Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I thank the member for bringing this forward. It is a great opportunity to talk about this project and the fact that it is built on utter deceit and delusion. Let me start by reading into the Hansard the Premier’s comments in August 2022 and an article that is still on the AFL website where it is headlined:
The Premier confirms the stadium won’t be part of Tassie’s AFL bid.
Tasmania confirms their formal proposal for the league’s 19th licence won’t include a new stadium ahead of a vote this month.
It quotes Premier Rockliff saying, ‘The stadium is not part of our bid’. The deceit started way back then and Tasmanians know that they do not need, they do not want and they cannot afford this stadium. They certainly do not need it.
In that same article, ex-Geelong president, Colin Carpenter, who was commissioned to do a report on this, said
Tasmanian grounds are regarded as perfectly adequate for playing AFL football at the moment.
They are ‘perfectly adequate’. As articulated by the member for Bass, York Park should be the home of footy. It has the best playing surface in the country and we have been playing there for many years at the AFL level. We do not want it. That is a constant message that we have all heard on the doors through this last election period.
People hear of the cuts to health, housing, education, the efficiency dividends, and the debt. People know that we cannot afford this and it is going to come at a cost to essential services. The Budget cannot afford it and that was writ large just in the last week and over the last session of this parliament, debating the budget and looking at the level of debt, looking at the level of deficit and looking at the quantum of the efficiency dividends that our departments are going to have to deliver. Every efficiency dividend is a cut to services for Tasmanians.
We support our AFL teams and we do want them. Originally, when there was tripartisan support for the footy teams, it was based on the commitment of the Premier that there would not be a stadium. We absolutely support a footy team here and we look forward to it happening, but the more we buy into the narrative that it cannot happen without this stadium, the more we just empower the AFL to continue to bully this state into delivering a stadium that we do not need, do not want and cannot afford.
The deceit has been writ large this week with the release of the summary report and application – $715 million has turned into $830 million. There is $50 million upfront that is declared, and then you have to go and bury deep down into the papers to find that there is an additional $65 million blowout in the expenditure on the LED screens, TV, AV and the like within the stadium.
The other utter delusion is this notion that we have just heard twice now from members of the Liberal Party that not one more cent will be spent over $375 million. Both the Budget and the summary report that was released yesterday shows that there are going to be borrowings from Macquarie Point that pay for the blowouts over and above $375 million. Government needs to service those debts going forward. We need to service the interest on those debts going forward, and it is abundantly clear that this is going to cost us more than $375 million.
That is a question for Labor because your support for this stadium was contingent upon the fact that this would not cost one red cent over $375 million. You are the alternative treasurer, Mr Willie. It is clear that servicing those borrowings is going to cost us. This is the product of deceit, delusion and dud deals. The AFL has us, the taxpayer, on the hook for every single cost overrun. The Treasurer failed to negotiate the GST exemption and the federal government is going to claw that back over time. We are going to pay for the borrowings and the interest on the borrowings.
I will touch on the cost‑benefit analysis that is in this submission, because you have to look at it carefully. When it came to the cable car on kunanyi/Mount Wellington, we needed to look carefully at the cost‑benefit analysis, and in the independent tribunal the proponents’ cost‑benefit analysis was comprehensively rejected. When it comes to this stadium, the cost‑benefit analysis is based on the status quo where nothing happens on that site. It is ‘vacant land’, which is demonstrably untrue because, before junking it, there was a very well-worked up development plan for the Macquarie Point site. In fact, the government had already started to contract out development of that site. We had to pay out developers from the mainland so that they did not build on Macquarie Point in order to progress this stadium. Are those costs factored into it? It is utterly delusional.
We will stand in solidarity with the community and stakeholders in opposing this stadium, come what may.
Matter noted.
