Two political strategists say the Macquarie Point stadium is ‘dead in the water’ as Premier Jeremy Rockliff stares down a no-confidence vote that could bring down his government today.
On a snap episode of their ‘FontCast’ podcast this morning, Font PR partners Brad Stansfield and Becher Townshend painted a grim picture of the Premier’s political survival.
“It’s looking very, very shaky for the premier,” said Stansfield, who served as chief of staff to former Liberal Premier Will Hodgman from 2010 to 2018.
Opposition Leader Dean Winter tabled the no-confidence motion yesterday following his budget reply speech. He already has backing from independents Kristie Johnston, Andrew Jenner and Craig Garland.
The Greens met on Wednesday morning to confirm they will support the motion too.
“The vast majority of the Liberal Party room has been… literally sleepwalking, lemming-walking into opposition,” Stansfield said, referencing the classic video game where characters blindly follow each other off a cliff.
Polling from EMRS, which is also owned by Stansfield and Townshend, shows the Liberal vote has collapsed to 29%, its lowest in decades.
Public sentiment on the Macquarie Point stadium has shifted sharply. Once a fringe issue, it jumped from 2 to 13% in importance, with opposition particularly strong in the north and north-west.
Stansfield said that during the 2024 state election campaign, which he helped run, “we spent most of our time trying to polish that stinking pile of poo down there on Macquarie Point”.
“I’m not talking about the poo plant I’m talking about in the proposed stadium and we were just very fortunate that the Labor Party, at that point, had a confused position on the stadium,” he said.
If the no-confidence motion passes, the hosts agree the stadium is finished regardless of what follows. “Any option you look at Stadium 1.0 for the sake of the argument is dead, it’s gone,” Stansfield said.
A new Liberal leader would need to dump the project to secure crossbench support, they said, while a Winter-led government with Greens support would also kill it.
Stansfield tipped Michael Ferguson as the most likely replacement if Rockliff falls, calling the former infrastructure minister a “clean skin” after a year out of cabinet.
“You’ve got to choose the best of the options you can’t choose the options you want,” Stansfield said of Ferguson’s prospects despite his baggage from the Spirit of Tasmania ferry debacle.
“If there is an election, just to be brutally frank, the Liberals would be annihilated,” he said. “All over, red rover. See you in 15 years.”
