Latest news with #Tasmanian
West Australian
4 hours ago
- Politics
- West Australian
Tasmanian Greens buy AFL CEO Andrew Dillon a flight to Hobart as stadium row escalates ahead of election
The Tasmanian Greens party have chipped in to buy a flight ticket for AFL CEO Andrew Dillon in their latest publicity stunt to draw attention to the state's controversial proposed stadium. The $1 billion Macquarie Point stadium has been a sticking point for the Greens, who are vehemently opposed to the project despite it being a non-negotiable for the AFL to expand to the state. Despite bipartisan support from the major parties, the Greens could be crucial given another hung parliament is projected after Premier Jeremy Rockliff was forced to call a snap election for July 19. It could see the stadium remain in political limbo with the Greens urging Dillon to speak to locals on election day. 'Since the beginning of the stadium saga, the AFL has spent all their time talking to Liberal - and more recently Labor - politicians and ignoring the Tasmanian community. That needs to change. The AFL CEO should front up and listen to Tasmanians,' the Greens' statement read. 'The AFL CEO can come down, head out to some polling booths, and hear for himself what people think about the stadium. He could even head along to the Hawks vs Power game in the afternoon and remind himself of just how good a place York Park is to play football. 'We know Andrew Dillon is a busy guy, but given the huge turmoil the AFL's insistence on a stadium has caused for Tasmania, surely the least he can do is show up? 'While he might not be used to flying Jetstar, we've bought him extra leg room to make the trip a bit more like what he's probably accustomed to.' Hawthorn will face Port Adelaide at Launceston's University of Tasmania Stadium on Saturday . The original agreement between the state and the AFL was for the stadium to be finished in time for the 2029 season, with the state set to cop a $4.5 million penalty if it's not half finished by 2027. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has urged the state to get on with the project and look at the wider benefits of a team. 'We support a stadium, not just because of what it will do for AFL, but for what it will do in Hobart,' the Prime Minister told the Two Good Sports podcast. The federal government has allocated $240m for the project, while the AFL has tipped in $15m for the stadium.
Perth Now
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Perth Now
Greens play political football over Tassie stadium
More than half of agents say drug use is an issue for their players. The Tasmanian Greens party have chipped in to buy a flight ticket for AFL CEO Andrew Dillon in their latest publicity stunt to draw attention to the state's controversial proposed stadium. The $1 billion Macquarie Point stadium has been a sticking point for the Greens, who are vehemently opposed to the project despite it being a non-negotiable for the AFL to expand to the state. Despite bipartisan support from the major parties, the Greens could be crucial given another hung parliament is projected after Premier Jeremy Rockliff was forced to call a snap election for July 19. It could see the stadium remain in political limbo with the Greens urging Dillon to speak to locals on election day. 'Since the beginning of the stadium saga, the AFL has spent all their time talking to Liberal - and more recently Labor - politicians and ignoring the Tasmanian community. That needs to change. The AFL CEO should front up and listen to Tasmanians,' the Greens' statement read. 'The AFL CEO can come down, head out to some polling booths, and hear for himself what people think about the stadium. He could even head along to the Hawks vs Power game in the afternoon and remind himself of just how good a place York Park is to play football. 'We know Andrew Dillon is a busy guy, but given the huge turmoil the AFL's insistence on a stadium has caused for Tasmania, surely the least he can do is show up? 'While he might not be used to flying Jetstar, we've bought him extra leg room to make the trip a bit more like what he's probably accustomed to.' Hawthorn will face Port Adelaide at Launceston's University of Tasmania Stadium on Saturday . The original agreement between the state and the AFL was for the stadium to be finished in time for the 2029 season, with the state set to cop a $4.5 million penalty if it's not half finished by 2027. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has urged the state to get on with the project and look at the wider benefits of a team. 'We support a stadium, not just because of what it will do for AFL, but for what it will do in Hobart,' the Prime Minister told the Two Good Sports podcast. The federal government has allocated $240m for the project, while the AFL has tipped in $15m for the stadium.
