... and now, the top soccer stories in Tassie newspapers today:

The Examiner - "Launceston may host Harry Kewell".
The Mercury - "FFT investigates brawl".

Just another example of how biased The Mercury is.

Still not convinced?

Of the thirteen top stories in the Mercury soccer section, six are about the "racial abuse" issue (the rest are local club news and match results).  However, in that time period (19 June - 8 July), The Mercury has also published articles about soccer workshops during World Refugee Day ("Kicking off a new life", 26 June) and an update on the Tassie A-League bid ("Tassie A-team in the pipeline", 30 June).  Why aren't these articles included?  Too positive?  Don't they suit The Mercury's point of view?

This isn't unique to the Tasmanian media - it happens all across the country, sometimes it is subtle, often it is patently obvious.  In any case, nothing is going to change if we stay silent!

So not only do we have Hawthorn and North Melbourne playing matches in Tassie - the latter due to a fair bit of effort from Hobart City Council Alderman Marti Zucco - but it seems now he is trying to get Melbourne Storm to play in Hobart.

This seems strange to me - an NRL team, instead of an A-League team, for a few reasons - first, Tasmania is certainly not known as a rugby league stronghold - it would be the #3 or #4 football code in Tassie.  Second, because Marti Zucco is Italian - and although generalisations about a person due to their heritage are not always correct, he is very proud of his roots.


Dear Mr Zucco,

I'm writing to you since you have been in the media recently, due to your actions in trying to attract national club sporting events to the state - not only the AFL games at Bellerive Oval, but also about the announcement last week of a possible NRL pre-season game at North Hobart Oval.

As you may know there has been an A-League pre-season match (featuring Melbourne Victory) each July for the past five years at Aurora Stadium in Launceston, generally drawing 5000-8000 spectators.

It would be fantastic to see a similar event in Hobart.  For the coming A-League season (October 2011-March 2012), Football Federation Australia has marked five matches to be played at a "regional venue - TBC".  I've contacted both Cricket Tasmania and Launceston City Council about the possibility of hosting one of these but have not received a response.  Going by the enthusiasm you have shown in drawing AFL and NRL matches to Hobart, I hope you would have a similar interest in negotiating an A-League match.

It would be great to get to the stage where there are regular matches in Tasmania by Melbourne Storm, Melbourne Victory, Melbourne Heart or even the Melbourne Rebels super rugby team. Such events could hopefully be the precursor to the development or upgrade of a rectangular stadium - such as North Hobart Oval - in the state.

For reference the available match dates are:

• Wed 7 Dec 2011 - Sydney FC v Perth Glory
• Sun 11 Dec 2011 - Gold Coast United v Sydney FC
• Wed 14 Dec 2011 - Wellington Phoenix v Brisbane Roar
• Wed 18 Jan 2012 - Melbourne Heart v Central Coast Mariners
• Wed 25 Jan 2012 - Adelaide United v Newcastle Jets

Full fixture list: http://www.a-league.com.au/site/_content/document/00002236-source.pdf

CC:
Cricket Tasmania (events@crickettas.com.au)
Aurora Stadium (aurorastadium@launceston.tas.gov.au)
Football Federation Australia (feedback@footballaustralia.com.au)
John Boulous, (CEO Football Federation Tasmania) (CEO@footballfedtas.com.au)
Michelle O'Byrne (Minister for Sport) (michelle.obyrne@parliament.tas.gov.au)
Mark Shelton (Shadow Minister for Sport & Rec) (mark.shelton@parliament.tas.gov.au)

Of course, it sounds like a pretty extreme proposal - and didn't the rabid hordes let everyone know! Complaints about "taxpayers are funding these nutters!" (even though they aren't) and "who's gonna pay for this little dream-up?". One particular comment amused me "oil will be of such dwindling availability and so expensive that only the super-rich will be able to afford to drive over it. " Apparently someone thinks we will still be driving petrol-powered cars in 50 years time?

One person seemed to be rather displeased with the suggestion when he suggested that "These people will destroy Tasmania!"

It's quite obvious that no-one looked at the design in context. It is an entrant in the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale - an international architecture exhibition. Entrants have been asked to explore possibilities for urban developments 50-100 years in the future. Room 11's entry, Island Proposition 2100, sets out a design which answers the question - "If, in the face of climate change, Tasmania had to accept 5 million eco-refugees, how would they do it?"


The bridge is only one part of this proposal - obviously the Mercury used it as a headline grabber - but it doesn't give credit to the rest of the design. The basis of it is a high-density, urbanised spine running from Hobart, through the Midlands, Launceston, Devonport, Burnie, through to Smithton - and then continuing on in the form of a bridge to King Island and Victoria. This "spine" would contain infrastructure such as high speed (maglev) rail as well as energy generation (wind and solar) and grey water processing.

