Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – I might seek some advice from you after the sitting about whether it is unparliamentary simply to exclaim in surprise. The reason I was surprised is because in the House of Assembly, when the Greens put an identical motion to this one up, it was not supported by government or Labor members. That is something that the Council should be reminded of because when we are told in this place by certain members that they support extra scrutiny on this project, that needs to be backed up by actions. I note that all during Estimates we didn’t hear a single question from Labor across four Estimates committees on the stadium.
I also note that when the Tasmanian Planning Commission came to present to us at the hearing last Thursday, we had questions from Labor about themselves at the beginning of the hearing and nothing for the rest of the four hours, so anyone can stand up here and say anything. You can say you support extra scrutiny, but your actions speak for themselves.
I appreciate the member for Murchison’s initiative in bringing forward this opportunity for the Legislative Council to go through the stadium order clause by clause, weak provision by weak provision, flimsy condition by flimsy condition. Personally, given what our community has been through for the last three years, the division, the conflict, the dishonesty, I would rather that this order was euthanised quickly, but as I said at the rally last Saturday, and I said it with enormous pride, on this issue as on every issue, the Legislative Council will do the work and it is manifest in this motion put forward by the member for Murchison.
We have a job to do to go through this order, and I believe it will be exposed for the sham that it is. I draw members’ attention to how similar, almost identical; this final order looks to the draft order that came out a few weeks before that and how near identical it is to the enabling legislation and the provisions within that legislation.
Ever since the Tasmanian Planning Commission, after a year of gathering evidence and assessment, came back and said the parliament should not support this stadium, we’ve been subject to a government making it up as it goes along, whether it was the enabling bill which came out after the draft integrated assessment report, or this final order that’s before us.
We’ll be dealing with an order, to be really clear, where the government is the proponent, the developer and the regulator. I know that all members are being flooded with emails. I haven’t counted them yet, but overwhelmingly they are in strong opposition to this project.
I’m certain that those people we represent will be glad to know, should this motion pass, that we’re putting the time in to better understanding the order. I absolutely believe that for any member who hasn’t made up their mind at this point ‑ and how could you not, but there would be people who are still weighing it because it’s such a huge decision ‑ I believe that closer scrutiny of this order will help all of us more clearly understand the risks that we would be embarking on should the order itself be approved, because it does not address all the matters that were raised as problematic by the Tasmanian Planning Commission.
It doesn’t go anywhere near close enough to addressing the environmental issues. The fact that, as we established in Estimates, there are 220,000 cubic metres of contaminated soil under the footprint of the stadium. It doesn’t deal with the RSL Tasmania’s heartfelt plea to us to reject the stadium order because it is immoral.
Well, in all likelihood tomorrow we’ll have an opportunity to closely examine this immoral order. I trust it will be exposed for the high-risk scenario it presents us with.
