The National Capital Authority has opened the door for the Acton Waterfront to become the home of a new Canberra stadium.
The news comes as the slanging match between ACT Labor and the Canberra Liberals escalated over whether a stadium would fit on the West Basin site.
ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr attacked Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee's Civic Stadium proposal on two fronts - firstly he said the land couldn't be used for a stadium; and secondly it wouldn't fit.
Ms Lee dismissed the first claim when she announced her plans for a 30,000-seat stadium, which would cost $700-800 million, on Tuesday and then the latter on Wednesday.
The Canberra Times, having broken the Liberal's Waterfront idea on Tuesday, contacted the NCA to find out if they would be open to amending the National Capital Plan to allow for a stadium.
They regularly review the National Capital Plan in line with Canberra's growth.
"The National Capital Authority will consider all proposals put forward through the normal assessment processes," an NCA spokesperson said.
"Amendments to the National Capital Plan are made through an established, transparent process that includes stakeholder and community consultation, and Ministerial and parliamentary oversight."
The NCA told The Canberra Times the time required to amend the plan was "entirely dependent on the nature of the proposal".
Mr Barr implied getting the NCA to make changes would take a decade.
He said the original alterations to amend the plan to allow luxury apartments to be built at Acton Waterfront had taken 10 years.
Mr Barr said it would inevitably delay the Liberal's plans to begin building a new stadium before the end of 2028.
His plan was to complete a new Bruce stadium by the mid-2030s.
"What we have now went through such a process and it took 10 years. Ten years," Mr Barr said.
"So to think that it's going to be changed inside a parliamentary term, when there are formal requirements around public consultation, it has to go through a parliamentary committee process and be approved by both houses of Federal parliament - that's not something that will happen in a very short period of time."
Mr Barr said a new stadium wouldn't fit at Acton Waterfront anyway.
While he wanted to build a stadium at Bruce, after 15 years and eight studies he still doesn't have an exact location.
"The photoshopped images that they have produced have effectively shrunk the stadium," Mr Barr said.
"I ask people to go and do an overlay of an actual 30,000-seat stadium, in its full breadth and overlay that on West Basin.
"And you see quite clearly that it's jutting out into the lake.
"That's before you get to the question of car parking."
But Ms Lee said they'd done their research using similar-sized, existing stadiums - like Parramatta, Christchurch and Townsville and they'd used maps to overlay those stadiums on the site - and all three fitted.
She laughed off Mr Barr's suggestions they'd "shrunk" the stadiums to get them to fit.
Ms Lee said the 64,000sqm Acton Waterfront site was 30 per cent bigger than the Civic pool site - a site Mr Barr has previously proposed himself before backflipping - and 40 per cent bigger than the sites at Townsville and Parramatta.
"Yes [it can fit]," she said when asked.
"Any simple Google search and overlaying of these stadiums over the site should give Andrew Barr what he needs.
"All three options fit on the Acton Waterfront site very, very comfortably."
