Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Honourable Speaker, I want to speak to the urgency of this motion and to the whole idea of an opposition being for scrutiny. We know that the way democracy works is that scrutiny is critically important, and that people’s voices are important in that. What we have is a report that was released by the TPC, the Draft Integrated Assessment report, that was quite damning of the stadium and indicated that there are many issues with the stadium.
The government’s immediate response was to dismiss that report and minimise it, and we are seeing that happening further today. That was the opportunity for the opposition, led by Mr Winter, to hop up and say, ‘This is something that needs to be looked into further.’ We have a draft report that is saying the stadium will not be good for the people of Tasmania, it will not be good for the budget of Tasmania and it will put us into great debt.
We need to make sure that there is opposition, there is scrutiny and that there are active actions taken that will call out and draw out all the information that we need as a state to make a good decision. If we continue on this path of just acquiescing to what the government wants and saying we give them full support, and if Labor continue to say there is unconditional support for this stadium, then the voices of the people will be lost. The accurate information that needs to be assessed and drawn in and submitted will all be lost and wiped out.
This is urgent because we do not know. The government has not given us any indication yet of what their plans are with their special legislation that they may well introduce into this parliament. It could happen at any time. It is important that opposition happens now, that we do not let this slide, that we do not stand back and do nothing.
The opposition leader mentioned that the opposition provides scrutiny on things like health and hospitals – all of those things are under threat with this stadium. We already have a government that has a budget deficit, and because of that they are introducing cuts, hiring freezes and efficiency dividends that are impacting significantly on services within Tasmania.
If we want to stand up and call out the government on those cuts and on those freezes and on those impacts on the people of Tasmania being able to access the service that they need, we have to think of the bigger picture. We cannot just call out those cuts now and say, ‘Well, we’re scrutinising this,’ when we know that the stadium is going to take us into far greater debt.
It is important that we debate this now, that we draw attention to this now, that we say democracy is important and people’s voices are important, and the government cannot be allowed to get away with what it wants to do as quickly as it wants.
This process from the TPC is a process that has an established plan and an established timeline. We know that people are being invited to make submissions until 8 May. We know that there will be hearings in July. We have to protect that process and we have to protect it now. It is important in doing that that we have this debate today, that we call out the opposition leader and say, ‘We need you to do your job to scrutinise the stadium.’
Yes, keep scrutinising all those other things that you are scrutinising, but scrutinise the stadium. The people of Tasmania need us to do that. They need us to be in here fighting for them. They need us in here making sure their voices are heard. They need us in here highlighting that we already have a stadium that would be perfectly suitable for AFL in the north of the state at York Park Stadium.
We are the voices of the people of Tasmania who do not agree with what the government is doing. We must stand up, we must speak and we must do it now.