Time Magazine
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
The True Story Behind 'Amy Bradley Is Missing'
More than twenty-seven years after 23-year-old Amy Bradley went missing on March 23, 1998, while on a Caribbean cruise with her family, authorities still don't know why and how she disappeared. A new Netflix documentary, Amy Bradley Is Missing, spotlights her family's ongoing journey to find her. Through interviews with Amy's family members, FBI officials working on the case, and people who believe they saw Amy alive, the hope is that covering the case on the world's largest streaming platform will reach someone who knows something that can help move it forward. In the film, the cruise director who was working on the ship insists that Amy fell or jumped overboard. A body has not been recovered in the case, which is one big reason why it remains open—and why people have theories that Amy is still alive. People who claim they saw Amy What makes the case hard to solve is that cell phones didn't exist at the time of her disappearance. The cruise ship could determine the last time Amy used her key card to enter her bedroom, but there's no way to tell when or how she left the room. In a conversation with TIME, directors Ari Mark and Phil Lott shared several theories that they have heard that suggest that she could still be alive: Maybe she was murdered, stored in the ship, and taken off when the boat docked at the next stop. Maybe she walked off the ship and started a new life somewhere. Or, maybe she is being held against her will somewhere. Amy Bradley Is Missing features people who say they saw her alive outside of the ship, but didn't report their findings until years later, so authorities couldn't act on them. In the doc, one person who claims to have seen Amy, David Carmichael, says he was walking along a beach in Curaçao when he saw a woman with a tattoo of the Tasmanian devil walking towards him. She looked like she was about to say something, but then kept walking with the two men who were with her. He thinks one of the men was Alastair Douglas, a bass player that Amy was dancing with hours before she disappeared. 'It really isn't until David Carmichael comes forward and says that he saw Amy on a beach that the possibility that she's really alive gains some real momentum,' Mark says. Other people have also come forward with claims of seeing Amy. A Navy vet, Bill Hefner, says in the film that he met a girl at a bar in Curaçao who said her name was Amy Bradley and told him that she had hopped off of a cruise ship to score drugs and now was being held against her will. In 2005, Judy Maurer says she was using a restroom in Barbados when she heard a bunch of people come into the bathroom. A group of men were ambushing a woman and telling her a deal was imminent and that she better be on time. When Maurer left the stall, she saw an emotional woman by the sink. When she asked the woman what her name was, the woman said her name was Amy. A big lead in the case for Amy being alive happened that same year. An anonymous tipster sent the Bradley family a link to a website with sex workers for hire, and an FBI forensic analysis determined that one of the women looked like Amy. A confrontation Shortly after Amy disappeared, one of the first people that the FBI questioned was the bass player on the cruise ship, Alastair Douglas. A videographer on the cruise ship found footage that showed Amy dancing with him in the middle of the night, hours before she went missing. The FBI found no evidence to charge him with Amy's disappearance, and his polygraph test was inconclusive. However, his daughter, Amica Douglas, appears in the doc and says she's not convinced that he had nothing to do with the case. Douglas talks about red flags she saw in her father, saying that when he returned from the cruise ship that Amy was on, her mother found he grew more distant. Amica adds that her dad had a bag full of photos of white women who were not her mother, which she thought was suspicious. It's rare for someone who was a person of interest to be confronted in real-time in a true crime doc but that's exactly what happened when Amica called her father while filming her interview for Amy Bradley Is Missing. He sounds exasperated when his daughter brings up Amy, yelling, 'I didn't do anything wrong. What am I supposed to do?' He explains that all he did was dance with Amy at the club. When asked if he was walking on a beach in Curaçao with Amy, he said no, claiming he stays away from beaches, because he doesn't like them. 