All these details are available by simply reading the website - obviously many of the comment writers are incapable of doing so!

Tasmania's small, decentralised population and physical separation are the root of so many issues in the state - here is a concept which would solve all of them in one go! And it is just that, a concept. It is designed to make us open our eyes and look at things from a different perspective. But we could never have that in Tasmania - the "can't do" state - could we?

The Hare-Clark voting system as used in Tasmania's multi-member electorates, is one of the fairest political systems in the world. In the recent Tasmanian election, five members are elected from each of the five electorates, which make a total of twenty-five members in the House of Assembly.

One of the benefits of this system is that the end result is very similar to the will of the voting public.

Take a look at Australia's federal lower house, the House of Representatives. This system uses single member electorates. Each of the 150 seats nationally elects a single member using preferential voting. But look at the last federal election - over 16% of voters chose a member outside of the major parties (ie. Greens, Democrats, Family First, another smaller party or another independent) as their first preference - but in the final makeup of the house, only 2% of the seats are represented by a non-major party.

In the recent Tasmanian election we see how the system *should* work. The first preference votes received were split between Labor 37%, Liberal 39% the Greens 21% and other parties 3%. The final distribution of seats is Labor 10 (40%), Liberal 10 (40%) and the Greens 5 (20%). A much more accurate representation of the choice of the people.

However, people need to know how to work the system to their advantage! As you can see above, the result was very close - particular in Denison where the fifth seat was between Liberal Elise Archer and independent Andrew Wilkie. The graph below, originally from Antony Green's Election Blog (an excellent resource) demonstrates it well. (Note this particular graph was originally from this post.)

Along the bottom of the graph, you see each candidate as they (or in the case of those who secured a quota, as their excess votes) are eliminated. When one of the coloured lines goes to the bottom of the graph, it means they were the last candidate for that party. The dark grey line near the bottom shows "exhausted" votes. Voters were only required to enter numbers 1 to 5 - anything above that was optional. When one of the ballot papers "runs out of numbers" so to speak, it becomes an "exhausted" ballot.



Notice the rather small difference between the final Liberal candidate (Archer) and the independent (Wilkie) at the end of the count.

Now, notice by how much the grey bar rose when the last Labor candidate (Bacon's excess) and the last Green candidate (Burnett) were eliminated! It seems these were people who voted 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 for either Labor or the Greens, and no-one else. These votes are often wasted (as it is very unlikely that one electorate will elect five members from the one party) as the votes often "flow" onto other parties.

Without making predictions as to who would vote for who, I'd say it would be likely that most Labor voters would put any other party above the Liberals, and most Greens would put Wilkie before any other party. The second point in particular can be demonstrated by the large gain Wilkie received when Burnett was eliminated.

If only a small fraction of the the 1-2-3-4-5 Labor or Green voters had've put #6 as Wilkie, we would be looking at a parliament with 10 Labor, 9 Liberal, 5 Green and 1 Independent - which clearly would have a massive effect on who makes the next government!

There have been a couple of news tidbits about the National Broadband Network and general Tassie broadband news over the last week ...

By the way, this is my first post on the "broadband" category of this blog - it only took 2 1/2 months! I recognise that some readers are not technically inclined so I'm happy to answer questions in the comments if anyone has any!

The first one is the announcement of the locations for stage 3 of the NBN.  Where stage 1 and 2 were basically a few towns, stage 3 covers many suburbs in the major cities.

Unfortunately for us, the suburbs listed do not include Lenah Valley!  (They do include Glenorchy, but I wouldn't expect anything to be live until at least mid-2011, by which time we will - hopefully - be close to moving.)


View NBN locations - Stage 3 in a larger map

Areas in Hobart to miss out include anywhere north of Berriedale on the western shore, anywhere north of Geilston Bay on the eastern shore, anywhere east of Mornington/Howrah, the Moonah/New Town/Lenah Valley area, and anywhere south of the city (except for Kingston) 

The good news is that Internode's DSLAM deployment is well on track - most of them are live or pretty much ready to go live - a lot of their deployments here have been external to the exchange (i.e. the green cabinets that you see on the nature strip). people on Whirlpool have been sneaking up to them to see if they are making noise! Internode has 3 outages scheduled for the early hours of Tuesday and Wednesday morning this week related to Tasmania so the consensus is that it can't be far away.

As a comparison to the NBN map above, see below for an example (my estimates only!) of the coverage area of the central Hobart exchanges that Internode has their equipment in. (The others are located in Kingston, Launceston and Devonport.) I would have thought the NBN would target areas such as Austins Ferry/Granton, Lower Sandy Bay/Taroona, Old Beach/Otago, which are NOT covered by the upcoming DSLAM deployments!


