Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I rise to speak this morning about the Hobart City Council’s State of the City 2026 report. While the report itself contains a lot of data and numbers, those numbers tell the story of a vibrant and diverse city, but a city that is not without its challenges. What the State of the City report tells us is that Hobart’s economy has passed $10 billion for the first time, which is a milestone. The report says it was ‘reached through productivity and higher-value work rather than population growth’. The city’s economy has roughly doubled in the last quarter of a century and the city now generates close to a quarter of the state’s entire economy, as you’d expect for a capital city.
Growth has been steady rather than spectacular, averaging about 1.2 per cent a year over the past five years, below the 3.5 per cent in growth seen across the larger capital city economies. But that is not necessarily such a bad thing, to be not growing too fast. The population is getting slightly older. In 2025, overseas migration added 892 residents to our beautiful city and remained the main driver of growth, while a net 953 people move to other parts of Hobart or Australia, and there were slightly more deaths than births.
Interestingly, the majority of the net loss of residents from Hobart was to the LGAs of Glenorchy and Clarence. It’s possibly something to do with the fact that rents are increasingly unaffordable in Hobart and there are too few available homes. The number of people working in the City of Hobart has grown over the past five years from around 63,200 jobs in 2019‑20 to about 67,200 in 2024‑25. The city remains a major employment hub, home to roughly 47 per cent of Greater Hobart’s jobs.
There’s been a growing demand for smaller dwellings in the housing space, likely supported by increased international migration and lower demand for larger dwellings as former residents have moved out to neighbouring local government areas. For a city where the population growth has been minimal, this points to the continuing importance of delivering a good supply of mixed social and affordable housing, and it’s a challenge that the government continues still to have.
Over the past five years, rents have risen at a fairly steady 4.0‑4.5 per cent a year. They’ve continued to edge up while house prices have levelled off, which is good news for young people. The rental market remains savagely tight with vacancy at around 0.5 per cent. The value of building approvals in the City of Hobart has picked up in 2025‑26, with a month still to be counted. Residential approvals of 109 million already exceed the whole of 2024‑25, which was 91 million.
Hobart has the tightest CBD office market in the country. Vacancy was just 5.2 per cent in January this year, well below every other capital and less than half the capital city average of 13.5 per cent. Vacancy has risen by about 2.7 per centage points over three years, but from a very low base.
Spending in the city’s businesses reached about $1.7 billion in the year to June 2026, up 1.3 per cent. Visitors account for close to two thirds of that spending, underlining how important tourism and events are to local traders. The fastest growing areas were night‑time spending, which is up 5 per cent, and tourism and recreation, which is up 7 per cent, notwithstanding the fact that we’ve had some really well patronised and loved businesses close in recent times. It does point to a vibrant and growing evening and events economy.
We’ve had 2.8 million passengers come through Hobart Airport in 2024‑25, up 6 per cent on the previous year. Visitor numbers to the city have eased slightly over the year with domestic visitation broadly holding up and international visitors down from a recent high. Events remain a strong draw; Dark Mofo returned in 2025 with close to 120,000 attendees, almost half of them from interstate, and added about $67 million in economic benefit.
Health and digital care investment is flowing into our beautiful city. The state is partway through a multi‑year investment in a digital health and integrated care platform. We know there’s been challenges there, but health and care remain among the city’s largest employers, and the mix of demographic demand and research capability keeps digital care a credible growth area. There is also some mention of the stadium in the State of the City report, but I was inclined to ignore that.
What we do know is that beautiful Nipaluna/Hobart will have its challenges in the future, particularly around climate adaptation and making sure that we have enough homes for our people. But it is a thriving city – one of the greatest cities in the world – and I want to thank the City of Hobart for the excellent work they did on the State of the City report and the snapshot it provides for us on where our city is at right now.
