never even had the chance for a trial—fair or otherwise. Mr Smith was referring to the possibility that the AFL might end the practice of special distributions to clubs in need, which this year saw those three clubs receive $4.1 million under the scheme. He went on to say in the same article:

The devil in all this detail is historical contracts with Melbourne’s two playing venues, the MCG and Telstra Dome. The three clubs are locked into long-term deals that deliver piddling returns.

This is a big issue not just for these three clubs but for a number of other Melbourne based sides as well. Whilst it seems to threaten the survival of three long-term existing clubs, it is not a problem which we could expect Tasmania to face if it were able to field a permanent team in the big league.

Three of the reasons that have been advanced against the argument for a Tasmanian based team in the AFL warrant some consideration. The first is that Tasmanians are so committed to the AFL game and its current clubs that they might not sufficiently embrace a team of their own. It is true that it is often hard to find a Tasmanian that does not associate with an existing AFL side one way or another. Our passion for the game and ‘our’ team is significant and during the footy season sometimes life determining, at least in terms of our social programs. The obsession with footy tipping on the AFL is almost overwhelming with a huge number of Tasmanian workplaces and social clubs committed to one form or another of such competition. But this can easily work in favour of the push for Tassie’s own team. Even if we remain loyal to our original side, we are faced with the immediate bonus of, at least once every two years, that side playing a rostered game in Tasmania. And these things are of course generational. You only have to take a cursory glance at Hawthorn games in Launceston to see that the biggest proportion of Hawks fans at the games are younger supporters—those who have made their decision as to which team to support in the period since Hawthorn has begun to play in Tasmania.

And let us not overlook the fact that Tasmanians are often, with some considerable justification, accused of being parochial. The Apple Isle did not have a team in the interstate cricket competition for the early and middle years of the Sheffield Shield. This did not prevent Tasmanians from quickly embracing the Tassie Tigers once they were admitted to the competition, and certainly not when they eventually won it—much more quickly I would say than was the case with Queensland! It is doubtful that Tasmanians would avoid for too long the chance to support an AFL team of their own, even if it were by the time honoured practice followed by AFL supporters of having a ‘second’ team.

The second cause for concern that has been thrown up is that we might not get too excited about a team that did not have many Tasmanians in it. It is, of course, true that there is no guarantee, given the current draft and transfer systems, that a significant number of Tasmanian-bred players would be part of a Tasmanian side. But Tasmanians are a welcoming bunch and, as they have shown with many new arrivals in other sports, it does not take long for a new arrival to be regarded as one of Tasmania’s own. Daniel Marsh, the captain of the Tasmanian cricket team, is a perfect example.

And then there is the argument that Tasmania could not support an AFL team in other respects. But in the case of an AFL club it is no longer necessary, as it may have been even a short time ago, to find jobs for the players in a team’s home town. This would have been an issue for Tasmania in those days, but it is now an irrelevancy because it is the club that provides the employment opportunities, not only for the players, who are now all full-time, but for the support and administrative staff as well. The same applies to many of the other arguments that are raised in objection to the suggestion that Tasmania should have its own resident AFL team. Much has been said, in justification of an expanded national league, about the need to provide more material for broadcast rights holders. But surely it does not matter whether a game being telecast is coming from Tasmania, the Gold Coast or Sydney.

There is growing support within Tasmania for an AFL team of its own. The Tasmanian government has responded by allocating some $200,000 to commission a study into the feasibility of such a move. It is perhaps regrettable that to date the Tasmanian football family and its supporters have not been treated with the respect that nearly 150 years of devotion to the national game deserves. In a thoughtful, forward-thinking piece in the Age on 15 May, Jake Niall pondered July 2013 and what that time might reveal of the progress of a Western Sydney team in the AFL. The picture painted was bleak as Niall was foreseeing poor crowds and a ‘borderline competitive’ AFL constructed team with just a single local player. In Niall’s words:

It has no supporter base and no basis for being, except the league’s ambitious expansionist agenda.

Naturally much of this is speculation, however well based, except, of course, for the latter remark, which arguably is already accepted fact. Niall’s well-considered case, which predicted that Western Sydney loomed as ‘the AFL’s Iraq’, concluded with the following:

If the AFL forges ahead with its (second) imperial adventure as planned, the Western Sydney team will consume untold millions and drain coffers to the point that the code could be weakened elsewhere—textbook overstretch. My guess is it would be cheaper to prop up a team in Tasmania, or even Canberra. In terms of financial viability, the best market for another team actually would be Perth.

In the AFL’s logic, a large population is the precious natural resource. Tassie, sadly, doesn’t have the numbers, which is tantamount to having no oil.

I think those words of Niall’s are prophetic. On all that we have heard to date, it is hard to conceive that Niall’s ‘guess’ is all that far off the mark. Surely that justifies, at the very least, the AFL giving some real time to considering Tasmania’s case.

Debate (on motion by Senator McLucas) adjourned.