Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I rise to make a brief contribution on the adjournment, in part in response to the honourable member for Mersey’s contribution last night, where he made it clear that the leaders of the three political parties should give their members a conscience vote on the stadium order. He did state in his contribution, and I’m here to confirm, that the Greens do in fact have a conscience vote on every issue in every parliament in which we’re represented in this country.
The journalists today out the front of parliament picked up on the story and a really good idea, and asked our Leader, Dr Rosalie Woodruff whether she would give Greens members a conscience vote on the stadium order to which she said, and I am paraphrasing, we have a conscience vote on every issue, and of course the Greens members in both Houses will be voting on the stadium order with their conscience. I can very clearly indicate to all honourable members of this place that our conscience tells us that we should vote against the order.
I also wanted to fill members in on the meeting that we had with the AFL last week. This follows a letter from 21 signatories that was sent to the AFL seeking a meeting with the CEO some weeks ago. Then another letter when we got no response to that letter signed by 18 members of both Houses and local government, including the mayors of Hobart and Glenorchy, where we again asked for a meeting with Mr Dillon, we were again ignored. Instead of letting it go there, we persisted and secured a meeting with Tom Harley, the Chief Operating Officer of the AFL.
Last Wednesday, Greens Deputy Leader Vica Bayley, Independent member for Clark, Kristie Johnston, and the Independent member for Franklin, Peter George, and I were a small delegation who went to AFL headquarters and had a very cordial and frank meeting with Mr Harley and a number of other executives from the AFL.
We laid out to the gathered executives what our constituents are telling us about this stadium and how fierce the opposition is across Tasmania to the construction of a stadium which we simply cannot afford. We also made it really clear to Mr Harley that a team which Tasmania has earned and deserves should be uniting us but the issue of the team itself has become quite divisive because of the overlay of a stadium that is being, or trying to be forced onto the Tasmanian people and the people of my community of Hobart. It is a damaging debate to the Devils.
I have sat down with the terrific Brendon Gale and Kath McCann and expressed that concern to them. We also said to Mr Harley that this issue, this stadium is creating resentment towards the AFL. Mr Harley was really clear. The AFL’s position is that without a stadium there is no team and we expected him to restate that. He said it’s a matter for the 18 club presidents to decide, but we did put it to the gathered meeting. We asked what are the presidents going to do? You have 200,000 signed up members for the Devils, about half of them are on the mainland, players for the Devils in the AFL and AFLW teams who are contracted, and Tasmania entering the VFL next year. I did ask Mr Harley if anyone would be Tasmania’s champion should the stadium order fail by a democratic vote of the Tasmanian Parliament? It was a question that he couldn’t answer.
The final message that we gave to Mr Harley and the gathered executives is that Tasmania has a long and proud history of civil society standing up against the excesses of governments and corporations. We have done it with the pulp mill, Ralphs Bay, and our forests. In Tasmania we are hardened to protest and we are good at it. I hope that we left the AFL executives with some very serious food for thought to chew on.
Again, I want to say we are thankful we were finally given that meeting with the AFL, but I remind members of something that we all surely know, and this gets back to the question of whether we will exercise our conscience in voting for this order. It is a huge decision. The future of the state will be significantly affected by this decision whichever way parliament ends up voting. We should all exercise our conscience, as the member for Mersey said last night, when we vote on the order in December.
The Council adjourned at 6.57 p.m.
