Letters to the editor | June 17, 2022

Who was the bright spark who apparently gave little thought to how they affect so many shoppers?

Parking at $3.20 an hour has me in no doubt the council's main aim is to fill its already-overflowing coffers. Just a bit more, but in other words, greed was its focus.

One is now limited to having a day in town enjoying the shops, having a bit of lunch or a coffee. Maybe if you were efficient on skates or a skateboard and zoomed from A to B you would be able to get back to your car before the money-hungry monster ran out of time.

For just three hours' parking it is going to cost $9.60. It's not all that much for some, but for those on a limited budget it makes it a rather expensive day in town.

The council says it wants to encourage more consumers to visit. Charging this high cost isn't sending out the right enticement. Shame on the council, it's not the way to go.

ALTHOUGH I can appreciate John Collins' views (The Examiner, June 5) concerning the new location of the Spirit of Tasmania terminal at Geelong, I and many others might choose to disagree.

Many years ago we did the trip to North Queensland towing a caravan and I found the most stressful part was driving through the big cities.

Not everyone who travels on the Spirit wants to go to Melbourne, and if I ever get the chance again I would rather do a few extra kilometres than to brave the traffic through Melbourne and to have to pay a toll for the privilege of doing so.

IT'S interesting that Cardiff is the only football stadium in the UK with a fully retractable roof.Not even Manchester United with an estimated worth of $4.6 billion, which is more than half the recent Tasmanian budget of $8.3 billion, has a roofed stadium.

Tasmanians love AFL, but we are sceptical at best of the AFL. Harking back to Andrew Demetriou and his narrow and mean MBA-driven assessment of our small state and hence small market, we now have the McLachlan self-serving stymie.

How much more do you want to wrench from our state? We have been milked of players and plenty of dosh, which has been nothing short of bribe money for Hawthorn and North Melbourne. Coverage of AFL has reached such a saturation point that we no longer broadcast our own local footy. We have two stadiums with enough capacity to fit our population demographic.

Yet you still want more. It should come as no surprise that many of us would like to see you stick your roofed stadium up the darkest place you can find.

TASMANIA'S bid for the AFL team licence is caught in a Mexican stand-off, which makes any progress highly unlikely.

The AFL is not at the same level of priority for funding as health, education, and other state responsibilities. Its demand for a new stadium in Hobart, with a minimal cost estimate of $750 million, is likely to consign this dream to the never, never.

This was, unfortunately, always going to be the case. Geography is simple, really.

I FIND it offensive the chief executive of a sport organisation can dictate to a state's elected representatives the terms under which a state AFL team will be granted a licence.

According to the chief executive's non-negotiable term, the state must have a stadium that meets the sport organisation's specific requirements.

I also do not accept that a stadium determines the success of a team.

Under the chief executive's asinine reasoning to have more honey our apiarists should only increase their number of hives as bees are irrelevant.

Any sport-loving person would reasonably assume it's players that make a team, not the field on or the size of the stadium at which they play.

Our JackJumpers just proved the point to Australia in their first year in the national basketball competition.

I hope our Premier knows Tasmania is behind him and he shouldn't capitulate to what is blackmail.

A stadium will be the natural outcome of a successful Tasmanian team.