Southern Tasmanian basketball players are crying out for a home after lengthy delays in building a multimillion-dollar community sports precinct at Wilkinson’s Point.
The $49 million project, which includes a multi-sport facility and a high-performance training facility for the JackJumpers basketball team, has seen little progress six years after it was promised.
“Basketball doesn’t have a home. Football has a home, multiple homes. Basketball has not one home, not one,” Glenorchy Basketball Association President Kate Clark said.
“We’ve been waiting over well over 40 years for any type of facility to be built in Tasmania … we’re still waiting, how long are we going to wait for?”
Clark said the delays are straining existing facilities, which she now considers ‘outdated and unsafe’.
Labor’s Josh Willie criticised the government for failing to live up to their promises and said that the delays were impacting communities, particularly young players who cannot access courts.
“With the same department responsible for building this facility also tasked with building the AFL High Performance Centre and with an election looking closer and closer, there are serious doubts the Liberals will even turn a sod before their term ends,” Willie said.
Sport and Recreation Minister Nic Street acknowledged the frustration and said that an announcement on the site is expected soon.
“We are in active discussions through State Growth with Glenorchy Council are the DA at the minute. We hope to have some positive announcements to make in the near future,” he said.
“The design of that facility has gone through a couple of iterations since we first committed to it.”