View Internode DSLAMs in a larger map

Note - I know this doesn't include northern cities, or Kingston, or Netspace DSLAMs - sorry, a bit of systemic bias!

The third interesting bit of news is a combination of these two - Internode, iiNet and iPrimus have announced they will be partnering with the NBN to provide internet access over the new network when it goes live to homes in Smithton, Scottsdale and Midway Point in July. The best bit is this quote - "The ISP [Internode] will offer existing FTTH products on Tasmania’s NBN. Prices start at $49.95 per month for 5GB of quota. Internode also supports 100Mbps services geared towards business users starting from $99.99 per month." This is a pretty good sign that the retail plans available to residents of FTTH estates on the mainland will be the ones available via the NBN. The rest of the plans are available at Internode's website.

Of course I can't finish my first post about broadband without a plug for Digital Tasmania - a consumer action group, created "to give a voice to the views and needs of Tasmanian consumers in the digital age". Check the site for information on the groups aims!

Tasmanians have somewhat of an inferiority complex ... like the youngest child in a large family, you tend to get forgotten about.  A quick look through my (and my friend's) Facebook groups about Tasmania reveal groups begging for teams in the AFL and A-League.  There are groups begging for the Big Day Out, Foo Fighters and AC/DC to include us on their schedule.  There are those who want Krispy Kreme and Ikea to set up shop here, who want digital radio available here, paintball to be legalised, a Tasmanian venue as part of our World Cup bid .. even to complain that Tassie was omitted from My Kitchen Rules!

Sometimes there have been successes - the Basslink fibre optic cable is now going, bringing us cheaper broadband.  Bellerive Oval got their lights and hosted a sold-out international Twenty20 match last month.  Tasmanians got One HD eventually - a few months after the rest of the country.

In short, we want to be treated as an equal as the other five states!  Our population may be smaller but there are some services that need to remain in the state - we can't just hop in the car and drive to Melbourne whenever we want!

It was rather interesting news this week to hear that Professor Jan Gehl, an architect and urban planner from Denmark, has been hired by the Hobart City Council to design a new vision for the CBD.  He has previously done similar things very successfully for Copenhagen, London, New York, Melbourne and Sydney.  What a fantastic coup for little ol' Hobart to score his services!

Hobart certainly needs a bit of help - for those who aren't familiar with the area, central Hobart is kind of split in half - the CBD area and the waterfront area are separated from each other by Davey and Macquarie Streets - two one-way streets, four lanes each, which are pretty much the only route between the north and south of the city.

So, what is the local response to Professor Gehl's plans - all these people who want Hobart to have the services and facilities of cities four or ten times their size must surely be supportive of him, right?

The comments from the Mercury articles (1) (2) (3) tell the story.  Many are extremely supportive, but sadly there are some that are typical of the other half of Tasmanians.  Paraphrasing: "We don't want to be another clone of Melbourne or Sydney" Hmm, if you look at the cities that Gehl has previously worked with, they are all quite unique - not clones of each other!  "What do all the elderly people do if no cars are allowed?"  Whoever said cars were not allowed?  Gehl's designs generally encourage walking/cycling and discourage cars in the city centre - but 'discourage' is different from banning them!

This one really gets to me: "We are a small city, and we like it this way, leave us alone" - ah, no.  The reason so many of our young people leave for the mainland as soon as they are able is because Hobart (and Tasmania in general) is not big enough to be able to provide all the services that they are after.  Hobart is a capital city, not a rural village, and should be treated that way.  If you want to live in a rural area, perhaps you would like it more at Richmond, Huonville, Seven Mile Beach or New Norfolk.  Meanwhile, let's grow our cities - so one day we might get that Foo Fighters concert!

Are you a Tasmanian with an opinion? Specifically, a Tasmanian who uses the internet to post your opinion on the upcoming state election?

Be careful - since 6pm tonight (Friday, February 19), any online commentary about the state election must include your full name and address.  This is according to section 191 of the Tasmanian Electoral Act.

This is a completely impractical situation.  The law covers all kinds of internet activity including Facebook status updates and Twitter posts.  For obvious reasons, many people are not comfortable with their full home address being linked publicly to either of these accounts.  Some reasons, such as privacy and risk of stalking or assault are obvious, but there are also some less obvious reasons.

Digital Tasmania, supported by groups such as Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Australian Privacy Foundation, has written to the electoral commissioner requesting to not enforce this particular law, and for the leaders of the political parties to review the legislation when parliament next resumes after the election.  (Media coverage: ABC, iTWire, The Examiner)

The lack of practicality of this law was demonstrated by (or lack of) by iBleeter on Twitter who has started a drinking game - take a drink each time you see an example of the law being broken.  He was probably off his face after the first couple of hours, after breaches were spotted on the Facebook or Twitter feeds of David O'Byrne, Lisa Singh, Daniel Hulme, Will Hodgman, Jeremy Rockliff, ABC News Tasmania, The Mercury, Kim and Dave, Bob Brown, Forestry Tasmania, David Bartlett and Nick McKim.  Clearly if the Electoral Commission don't want to have a mockery made of this law they should prosecute all of the above.

