Anything's possible in an election year, so take a punt on your own fab project

Promises, promises. Don’t you love election years? All of a sudden, governments and oppositions can do anything.

A few hundred thousand to keep a football team going? Why not?

Put a stadium in the city? Sure.

Dash off letters to the PM requesting multi-millions for a precinct here and a precinct there? You bet.

It’s only April, and there are six more months until election day.

This week alone, we heard about three letters to the PM, two from Chief Minister Andrew Barr and one from Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee, and both the ACT Government and the Liberals had announcements about a lifeline for the women’s football team, Canberra United.

A miffed Lee says the government got wind of her rescue plan and gazumped it, but Capital Football doesn’t care. It’s got the money, at least for another season. What happens after that is anybody’s guess, but it won’t be an election year.

Barr wrote to Albo for a couple of 50/50 funding deals for a new stadium in Bruce, and it’s got to be there, and surprise, surprise, a convention centre and entertainment pavilion on the Civic pool site, you know, where the stadium wouldn’t fit.

Lee cranked out her own missive about the stadium, saying, “Hang on, just give us the money, and we’ll decide what kind of stadium and where it will be built”. Replying is probably not too high on Albo’s to-do list.

As far as Lee will say, the Libs want a stadium in the city, not Bruce. It’s an economic no-brainer, and everybody wants it there.

But it’s not quite a commitment. They’re talking to stakeholders, looking at the options and tossing up the numbers – $500 million to $800 million. When it comes to where in, or how close to the city you can plonk a 30,000-seat stadium, the Libs are keeping mum.

We’re told they’ll have more to say closer to the election when asked whether they still want to look at the pool site despite Barr’s feasibility study knocking it on the head or whether they have somewhere else in mind.

If it is the Civic pool site, I guess you can engineer anything with enough money. Maybe they’ll throw in a convention centre for Senator Pocock.

But take a look.

There’s not much more vacant land around unless Commonwealth Park comes into play.

So I can’t wait for what Lee might offer to the mob and whether it will be more than just punting a plan in the air. I hope it stays afloat until polling day.

The ACT Government loves a precinct. We can’t just have a stadium at Bruce. It’s got to be part of a grand plan to bring together the AIS, CIT, UC and even the new hospital, not to mention housing.

I guess, this way it’s got more of chance of jagging the Federal money it needs and finding some offsets for the costs.

But it seems nobody loves Bruce.

Then, there is the convention centre precinct. It’s now going to include the current convention centre and the pool site. That one kind of makes sense, but it came out of the blue after we were told it was going on the old Australia Forum site next to City Hill.

So what else do we need? Let’s not talk about light rail. What about a new National Aquatic Centre? A National Concert Hall by the lake to replace Llewellyn Hall?

Just put a ‘National’ in front and see what happens.

It’s less than a month until Federal Budget Day, so in a couple of weeks or maybe sooner, we can expect some ‘announceables’.

Will there be some co-funding deals in the mix? Andrew Barr will hope so.

One thing is a sure bet: whatever is unveiled over the next six months, it will be a while before anything happens, if at all. Maybe after a feasibility study or two.