'We just wanted to give her a chance to confront her dad, which she really wanted to do,' Mark explains, 'and of course, at the same time, see if we could glean anything, see if his story was consistent, and see if his tone was defensive as she kept telling me it would be. And, of course, it was.' Why Amy's family remains hopeful Amy's family is convinced that she is still out there, and they regularly update a website where they've posted family pictures because they've noticed that an IP address from Curaçao and Barbados visits it around holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries—and dwells on the site for about 45 minutes. They hope it's connected to Amy, but they don't know for sure because the FBI can't get more information on the IP address since it's not from a U.S. carrier. 'In case she happens to be able to look at it, hopefully she would know that we're still trying and still thinking about her,' Amy's brother Brad says in the doc. Amy's mother describes how every day she wakes up thinking 'maybe today,' meaning, maybe today is the day they will find Amy. And at night, her parents have a special goodnight ritual, in which they say, 'maybe tomorrow.' Her father Ron keeps Amy's car in the garage and still handles its maintenance. 'We all have this gut feeling that she's out there,' says Brad. 'The lack of closure or the not knowing allows us to continue to hope. So I actually prefer it that way than the finality of having an answer.' The documentary ends with a plea from her mother Iva, with tears in her eyes: 'If you know something, please give us that one thing that we need, please do that for us and do that for Amy.' The final scene is a clip from a home video of a young Amy kissing Iva on the cheek. Mark says he hopes that documentary will help lead to an answer. "Things happen and change as a result of these shows," he says. "When you put these mysteries out there, something almost always moves forward." Amy Bradley Is Still Missing is the most comprehensive documentary treatment of the case so far (it has also been covered on America's Most Wanted and Dr. Phil) and yet still, viewers will watch it and still have many questions about Amy's whereabouts that cannot be answered. As Lott puts it, 'Nothing adequately answers everything. And in fact, everything seems to just make the mystery that much more tantalizing.'
Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Tasmania is facing another hung parliament. It could cost the state its AFL team
Tasmania is staring down the barrel of another hung parliament, as polls show Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff's snap election gambit is unlikely to return a majority government. The future of Tasmania's AFL team and the state's fiscal health hang in the balance amid a deep political divide over the proposed Hobart stadium, which is backed by the major parties but fiercely opposed by the Greens and some of the crossbench. Voters will head to the polls on Saturday for the second time in 16 months - and the fourth state election in seven years. But few are optimistic it will lead to a new period of political stability. How we got here The election was called after Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff, who led a minority government relying on independents and a Jacqui Lambie Network MP, lost a motion of no confidence in the lower house on June 5. Opposition Leader Dean Winter used his budget reply speech to table the motion, which was won by 18-17 votes, saying it was in response to the state's budget, plans to sell power companies and the bungled delivery of new Spirit of Tasmania ships. Six days after the motion, Rockcliff visited Governor Barbara Baker to request an early election instead of being forced to quit. 'Another election is not what I wanted, and I know that it's not what Tasmanians wanted,' Rockcliff said on June 11. 