Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Deputy Speaker, the Macquarie Point Stadium has been the hottest of hot topics on this little island, Lutruwita, for years. I want to state very clearly the Greens’ position from the outset. We were involved in the negotiations with the premier at the time, Peter Gutwein, about securing AFLW/AFL teams for Tasmania and we were fully supportive and signed on to the tripartisan letter that went to the AFL and made it very clear that Tasmanians long-deserved, demanded to have access to our club, our team and be involved in the AFL, to be part of the sport and to join in, as is the right of people who have been playing for generations in Tasmania and want to be part of the national team.
We were very clear from the outset that we would not and never would support the building of a stadium. It seems that Peter Gutwein went away and obviously did make a secret deal with the AFL at the time to build a stadium, and he announced in March 2022 a $750 million spend out of nowhere. The context when he made that announcement in the state of the state speech was a terrible crisis in our health system. We had the beginnings of what would become the ambulance ramping inquiry – enormous ambulance queues. It was a terrible situation. People were not able to get elective surgeries and could not get a bed in the emergency department when they needed. Ambulances were not coming when they were needed.
A huge number of people were evicted into homelessness in a rental housing crisis – partly the making of this government, a government that never took action on those issues and never did what was needed to build public housing over 10 years for the people of Tasmania who deserve it. In that space, we rejected the need to build a stadium. We knew that we have two perfectly good stadiums, one at Bellerive and especially one at York Park.
We have always supported the money that has now gone into this stadium into refurbishing the York Park Stadium to make it what it should be, where it should be, the home of AFLW/AFL in Tasmania. That is where we need to put our money. Where was Labor in these conversations? Well, federal Labor came out and initially made some noises about concerns about the state government spending money on health and housing.
State Labor did their own poll and they found that 67 per cent of Tasmanians opposed the stadium – 52 per cent strongly opposed it. Rebecca White, then leader, was a detractor at the time. She made strong statements against the stadium on social media. She ran a campaign to get Tasmanians who are opposed to the stadium to believe in their hearts that Labor would be there with them, standing against building an unnecessary stadium that would cost $750 million when they knew that that money should be prioritised by a party which says it cares about people who work in the health and housing system, says it cares about people who need homes and people who need beds in hospitals. She made them believe Labor would support them and stand against the building of a stadium.
Then what happened in the 2024 state election was the stickers got peeled off the Labor Party cars. The ‘No Stadium’ stickers went and instead Dean Winter took the party to that election refusing to make a commitment about the party’s position on the stadium. He would not make a commitment, and in fact went to the Legislative Council elections in May last year also refusing to make a statement about it. Guess what happened? Almost before the writs were issued after the Legislative Council election, Mr Winter came out and made a strong statement in support of the stadium after he had hoovered up the votes of people in Tasmania, falsely pretending that Labor was going to stand against the stadium.
Here we have two incredibly strong reports – the Gruen report, an independent report in January, and now the Tasmanian Planning Commission – saying that this stadium is going to financially ruin Tasmania. It is going to be a millstone around our necks. Nearly $2 billion in debt and we do not need this stadium. The Greens are going to fight it all the way through, and if the Liberals want to bring on enabling legislation, you go right ahead because we will be standing with Tasmanians who are utterly opposed to building this stadium, particularly the people in the north who are overwhelmingly opposed to it.
Time expired.
