Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Honourable Speaker, I’m pleased to be able to rise and speak about backing Tasmanian jobs. We’ve heard a lot of talk in this place about how wonderful the stadium will be for jobs in Tasmania. It’s gone on and on and on, even this morning in Question Time, but it is a misrepresentation and a gross exaggeration of the benefit of the stadium to Tasmanians. It’s a total disconnect from reality.
The Tasmanian Planning Commission has been crystal clear. Any economic benefits of the stadium are far and away outweighed by the disbenefits. The stadium represents a fall in the collective economic welfare of Tasmanian residents. A disbenefit is the polar opposite of a benefit. It’s a cost. The stadium is going to cost Tasmanians and it will leave our state worse off.
Talk all you like about economic growth, as the Premier did in Question Time this morning, but the TPC sees no net economic growth as a result of the stadium. For every dollar spent, the stadium will result in a loss to the state of $0.50. The economic benefits of the stadium are less than half of the estimated costs.
What does this have to do with Tasmanian jobs? Two things. Tasmanians will not be in a better place as a result of the stadium. The economic position of the state will be weaker overall. Individual Tasmanians will be less healthy, less educated and worse off overall than they would have been without a stadium. This means that there are likely to be fewer job opportunities in the state and Tasmanians will have less capacity to participate in jobs. This has been demonstrated in rigorous economic studies that have consistently found that there’s little to no positive impact on employment or overall economic growth when stadiums have been built in cities around the world.
I turn now to jobs in our public service. It’s clear that Tasmania cannot afford this stadium with the economy the way it is at the moment. Building it will require either increased taxes or public service cuts.
The Premier again ruled out increasing taxes this morning and that leaves one option – cutting public services, and that means cutting jobs. It’s a clear line from building the stadium through to service cuts, through to job losses in Tasmania. You can’t cut services in our state without cutting jobs.
We haven’t even started building the stadium and the government is working hard to cut 2500 jobs. That was confirmed this morning. This can only be the beginning and that number can only grow as the state goes further and further into debt to fund the stadium. There isn’t any other way around this.
For all the crowing in here about how wonderful the stadium will be for jobs, it will be terrible for jobs in Tasmania. It will be terrible for our public service and terrible for the people who have jobs in the public service. There will be some short‑term job creation during the construction phase, but we can’t ignore the fact that overall the rest of Tasmania will suffer, and we will suffer into the long-term.
If we really want to back Tasmanian jobs, we have to ditch the stadium. We have to properly invest in public services that will benefit all Tasmanians. We need to put the people of Tasmania first before some so-called economic benefits that simply don’t exist.
We must invest in public services, and that means more jobs in the public service. It means healthier Tasmanians. It means happier Tasmanians who will have what they need to live well. The stadium’s not going bring that. We can talk about it and imagine that it might, but it won’t bring that. That’s very clear.
What we need to be working towards is the genuine interests of Tasmanians, stopping with the foolish stadium plans that we have, the foolish stadium build, and investing in what we know will benefit Tasmanians overall: public services that will increase their education; public services that will help their health and help them to participate and live well.