'But it was forced upon us by the Leader of the Opposition.' What's footy got to do with it? The proposed $945 million Macquarie Point Stadium in Hobart remains a hot-button topic for many Tasmanians going into the election. In 2023, after years of lobbying and negotiations, the state was finally given a license to build a team – The Tasmanian Devils– and is slated to join the league in 2028. The AFL signed commitments with the Tasmanian and federal government for the construction of a 23,000-seat roofed stadium – a condition of the club's entry into the AFL. No stadium, no team. Since then, the stadium has been embroiled in political turmoil and economic uncertainty, with recent opinion polling showing 60 per cent of Tasmanians oppose the development demanded by the AFL. The election means a vote to approve the new stadium has been delayed. So what happens now? The state government has already missed a June 30 deadline from the AFL to obtain all required planning and environmental approvals for the stadium. Legislation to approve the stadium will need to be tabled under the next government, with new numbers in the lower house. Loading Both Labor and Liberal leaders have said they will support the stadium, however the Greens, Nationals and some independents oppose the development. It's unlikely that either major party will win a majority of seats in this election, so they'll need the support of the Greens or crossbench to form government. One threat is that anti-stadium crossbenchers demand the stadium plans be dropped or altered, a big no-go for the AFL. The 18 AFL club presidents unanimously backed the league's plan for a 19th team. However, they'll have a chance to withdraw their support if the stadium deal falls through. Until the election results become clearer, the stadium and the Devils hang in limbo. Who said what? Governor Barbara Baker in June: 'Notwithstanding the recent 2024 election, the public interest in avoiding the cost of another election and the prevailing public mood against holding an election, I have granted Premier Rockliff a dissolution.' Opposition Leader Dean Winter: 'Today I have tabled a notice of motion that says this House has no confidence in the Premier. Because he has wrecked the budget. Because he is planning to sell our power companies, our ports and our public transport. And because no one can trust him after his handling of the Spirit of Tasmania fiasco.' AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon: 'As we sit here now, 2028 is still on the agenda. We are looking forward to working with the government to deliver a stadium for all of Tasmania.' What do Tasmanians actually care about? University of Melbourne election analyst Adrian Beaumont said a new AFL team was not the central issue for most Tasmanians. Rather, many were more concerned with the state of the budget, housing and health. In a recent YouGov poll, 52 per cent of Tasmanian voters cited health as one of their top priorities and 45 per cent ranked building more public housing as a key concern. Reducing state debt was a top concern for 41 per cent of voters, while 34 per cent opposed the privatisation of state assets and 33 per cent cited opposition to the Macquarie Point stadium as one of their top priorities. Only 22 per cent supported the stadium proposal, while less than one in five voters prioritised policies supporting privatisation or cutting public services. Meanwhile, a survey of 842 Tasmanian voters, conducted for The Australia Institute, found Tasmanians overwhelmingly felt dudded by the AFL and believed the state should renegotiate with the league. Beaumont said the two major parties' steadfast support of a new stadium could lead to a surge in support for minor parties and independents. Loading 'People who oppose the stadium have to vote for someone other than the major parties,' he said. Beaumont also believes Labor's refusal to do a deal with the Greens to form government in 2024 has lost them support from the left. What do the polls say? Most polls indicate a hung parliament is the most likely outcome, which would force the major parties to negotiate with the Greens or independents to form government. Labor could form government with the Greens, a partnership the party rejected after the 2024 election. But Winter has maintained his position that he would only do deals with 'sensible' independents. Election analyst Kevin Bonham said that while he initially expected Labor to win the most seats, more recent polls suggest otherwise. 'This has led to a view that Labor's bringing down of the government could have actually backfired or at least failed to impress,' Bonham wrote on his blog. 'Tasmanians could be voting for more of the same or perhaps even a better Liberal position.'
