ROCKLIFF’S BOAGS SITE PURCHASE: ANOTHER MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR CORPORATE HANDOUT AMIDST ECONOMIC CRISIS
MEDIA RELEASE 16 July 2026
The Rockliff Government’s sudden proposal to purchase the historic James Boag’s Brewery site in Launceston is the next in a long line of big corporate giveaways that Tasmania simply cannot afford.
Fresh from his trip to breweries in Japan, a clearly inspired Premier Jeremy Rockliff has announced the state government will step in to explore buying the privately owned property from multinational giant Kirin. Clearly, the Premier thinks there is plenty of play money to toss around. Meanwhile, Tasmania is staring down a staggering $8.4 billion in net debt by the end of the financial year, our core infrastructure is crumbling, and families are facing homelessness in the dead of winter. The state’s appropriation bills received royal assent last week, and the public deserves to know exactly what the line item is for this corporate welfare.
It is completely galling that the Premier is spending like a drunken sailor on corporate handouts while our schools are dilapidated, our roads are potholed, and the Launceston General Hospital is turning away patients due to lack of resources, while patients and staff are set to swelter though another summer without functioning air-conditioning.
The serious lack of due diligence and transparency behind this proposed deal was laid bare at the Northern Tasmania Economic Summit. Tasmanians have a right to ask why a private property developer, Errol Stewart, was standing by the Premier’s side, presenting proposed commercial plans for the site. Why is a private developer effectively pulling the strings on a major taxpayer-funded intervention?
Furthermore, the Premier has openly admitted that the government has not carried out detailed work on the cost of remediating this heavy industrial site. What consideration has been made to understand the full extent of environmental contamination on a site that sits precariously on a flood plain? Sinking public funds into a flood-prone industrial zone without an environmental audit is a massive financial gamble. Has he learnt nothing from the shambolic handling of the Macquarie Point Stadium development?
Worse still is the complete disregard for the sheer scale of the financial liability being dumped onto taxpayers. The cost of safely decommissioning and clean-slating an industrial production brewery of this size could well exceed $1,000,000 before a single brick of the Premier's vague boutique hotel or commercial concept is even laid.
The timing of this announcement is particularly offensive to local operators. The Boags consolidation news comes in the immediate wake of the collapse of the Pub Banc Group, which shuttered seven popular Hobart venues and laid off more than 80 staff members with mortgages and rents to pay.
We are seeing chalk-and-cheese solutions from a government that tells struggling local hospitality operators to write letters to the federal government on one hand, while rushing to buy real estate from a global giant on the other.
The justification that the site will be repurposed for small-batch craft brewers is completely disconnected from reality. I have heard from industry consultants that independent brewers have absolutely no interest in using the site. Boags operates at an industrial scale far beyond their capacity, and the region already has a taxpayer-funded incubator in Ferment HQ in Legana – a $14 million investment explicitly built for small-batch and test-batch production.
Propping up a massive, under-utilised commercial facility with taxpayer dollars will only create artificial competition in an already hostile market. Locally owned, independent craft brewers employ over 300 Tasmanians, yet they are systematically locked out of 95% of the Tasmanian market by the aggressive contracting practices and anti-competitive tap monopolies of global giants like Boags (Kirin) and Cascade (Asahi).
When does the grab bag of corporate bailouts end? Instead of spending millions to help a multinational consolidate its profits interstate while private developers design the blueprints, the state government must redirect its focus toward protecting Tasmanian small businesses, dismantling monopolies, and keeping profits in the local economy where operators are feeling real cost-of-living pressures.