How the State Government misled Parliament over the UTAS Bill – promised protection covers only 14% of the Sandy Bay campus

(This diagram shows what would happen if the University of Tasmania (Protection of Land) Bill 2025 were to be enacted in its current form. In the absence of figures provided by the Government or UTAS, the numbers in this diagram and the text below are approximate, likely to within one hectare or one percent, and have been rounded).

Key points

The Government has fundamentally misled the Parliament over the University of Tasmania (Protection of Land) Bill (UTAS Land Bill), both in its November 2024 and 2025 versions, with the Bill now protecting only 14% of UTAS’ Sandy Bay campus, rather than the 100% it was originally intended to.

Of the remainder of the campus, 28% would be rezoned through operation of the Bill, but 57% (56 hectares) has surreptitiously been removed from the coverage of the Bill entirely and left unprotected. The Parliament has not only been uninformed in relation to the removal of this 57%, but it has also been misled.

The UTAS Land Bill should be immediately withdrawn, and the Government should address major questions over whether this misleading of Parliament was due to neglect or incompetence, or deliberate (that is, deceptive).

• Detail is provided below to enable readers to make up their own minds on this issue. I am clear that some, at least, of the people involved with the Bill acted deliberately to mislead while others may have acted from neglect or incompetence.

• I recently submitted a formal complaint to the Ombudsman under the Ombudsman Act 1978, in which I raised concerns about the Premier and the Department of Premier and Cabinet’s (DPAC’s) conduct in relation to the aspects of the UTAS Land Bill. In particular, I raised concerns that DPAC had withheld key documents that I requested under Right to Information (RTI), which would have shed light on this matter.

• It is open to both the House of Assembly and the Legislative Council to formally examine how they came to be misled by the Government. I would be happy to provide evidence, based on the RTI documents that I have managed to extract (principally from agencies other than DPAC).

The suggestion, which I understand is being made, that removal of 57% (56 hectares) of UTAS’ Sandy Bay campus from the coverage/protection of the UTAS Land Bill is somehow linked to the handback of land to First Nations people:

• Could be construed as a deeply cynical, not to say immoral, ploy – handback could have occurred at any time in recent years under a variety of mechanisms, would not involve the full unprotected area, and might anyway be more appropriately done by action of the Tasmanian Parliament, on behalf of the Tasmanian people, rather than by the University to whom the land was gifted by the Tasmanian people.

• In no way absolves the Government from the obligation to accurately explain major features of Bills to the Parliament and the Westminster system expectation that governments must not mislead Parliament.

Background

History

On 27 February 2024, during the Tasmanian election campaign, the State Liberal Government made an election commitment that it would:

“amend the University of Tasmania Act 1992  to require that the land at Sandy Bay currently held by the University of Tasmania cannot be sold except with the explicit support of both Houses of the Parliament.”

Subsequently the Government clarified that this commitment would also extend to the leasing of land by UTAS at Sandy Bay.

On 20 June 2024, the Government introduced the University of Tasmania (Protection of Land) Bill 2024 in the House of Assembly, in fulfilment of its election commitment.

The text of this version of the UTAS Land Bill honoured the Government’s election commitment (although the restriction on leasing is lax).

Crucially, this meant that the entire 98 hectares of UTAS’ Sandy Bay campus was protected under the terms of the UTAS Land Bill.

Following a deal between UTAS and the Government (including centrally the Premier, the Premier’s office and the Department of Premier and Cabinet), the Bill was amended at the last minute as part of the second reading process on 28 November 2024, to rezone 28% of the Sandy Bay campus as inner residential, allowing UTAS to avoid the normal disciplines and public scrutiny of rezoning processes.

• Detail is lacking on this deal due to the withholding of documents by DPAC that I requested under RTI.  I am pursuing this matter both through RTI appeals and my complaint under the Ombudsman Act 1978.

This last-minute change was bad policy and a breach of the Government’s election commitment, but at least the rezoning proposal was presented to the Parliament, albeit without quantification, in the second reading speech and subsequent debate – as it has been subsequently.

Misleading of Parliament brought to light

However, as revealed by Meg Webb MLC on 12 April 2026, what has only just become clear through detailed analysis, is that at the same time the Government was amending the UTAS Land Bill to provide for rezoning, it quietly removed some 56 hectares of land above Churchill Avenue (57% of the Sandy Bay campus) from the coverage and protection of the Bill altogether, through obscure tinkering with definitions that would have required precise drafting instructions.

In other words, if the UTAS Land Bill is enacted, UTAS’ future actions with respect to those 56 hectares will no longer be subject to the scrutiny of the Parliament – a clear breach of the Government’s election commitment and a clear subversion of the UTAS Land Bill as it was originally introduced to Parliament.

Of the 98 hectares of UTAS’ Sandy Bay campus originally intended to be protected under the UTAS Land Bill, the split following the amendment in November 2024 is thus:

• 14 hectares (14% of the Sandy Bay campus) protected

• 28 hectares (28% of the Sandy Bay campus) designated for rezoning

• 56 hectares (57% of the Sandy Bay campus) removed from the coverage/protection of the Bill altogether

So, a Bill that was to protect the 98 hectares of the Sandy Bay campus, now protects just 14 hectares. Think about that. The title of the UTAS Land Bill is palpably misleading – a more accurate title would be the University of Tasmania (Protection of Not Very Much Land at All) Bill.

The parliamentary process on the UTAS Land Bill – Government neglect/incompetence or deception?