Lisa Singh's breach is particularly amusing as she was on Stateline tonight - along with Cassy O'Connor and Brett Whiteley -where they were asked about the s191 law, and all of them supported it in its current form.

Even Mercury cartoonist Jon Kudelka has stated he will not be publishing his cartoons online until after the election.

One Western Australian has come to our rescue - just enter anything you want at his site at http://s191.org and he will automatically generate an authorisation for you - with his address way over in WA attached to the end.  No risk of vigilantes who disagree with your stance on the pulp mill, the Polytechnic, or water reforms egging your house!

And on that note - http://s191.org/56.

a)      Supporters travelling from the north to the south for matches (or vice versa - the percentage of people who suggested that they would attend a match at the other end of the state hovered around the 8-10% mark).

b)      Supporters attending more than one game

c)       Supporters from rural areas in the north-east, midlands, west coast, east coast, or Huon area

d)      Interstate supporters travelling to Tasmania

Of course as usual, the naysayers are up and about, as I have mentioned in a previous blog post.  One comment on Walter Pless' blog suggested that Tasmania's experience in the NBL and VFL are relevant to the potential for a Tassie A-League team.  He failed to mention our cricket team (which, although crowds are generally low, are comparable with domestic cricket crowds nationwide) and of course the large crowds which attend AFL and A-League matches at York Park.  If we can attract over 6000 people to a practice match between two non-Tasmanian teams in the middle of winter, how many would our own team attract?

If you want to know the answers to that question, TUFC has released a full breakdown of the statistics in a followup post on their site.

• Southern Cross news story - 3 Feb 2010
• ABC News - "Tas A-League pitch gains ground" - 3 Feb 2010
• The Mercury - "Support for soccer bid" - 4 Feb 2010

It's time for my first post on another one of our blogs main topics - balls, specifically of the foot variety!

Yesterday, Tassie A-League bid taskforce Tasmania United FC made a press release announcing the next stage of their bid process - a public sentiment survey.

And of course, the same thing happened that happens everytime.. the naysayers come out of the woodwork.

One anonymous poster on Walter Pless' site posted "We have at least two chances of getting an A league side here in Tasmania. Buckleys and none."  I would like to think that Buckley - FFA CEO Ben Buckley that is - who grew up in Tasmania, would like to see a team here! 

This is on a site specifically about Tasmanian football - you would expect them to be the most supportive.

"Zero chance of an A league team here. All clubs struggling. No money in the game. That is reality.", the anonymous poster continued.

I continued with some actual facts:

* Yes some clubs are struggling. Importantly, some are not. Financially, Melb and Central Coast are in the black. Crowd wise, some are down, but Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Wellington are up.

* The feasibility study includes financial info and a preliminary public interest survey.  It also states that TUFC will be able to break even with crowds as low as 8000 due to the favourable stadium arrangements in place.

* FFA is about to sign a new deal with Fox Sports for $60m/year (current deal is $17m/year).

* Buckley, Frank Lowy and Archie Fraser have all recently stated Canberra and Tasmania are their intentions for future expansion.

I don't understand the mentality of not supporting a team playing your preferred sport, in your own state.  Do people think they are going to get punished for supporting an unsuccessful bid? The general public don't need to worry about the funding or sponsors or business cases or anything like that - if the bid doesn't have them, they won't be accepted. The only question most of us have to answer is "If we get a team, will you support them?" You would expect Tasmanians, being a parochial bunch, to do so!

I think many Tasmanians have a built-in inferiority complex - they have been told that they are not good enough by mainlanders for so long that they start to believe it.

Support makes a huge amount of difference.  Look at Gold Coast United.  Ignoring the crowds they had everything that makes a hugely successful club.  Jason Culina, a World Cup Socceroo playing in Europe, returning in play in Australia in the prime of his career.  A strong squad including leading goalscorer Shane Smeltz.  Clive Palmer, Queenslands richest man, as their owner.  Good results, consistently in the top 3 of the league all season.  Robina Stadium, a 27,000 capacity stadium completed in 2005, to play in.  The only major sport on the Gold Coast over summer (not even cricket to contend with).  But their crowds are terrible, smaller than clubs based in less populated areas such as Central Coast and Townsville. 

They have not promoted themselves or connected with the community, and as a result they have the smallest crowds of any club, and that alone has caused all sorts of problems, on and off the field.

Hopefully as club based in a smaller population area, this will be one of the things that Tasmania United FC will do well.  Time will tell!