Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I thank the member for Clark for bringing this matter of public importance forward. Business confidence is an important issue for us to discuss. I want to talk about the unintended consequences of overreach when it comes to both sides of the House aiding and abetting big business, trying to get their business or their proposition up, over and above the wishes of the community. This is a sorry Tasmanian tale that goes back many, many decades. It is a case where no matter how hard you bend the rules, no matter how much you change the situation and the bar that a company has to get over, no matter how much you lower it, you are going to stoke a conflict with the community and, ultimately, the power of that community prevails.
We do not have to go too far back in history to recognise that this is a very real issue. Let us start with the Gunns pulp mill in the Tamar Valley, destined and proposed to poison our waterways, poison the airshed of Launceston, consume vast amounts of native forests and, ultimately, be something that is propped up by the taxpayer. The company did not like the independent process being run by the RPDC, so it ran to the parliament and got a former Labor government, in that case, to write special legislation drafted by its own lawyers so that proposition could be passed. Shame.
There was a similar situation with the Walker Corporation and the canal development on the eastern shore of the river here, which failed. As to the cable car on kunanyi/Mount Wellington, something detested by so many people, the community stood up for many years and pointed to the fact that this cable car just should not be built, it will impact on important values that are attracting people and tourists, and values that are adding to the business confidence of businesses visiting that facility or natural attraction. Where is the facilitation Act, where is that proposal now? Absolutely gone, dead in the water.
Regarding the forests, anti‑protest legislation does nothing to build confidence in the industry or deal with the fact that you have an industry that is fundamentally unsustainable. Now we have the Robbins Island wind farm, found by advice from the government’s own solicitor to contravene the coastal policy. What is this government’s proposition? It is not to insist that the Robbins Island wind farm fits the law and meets the requirements of the planning scheme and the coastal policy, it is to change the coastal policy to fit with the development –
Dr Woodruff – Change the law, bend over for big business.
Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER – Order.
Mr BAYLEY – Ms Badger raised the issues around changing the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area management plan to explicitly deal with the business of Wild Drake and building helicopter-accessed huts and huts on the South Coast Track and so forth. Ten years later, where is the confidence in that business? It has been mired in public controversy, legal challenges, and it has not got up and is unlikely to get up.
I am looking at blank looks from you, Mr Willie, asking what this has to do with business confidence. I am making the point that the actions you take in this House and the actions that you support in this House are not contributing to business confidence. The reality is that if you took steps to have an EPA with teeth, for example, so that it stops gumming on the failures of the fish farm industry, the mining industry and others, you are going to build more confidence in the sector, you are going to build more confidence in our industries and we can have a sustainable industry going forward that does not attract conflict in the community or the disdain of the markets and ultimately has a more secure future.
I want to finish on the stadium because this is a massive project that is causing huge amounts of concern and confusion in the Tasmanian community, because no-one believes the Premier when he says that it can be built for $715 million. I do not think the Labor Party even believes that even though they have now backed in the stadium since May. Released yesterday, we saw the agreement with the federal government that shows, as we knew, in black and white, written in a little table, that if the stadium costs $715 million, as the Premier says, $240 million of it is going to come from the federal government. We know that is going to be spent on wharves and on houses and that is not going to be GST exempt. That is a cautionary tale that bending the rules to assist business does not build confidence.