The Government’s failure to so much as mention removal of 57% of UTAS’ Sandy Bay campus from the coverage/protection of the UTAS Land Bill in the State Parliament is made worse by the fact that it has failed to tell the Parliament this key fact – indeed misled the Parliament – on three occasions, not just once.

It is worth running through these three failures so readers can form their own opinions on whether the Government misled the Parliament through neglect/incompetence or deliberately (that is, deceptively).

• However, whether it was incompetence or deception may well come down to the individuals involved, and how closely they were involved in the amendment process in 2024. Certainly, those who formulated the amendments and issued drafting instructions should have some explaining to do.

Let’s look at the detail.

On 28 November 2024, the Government introduced rezoning amendments to the original UTAS Land Bill as part of the second reading process in the House of Assembly. While – misleadingly – the Clause Notes and Fact Sheet for the Bill remained unchanged from those provided for the Bill on 20 June 2024, at least on the parliamentary website, the rezoning amendments were covered extensively in Minister Ogilvie’s Second Reading Speech and were central in debate.

However, Minister Ogilvie’s second reading speech failed to include reference to removal of 57% of UTAS’ Sandy Bay campus from the coverage/ protection of the Bill and the issue was not mentioned in debate. Most importantly of all, a diagram provided in Schedule 2 of the amended UTAS Land Bill that showed, albeit in crude terms which should never have been accepted by the Parliament, the parts of the campus to be rezoned, made no distinction between the 14% of the campus that would be protected and the 57% of the campus that would be unprotected.

The amended Bill passed the House of Assembly with the Labor opposition supporting the Government, but Parliament was prorogued for the 2025 State election and the Bill lapsed before it could be considered by the Legislative Council.

On 25 September 2025, the Government reintroduced the UTAS Land Bill as the University of Tasmania (Protection of Land) Bill 2025, this time with updated Clause Notes and a Fact Sheet that dealt explicitly with the now incorporated rezoning provisions. The rezoning provisions were again dealt with extensively in Minister Ogilvie’s Second Reading Speech and in the second reading debate on 3 December 2025.

Once again, however, the removal of 57% of UTAS’ Sandy Bay campus from the coverage/protection of the Bill was not mentioned and the modified diagram in Schedule 2, which surely set a new low in parliamentary drafting, while crudely showing areas for rezoning, again failed to make any distinction between the 14% of the campus that would be protected and the 57% of the campus that would be unprotected. Moreover, deliberately or not, the diagram cut off a substantial portion of the 57% of the Sandy Bay campus left unprotected between John Fisher and Christ Colleges and Olinda Grove on Mt Nelson.

It should also be noted that the Fact Sheet specifically stated:

The purpose of this Bill is to amend the University of Tasmania Act 1992 (the Act) to require that the land at Sandy Bay currently held by the University of Tasmania (the University), and gifted to the University in 1951 for education, cannot be disposed of except with the explicit support of both Houses, preventing the  University from unilaterally disposing it [sic]. Certain land is excluded from this requirement and rezoned by the Bill to give the University flexibility in relation to the development of a Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) precinct on the Sandy Bay campus.

No exclusion is stated in respect of the 57% of the Sandy Bay campus removed from the coverage/protection of the UTAS Land Bill and, taken as a whole, this paragraph can only be read as saying that that 57% is still subject to the protection of the UTAS Land Bill. There had been plenty of time to make sure this paragraph (and the document as a whole) was correct – instead it is totally misleading and represented gross neglect/incompetence or deceit by the Government.

The UTAS Land Bill passed the House of Assembly with the Labor opposition again supporting the Government and it was given its first reading in the Legislative Council on 4 December 2025.

The misleading of the Parliament then, if anything, reached a new high in neglect/incompetence or deceit.  In Minister Palmer’s Second Reading Speech to the Legislative Council on 25 March 2026 – the most detailed of the three second reading speeches given on the UTAS Land Bill – she stated:

“The future of the Sandy Bay campus has been the subject of extensive community discussion and engagement. This Bill was the result – preventing the University from disposing of campus land at Sandy Bay without the approval of both Houses of Parliament. There are only two parcels of land exempt, which we are looking to rezone.”

While, personally, I believe in the honesty and integrity of Minister Palmer, the misleading character of the words drafted for her delivery is clearcut – but to paraphrase – “campus land at Sandy Bay” could not be disposed of “without the approval of both Houses of Parliament” with the sole exception of two parcels of land for rezoning.

The only possible conclusion from this statement is that the yellow and white shaded areas presented in the diagram at the start of this blog post both remained protected under the terms of the Bill – some 71% of the Sandy Bay campus, not 14% (not, I repeat, that the Government has ever bothered with quantification, or precision in its diagrams).

• I also note that, contrary to the quote from Minister Palmer’s second reading speech, the major amendment process under which land was marked for rezoning occurred without community discussion and engagement. For instance, Cabinet decided on the amendments on 18 November 2024, while Minister Ogilvie only presented the amendments to the SaveUTAS group as a fait accompli on 26 November 2024.

• The two areas for rezoning in the 2024 version of the UTAS Land Bill also increased to the three in the 2025 version of the Bill (even though the extent of the land covered may not have increased). Perhaps this was so that a section of French Street was not rezoned inner residential! It certainly was not to provide increased accuracy or intelligibility.

It is clear that the Parliament has been repeatedly misled through neglect/incompetence or through wilful deceit or a combination of both, depending on the people concerned and the roles they played. This gives an added urgency and importance to my recent complaint to the Ombudsman.

I will also be making a supplementary submission to Ombudsman on the subject of this post.