The Alliance Party says the massive turnout at Dunedin Town Hall tonight for a meeting to Stop the Stadium is a last chance for the Dunedin City Council and Otago Regional Council to listen to the people.

Alliance Party spokesperson and former Dunedin North candidate Victor Billot says the movement against the public funding of the Awatea Street Stadium is a movement for democracy.

“If the pro-public money for stadium lobby on the councils don’t change course now, they are going to run into the iceberg of public opinion at the next elections.”

Mr Billot says the campaign against the stadium had united a wide cross section of the community that was present at a standing room only Town Hall.

He says most people believe that massive expenditure on a dubious entertainment complex was a crazy idea.

“The world is facing an unprecedented economic crisis; the city struggles to support basic things like the community hospice and the sewage system, yet the self-appointed stadium visionaries refuse toface facts.”

“The National Government is acting as an enabler to allow the Stadium proponents to get their way by handing over millions that was supposed to be fronted up by private business, so citizens are now paying through their rates and their taxes as well.”

Mr Billot asked where the local Labour MPs were on the issue as well, since their former leader Helen Clark had given positive support to the stadium in last year’s election campaign.

“Our local Labour MPs concern for their low income constituents and all the talk about sustainability seems to have gone quiet as some serious fence sitting goes on.”

Mr Billot says it is hard to say where the Carisbrook Stadium Trust, the Dunedin City Council and the Otago Regional Council begin and end as they seemed to be functioning as a kind of jelly like amoeba that was threatening to gobble up Dunedin.

“The lack of transparency, the absence of accountability, and the failure in democracy is deplorable.”