Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, I move –
That the House take note of the following matter: honesty in politics.
I rise to speak to and for Tasmanians who have been appalled and shocked at this Liberal government and Premier Jeremy Rockliff’s casual disregard for truth in politics. What they’ve seen over the last three years has shocked many Tasmanians to the core. I want people to know today, as we hear and understand that it is likely that the order to progress a stadium will pass this House, that the fight is not over. The fight to protect our democracy, the fight to protect the things that we love and hold dear is not over. The Greens stand with Tasmanians who want to have premiers and politicians who speak the truth, who want to protect our democratic processes and who understand that the things we care about should be protected for future generations.
We understand the true cost that this stadium would bring to the Tasmania’s budget, but we also understand the true damage it will do to the things that many Tasmanians hold incredibly dear, such as the sacred Cenotaph and the Aboriginal reconciliation site. That should be built and will be built at Macquarie Point, and the sacred Cenotaph will be protected, because people in Tasmania will resist and reject any attempt to spend our precious resources building a third stadium that is a vanity project for the AFL that Tasmanians don’t need and can’t afford.
It will cripple our economy for decades to come and it will mean that the things we need to have money spent on in a state that is desperately scarce of resources can be directed towards health, housing, the commission of inquiry recommendations, child safety services, the neighbourhood centres and all the other things that are currently being viciously cut by this government precisely to save the money that’s required to build the stadium. We stand with those Tasmanians, and we stand for people in this parliament. We from the Greens and many others here on the crossbench would be appalled that the government is actually considering making a mockery of democratic processes by going down this path.
Let’s be clear, you can legislate an order to approve a stadium, but that does not mean it will be built, because you cannot legislate to change reality and the reality is the costs of this stadium have gone up. They’ve already gone up four times and it’s only started, from $715 million to $775 million to $940 million to $1.13 billion. We have a stadium that’s 70 per cent designed. We do not have a contract for it. We do not have a tender. We have huge things that have to be included in the costs that are not unaccounted for. We have no money for a northern access road. We have no money to fix up the pedestrian and streets of Macquarie and Davey streets. We have nothing in there to do the job of building a stadium. More to the point, any and all the money that will go into building a stadium is money that will not go into putting people into homes, and it will not go into the escalating elective surgery needs, and it will not go into the neighbourhood centres that are already having their budgets cut.
Tasmanians have been watching. They might be played for fools by the Premier, but they are not fools. They can see the lies and broken promises that have dripped from his lips for two years now. He went to the 2024 election promising a cap of $375 million. He knew he had to do that or he would not have won that election. Every day since, he has refused, obfuscated and pretended that borrowings and capital are two different buckets of money. At the end of the day, Tasmanians will be paying for decades. The Greens are here with Tasmanians who are appalled at that idea, and we will never stop, because we defend our democracy and we defend truth. The attacks on the Planning Commission – they rejected this. This stadium should never be built. The Greens are going to stand with Tasmanians who make sure it won’t be.
Time expired
