Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Deputy Speaker, it is a very fitting day today to talk about decision making and leadership, and as we approach the Budget with the stadium coming to parliament, it’s a theme in the front of mind of most Tasmanians and certainly everyone sitting in this chamber. Across the state, people are struggling to meet their basic needs. They can’t find a home and they can’t access healthcare when they need it.
It is a struggle for many people to pay for school and the education outcomes in Tasmania continue to lag behind the country. Communities are seeing deeply concerning changes to their natural environment. We’re seeing the impacts of climate change, damaging industries, pollution and inappropriate development. They are all obvious to many. It is a sad reality that when I go to Franklin and across Tasmania, optimism for the future is harder to find than ever before.
People obviously love our home island, Lutruwita. It is beautiful. They see the news from around the world and they know how lucky we are to live here, while at the same time they feel like this state is on an inexorable trajectory to be in a much worse situation tomorrow than it is today, and next year getting worse and worse.
The state of the Budget is causing a lot of concern for many. When you look at what’s happening here, the decisions that are being made by Liberal and Labor politicians, it is easy to see why many in the community are despairing of what’s happening with politics in Tasmania.
There are so many major problems in health and housing, essential services, public sector unions are on strike, trying to get a fair deal for wages and conditions, a terrible debt confronting us, the climate crisis taking hold. What the government is doing is to focus all the energy, all the resources of government, to build a stadium that we don’t need that will ultimately cost taxpayers $2 billion that we should be spending on other things that we desperately need.
It will mean more cuts to services. When politicians are so out of touch, they make decisions like this. It is no wonder that people across Tasmania feel let down. It is the ultimate warped priority. Let us be clear, all of us know what the Liberal and Labor politicians in here are going to do when the stadium vote comes, and that is deeply saddening for many Tasmanians and very outraging for many more.
The majority of Tasmanians do not want this stadium to be built. Under Jeremy Rockliff as Premier, the Liberals have used every dirty dishonest and heartless trick to pursue the project, heedless of the cost. Meanwhile, Labor have had about a dozen different positions on the stadium. There is no leadership. There is no certainty from Labor except when it comes to parliament, they have finally made it clear that they will unconditionally provide their support for the stadium and provide a blank cheque to the government to boot to pay for whatever they want, whatever it will cost.
That’s not leadership. It is not the way the community expects their elected representatives to act. No matter what the leadership of the Liberals and Labor, the Greens won’t stop fighting to make sure that this stadium is not built. We know it is not a done deal. The other place will have a final say.
In Tasmania, I feel the sense deeply at the moment that we’re at a crossroads with the extraordinary debt we’re looking at coming online, and the idea that Liberal and Labor politicians would vote to bring in another $2 billion-plus to the burden of debt for future generations, which we know will cost community services, is deeply, deeply disgraceful. The Greens will be voting against the stadium because we know there are so many other priorities.
Labor might go outside and talk to the public sector and unions about their conditions and wages at lunchtime and many other days in the months to come, and they should really understand what will be at cost if they support the stadium. What it will mean is $2 billion less over the next decade to be putting into public sector jobs and conditions, putting into community services, the neighbourhood centres and the family violence support services. The economists have told us we are not locked in and we hope the major parties aren’t locked in to supporting that stadium.
Time expired.
