The government’s new ‘legal advice’ on the stadium is nothing more than a paid PR exercise seeking to discredit the government’s own assessment panel and the damning report it released on Monday. This has been commissioned to muddy the waters and to help the Premier justify bypassing the Tasmanian Planning Commission and bring special approval legislation for the stadium.
Jeremy Rockliff’s efforts to throw shade on the Planning Commission’s damning report have been laughable. This report has been compiled by a panel of six experts, including a former Assistant Solicitor-General and a former head of the Treasury Department. These are people the government trusted with the most serious questions of law and finance, but who are now being conveniently dismissed.
This panel of experts spent well over a year considering matters related to the stadium and developing a highly detailed report. But it’s taken just a couple of days for the government pay for a superficial response from a multinational law firm.
What’s been produced by the government isn’t serious legal advice. It’s a cooked-up pretence to justify a decision the Premier seems to have already made to pursue fast-track approval legislation for the stadium.
There’s a couple of highly questionable points of legal contention in this letter, but most of it sounds like it’s come from a Liberal party media release, or from one of Jeremy Rockliff’s Parliamentary rants about the stadium.
It’s ironic the government has paid these lawyers to criticise the Planning Commission for making unsubstantiated arguments, only for them to produce advice that itself that is completely unsubstantiated.
Jeremy Rockliff needs to stop kidding himself. The stadium is a turd that simply can’t be polished. There is no justification for by passing the Planning Commission, denying the community a say and fast-tracking special legislation to approve a stadium Tasmanians don’t want, don’t need and can’t afford.
