By The Canberra Times
April 28 2026 - 5:30am
When it comes to a new football stadium, Andrew Barr has been in the expectation management business for a very long time. He started out as the one to build expectations.
For years he was the proponent-in-chief of a new stadium for Canberra, and one prominently sited in the city centre. Our stadium was in its dying days, he said, so he visited the Asia-Pacific's most modern stadiums; a fact-finder promising to bring the best ideas and plans back home.
New Zealand city Christchurch now has a roofed, 30,000 stadium. Pictures by Keegan Carroll, supplied
Then, as the economic winds started to blow the wrong way, and the costs of running education and health systems while building a light rail network mounted, he had a Damascene conversion. He is now the leading voice in the "calm-down, the stadium is just fine" camp.
Last week Barr revisited his "multi-billion dollar" straw man argument, saying that stadium hopes would not be realised in either federal or territory budgets this year.
"There's not going to be a multi-billion dollar allocation of funds ... I just need to set some expectations in that regard," he said.
It is worth noting that Barr is about the only public figure who thinks a new stadium should cost multiple billions. Claims he made in 2024, based on some internal government number-crunching, that
a city stadium would cost almost $3 billion were widely lampooned.
Most of the largest and most modern stadiums in the world have not cost that much. As a scare tactic, it backfired.
Rather than setting expectations, those figures simply betrayed that the ACT government is not serious about delivering what was once the chief minister's pet project.
It was little wonder the chief minister was not in Christchurch over the weekend for the opening of their new stadium. The old Andrew Barr, stadium spruiker, would have been there for sure.
As a rebuttal to most of what has been said by his government in recent years, the Super Rugby festival round was powerful.
Sports reporters from
The Canberra Times were there as guests of the stadium builder, Besix Watpac, which delivered the 30,000-seat stadium for $560 million - one quarter of what Barr has claimed it would cost to do something similar in Canberra.
So too were many Brumbies fans, who were effusive in their praise not only of the atmosphere and amenity but its location in the heart of the city. "If you get this atmosphere in Civic ... this could almost be heaven," one said.
Restaurants and bars all around were crammed for hours before and after play, making a compelling case for the economic benefits of a centrally-located stadium.
And more than a sports stadium, it is a venue. It will, certainly, host the biggest performers in the world when they tour New Zealand, the kind who have for years looked past Canberra for credible host cities.
All New Zealanders can see this venue as something to be proud of, especially given it replaces a stadium destroyed by earthquake 15 years ago.
Its corporate name is One NZ Stadium after a telco, but its formal name is Te Kaha - a Maori term for strength or resilience.
It is a simple fact that every major city in Australia - and now New Zealand - has stadiums that are newer and better than Canberra Stadium.
Delivering what the national capital so obviously deserves can't be left to the ACT government, given its financial constraints and the lack of will from its political leaders.
New Zealand has shown the way. This is a national project that needs to be championed by the Prime Minister.
www.canberratimes.com.au
