Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Honourable Speaker, I rise to speak to the MPI about honesty in government and honesty in politics. I came into this place about 18 months ago under no illusions about honesty in politics. It’s well known that there’s a significant issue with integrity with politicians and with governments. But even I’ve been shocked while I’ve been in here to see the level of debate and to see the things that are said. The government today want to talk about respect, and they want to talk about honesty, but they come with double standards. They have been in complete denial of the facts of the stadium, they’re disconnected from reality. They’re shifting their baselines, constantly shifting the lines financially, and yet they have the audacity to accuse us of incorrectly calling out dishonesty in this place. What I constantly see in here is gaslighting. It’s gaslighting of the people of Tasmania. The government’s stand in here and say, ‘There will be no cuts because of the stadium.’ We all know that that is wrong. This stadium is going to place us into incredible amounts of debt – we’re already in debt, but we’re going to be even in more debt.
They’ve said that’s not going to lead to job cuts. It’s not going to lead to service cuts, but that’s impossible. The government are putting more and more money into this stadium. They say now they’ve got a cap. Well, they’ve already shifted their cap, so I don’t know why we would believe them on this cap that they’ve put on now. They’re saying, ‘Oh, no, it’s fine, we’ll put the money into the stadium, but it’s not going to affect services and jobs in this state.’ The reality is that the money that’s going into the stadium will come through borrowings. Those borrowings are going to lead to interest payments. Last time I was up here speaking about this, I think I said it was going to be up to $70 million a year. Now we have information that says that interest payments will be up to $90 million a year. We will be borrowing and borrowing and going into more and more debt and there is no way that we can continue to fund services and continue to pay public servants while our interest payments are going up and up and we need to find ways to pay for that.
What we have here is the government batting away our questions about this. We simply come and ask questions. We simply come and say, ‘Tell us the truth about this. Stop pretending everything is going to be okay. Stop pretending that the stadium is going to be a saviour for this state.’ It’s not going to be a saviour for this state. It’s going to put us into debt. Stop pretending that that debt is not an issue. I’m seriously shocked by that level of denial, that disconnection from reality that we constantly see in here. It’s not okay for the people of Tasmania. The Greens stand in here for the people of Tasmania. We raise these questions for them because they have concerns. They are worried about the future of the state, they are worried about debt in this state, and they are worried about what that means for the services that they need.
I stand here as the representative for Bass, asking questions for the people of Bass concerned about the lies that we constantly hear from this government, saying everything will be alright. People in Bass know everything’s not going to be alright. They come and talk to me about that all the time. They know that they’re going to have to wait longer in the emergency department because the stadium is going to mean that there is less money available for health. They know that they’re going to have to wait longer for ambulances.
Just last week I had an email from a constituent about their father having to wait seven hours for an ambulance and then being told he’d have to wait four to five hours in the waiting room of the emergency department. He chose to stay at home. That is the reality that we are looking at with this stadium, those kinds of situations growing and increasing. For the government to stand in here morning after morning, Question Time after Question Time and deny that is a lack of honesty. To get up here and attack us for raising the questions and bringing the concerns of Tasmanians into this space is a lack of honesty. It has to stop. We need truth in this state. Tasmanians deserve to know how much this stadium is going to cost before we commit to it. We cannot have any more shifting lines any more changes in the figures any more commitments to a cap that’s really a non-existent cap. It has to stop. People need honesty and the honest truth is this stadium will not help Tasmanians.
