Next ACT stadium a political football

Local sports organisations must be scratching their collective heads at recent developments in this space.

After years of the can being kicked down the road in terms of Canberra's sporting venues, the city now has a football stadium long past its prime and an indoor venue shut due to safety concerns to all but people seeking vaccinations.

That has embarrassingly left the national capital's most successful women's teams, the Canberra Capitals, playing finals in an amateur basketball centre amid suggestions a giant tent be installed as our replacement for the AIS Arena.

But while the most immediate crisis relates to the city's lack of an indoor venue of any real size, it's the long-promised football stadium that has sparked election interest.

On the one hand independent Senate candidate and former Wallabies captain David Pocock is backing a 20,000 seat stadium and multi-purpose convention centre in the heart of the city.

He argues the absence of such facilities is holding Canberra back and that such an investment could make the ACT a favoured venue for national and international sporting events, live entertainment and major conventions.

"It's insane how we have allowed ourselves to get into this position where we can't actually hold big conferences ... we can't hold big sporting events," he said.

Mr Pocock has a point when he says the issue has dragged on for far too long. The debate over a suitable replacement for the convention centre - which looks even older and more tired than its 1989 build date would suggest - has been raging for almost as long as some of the people who will be voting for the first time in this year's federal election have been alive.

Meanwhile incumbent Liberal senator Zed Seselja has weighed in with a more minimalist approach.

Senator Seselja, who says he has obtained $2 billion in federal funding for the ACT over the last three years that it would not otherwise have received, says the best way forward would be to upgrade Viking Park at Tuggeranong.

"I think it would be a great offering for rugby and potentially other sports as well," he said.

The trouble is that while Senator Seselja has had discussions with "senior colleagues" - including the Treasurer - he apparently hasn't canvassed the idea with the ACT government even though he would welcome its support. He said it would "sensational, but not essential" if the Barr government came on board.

And, in an interesting backflip, the Senator has walked away from his qualified support in 2021 for a new stadium in Civic.

That has now become a "thought bubble" from an independent who, according to the Senator, "can promise the world" but not be held accountable.

This bizarre situation where an issue that should have been resolved by the ACT government many years ago has become a pawn in a game of political one-upmanship between two rivals for the ACT's second senate seat is largely of the Barr government's own making.

It, like the belated development of the new Canberra hospital, is another example of cans being kicked down the road by a well-entrenched Labor/Greens administration which has held office for more than two decades and is confident it won't be voted out any time soon.

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