The Age
a day ago
- Politics
- The Age
Tasmania is facing another hung parliament. It could cost the state its AFL team
Tasmania is staring down the barrel of another hung parliament, as polls show Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff's snap election gambit is unlikely to return a majority government. The future of Tasmania's AFL team and the state's fiscal health hang in the balance amid a deep political divide over the proposed Hobart stadium, which is backed by the major parties but fiercely opposed by the Greens and some of the crossbench. Voters will head to the polls on Saturday for the second time in 16 months - and the fourth state election in seven years. But few are optimistic it will lead to a new period of political stability. How we got here The election was called after Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff, who led a minority government relying on independents and a Jacqui Lambie Network MP, lost a motion of no confidence in the lower house on June 5. Opposition Leader Dean Winter used his budget reply speech to table the motion, which was won by 18-17 votes, saying it was in response to the state's budget, plans to sell power companies and the bungled delivery of new Spirit of Tasmania ships. Six days after the motion, Rockcliff visited Governor Barbara Baker to request an early election instead of being forced to quit. 'Another election is not what I wanted, and I know that it's not what Tasmanians wanted,' Rockcliff said on June 11. 'But it was forced upon us by the Leader of the Opposition.' What's footy got to do with it? The proposed $945 million Macquarie Point Stadium in Hobart remains a hot-button topic for many Tasmanians going into the election. In 2023, after years of lobbying and negotiations, the state was finally given a license to build a team – The Tasmanian Devils– and is slated to join the league in 2028. The AFL signed commitments with the Tasmanian and federal government for the construction of a 23,000-seat roofed stadium – a condition of the club's entry into the AFL. No stadium, no team. Since then, the stadium has been embroiled in political turmoil and economic uncertainty, with recent opinion polling showing 60 per cent of Tasmanians oppose the development demanded by the AFL. The election means a vote to approve the new stadium has been delayed. So what happens now? The state government has already missed a June 30 deadline from the AFL to obtain all required planning and environmental approvals for the stadium. Legislation to approve the stadium will need to be tabled under the next government, with new numbers in the lower house. Loading Both Labor and Liberal leaders have said they will support the stadium, however the Greens, Nationals and some independents oppose the development. It's unlikely that either major party will win a majority of seats in this election, so they'll need the support of the Greens or crossbench to form government. One threat is that anti-stadium crossbenchers demand the stadium plans be dropped or altered, a big no-go for the AFL. The 18 AFL club presidents unanimously backed the league's plan for a 19th team. However, they'll have a chance to withdraw their support if the stadium deal falls through. Until the election results become clearer, the stadium and the Devils hang in limbo. Who said what? Governor Barbara Baker in June: 'Notwithstanding the recent 2024 election, the public interest in avoiding the cost of another election and the prevailing public mood against holding an election, I have granted Premier Rockliff a dissolution.' Opposition Leader Dean Winter: 'Today I have tabled a notice of motion that says this House has no confidence in the Premier. Because he has wrecked the budget. Because he is planning to sell our power companies, our ports and our public transport. And because no one can trust him after his handling of the Spirit of Tasmania fiasco.' AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon: 'As we sit here now, 2028 is still on the agenda. We are looking forward to working with the government to deliver a stadium for all of Tasmania.' What do Tasmanians actually care about? University of Melbourne election analyst Adrian Beaumont said a new AFL team was not the central issue for most Tasmanians. Rather, many were more concerned with the state of the budget, housing and health. In a recent YouGov poll, 52 per cent of Tasmanian voters cited health as one of their top priorities and 45 per cent ranked building more public housing as a key concern. Reducing state debt was a top concern for 41 per cent of voters, while 34 per cent opposed the privatisation of state assets and 33 per cent cited opposition to the Macquarie Point stadium as one of their top priorities. Only 22 per cent supported the stadium proposal, while less than one in five voters prioritised policies supporting privatisation or cutting public services. Meanwhile, a survey of 842 Tasmanian voters, conducted for The Australia Institute, found Tasmanians overwhelmingly felt dudded by the AFL and believed the state should renegotiate with the league. Beaumont said the two major parties' steadfast support of a new stadium could lead to a surge in support for minor parties and independents. Loading 'People who oppose the stadium have to vote for someone other than the major parties,' he said. Beaumont also believes Labor's refusal to do a deal with the Greens to form government in 2024 has lost them support from the left. What do the polls say? Most polls indicate a hung parliament is the most likely outcome, which would force the major parties to negotiate with the Greens or independents to form government. Labor could form government with the Greens, a partnership the party rejected after the 2024 election. But Winter has maintained his position that he would only do deals with 'sensible' independents. Election analyst Kevin Bonham said that while he initially expected Labor to win the most seats, more recent polls suggest otherwise. 'This has led to a view that Labor's bringing down of the government could have actually backfired or at least failed to impress,' Bonham wrote on his blog. 'Tasmanians could be voting for more of the same or perhaps even a better Liberal position.'
