Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, I can inform you that we will be requiring a vote today. I move –
That the House –
1) Calls on the Premier to, before Parliament adjourns on Thursday 5 June 2025, move a motion to establish a Scrutiny Committee for two days of the week of 16 June, to scrutinise the proposed Macquarie Point stadium bill, including an allocation of time, developed in consultation with Members of the House, to scrutinise: –
(a) the Environment Protection Authority;
(b) TasWater;
(c) the Tasmanian Heritage Council;
(d) the Aboriginal Heritage Council;
(e) Stadiums Tasmania;
(f) Macquarie Point Development Corporation;
(g) the Department of State Growth;
(h) the Department of Premier and Cabinet;
(i) the Department of Police, Fire and Emergency Management; and
(j) the Hobart City Council.
I think it is pretty obvious to say at the outset that this stadium approval process has been dominating the conversations in parliament and the community over the last couple of months in particular, but the conversation of whether or not we build a new stadium has been in the public domain as a hot topic for a couple of years now, and at least over the last year.
I want to say at the outset that I recognise that obviously not all members in the Chamber have the same position on this bill. Clearly, that is not what I am debating or proposing that we debate here today. I am attempting, in speaking to this bill, and in the bill that we have brought forward, to clearly separate members’ positions on the bill from the process of gathering information. This process is so that we can be fully informed and understand the issues, and properly represent the people who have voted for us when we come to the process of debating the bill in this House, which we all understand will be in a couple of weeks’ time.
As it stands, the government has brought forward a process to approve the stadium that does not involve the standard planning scheme process that governs every other development in Tasmania. Right now, the Tasmanian Planning Commission is still continuing with the work that they were ordered to do by this parliament to assess the stadium proposal and to move through the POSS process to a recommendation that they will deliver to us, the parliament.
In that process, regulators and agencies responsible for providing conditions to a planning permit have provided their views to the Tasmanian Planning Commission in a series of submission processes in October last year and also again recently. Through those processes, issues have been raised by regulators on the public record about the proposed stadium development, and that is a process that is still continuing.
The next step for the planning commission is to undertake public hearings and, in that process, to scrutinise members of public who have made submissions to the POSS and to speak with regulators who have raised a number of issues and concerns that they believe would need to be considered if development was to go ahead. Public hearings are part of that process. It is the opportunity for the public to understand the views of the regulators and to have the widest amount of information possible. That is part of the reason we have bought this motion to parliament today.
The process that the government has now taken, by putting out a draft special piece of legislation to bring a stadium bill to this place for approval, has been a very rushed one. With minister Abetz’s comments and those of the head of Macquarie Point Development Corporation, they have admitted over the last couple of days that the stadium itself is only 50 per cent designed at this point, more or less. It is incredibly important for us, as members of parliament, to understand as best we can the full view of regulators and agencies about the permit conditions that have been circulated by the government for the draft bill they have circulated.
At the moment, it is our view that the government is doing everything they can to make sure the project and its permit conditions, and every other matter to do with the stadium, does not get the proper level of scrutiny. It is obviously the process of taking it through parliament like this, when the stadium is not properly designed, it is not finished being designed. While there are so many questions, it is very difficult for us to have proper public understanding of what is being proposed or would go ahead, and for us as members of parliament to understand that.
They are working against the clock at the moment to make sure there is an opportunity for having true openness and transparency and information for us. The purpose of this is to have a committee where we would be able to understand from the regulators the issues and the information that they have provided to government and exactly what, if anything, is different in the permit conditions of the bill that we have.
We have to step up and look back and remind ourselves that this is the largest ever development proposal in Tasmanian history. It is the most expensive development proposal in Tasmania’s history. It has a huge amount of community division. A large part of that is around the cost, but not only. There is significant concern about the impact on the site that has been chosen, the gateway to Hobart, such an important place with all the impacts that would flow for the Cenotaph which is such an important place of remembrance for people who have given their lives for us all; for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (TSO); for our heritage values which are the basis of our tourism; for the environmental contamination which we know is deep on the site; for Aboriginal heritage; and for transport access; for the views of the city. It is enormous process.
In preparing the bill, what the government has done, whilst this separate process in parallel is being undertaken by the Planning Commission and will continue, the government has required agencies and regulators to write permit conditions as though, we were informed in a briefing, for a development that would go ahead. That was their direction: The development will go ahead; you need to write us a set of conditions so that we can build this stadium. We do not know from the permit conditions that appear before us in the bill, and there are a number, but not very many, we do not actually have any idea whether the permit conditions that appear in the bill are what the regulators prepared for the government staff, and we do not know what the regulators think about the permit conditions that are in the bill. In a proper planning process, the permit conditions would be mandatory and there would be no possibility of them being overridden without standard, formal planning processes. However, in this stadium bill, the proposal is that the minister can alter any conditions himself after parliament has voted on the bill. It is also clear in the bill and the enabling legislation report that the government has removed this project from what would normally be the standard oversight mechanism, the parliamentary works committee.
In other words, other large projects that are ongoing, things to do with planning components, infrastructure, the operational matters of the big road projects, the bridges, all manner of other large infrastructure developments appear before the Public Works Committee and can be scrutinised at any point along the way of the process of those infrastructure developments being built. This will not occur under the government stadium legislation. There will be no possibility for scrutiny like that by members of parliament at any other point.
We are very concerned that what we will be coming to is a permit and a set of conditions prepared by the government with information from regulators and agency and we do not have access to the original information. When we received a briefing about this a couple of weeks ago from the from the deputy secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPAC), we asked whether we could have access to the original reports that were to be provided to the government from each of those regulators.
We asked whether we could have access to the Environment Protection Authority’s advice, the Heritage Council’s advice, the Aboriginal Heritage Council’s advice, Hobart City Council’s views, TasWater, and we did not get a clear answer on that. However, it is pretty clear, from what we have got here before us, is that we certainly do not have anything like the original reports and advice from each of those agencies and regulators that were provided to the government. Why that matters is because we do not know what has been left out and we do not know whether the permit conditions that were constructed in the stadium bill in fact in any way match the normal requirements a regulator would have for a development to be built in the place that the Macquarie Point Stadium is proposed to be built.
What we have in the stadium bill are general conditions and there are specific conditions. There are 35 general conditions in four different areas. I am just noting, if you wanted to build a garden shed in your backyard and you submitted an application to the council, I reckon chances are pretty high you would have more than 35 conditions that you would have to adhere to. Honestly, the Land Use Planning and Approvals Act is pretty heavy when it comes to regulations.
I think it is worth reminding ourselves how scant the information is that we have before us. Let alone the fact, and this is a matter for the bill itself, that the minister will be able to make any changes he sees fit to any of the conditions, if it were to be passed by parliament, any changes can be made after the fact. We need to know, as legislators, what the implications are of the permit conditions that we have here and have specific conditions for each agency.
The EPA, on most infrastructure works of significance, prepares reports for a planning authority that start in the 50‑pages length. They would usually – for something as complex as the environmental contamination that we are looking at on that site, the serious issues that were raised by the EPA, including the risk of asphyxiation of people in the underground car parks in the first floor; the leaching of serious and harmful environmental contaminants in flood in storm water into the Derwent polluting the Derwent; the logistics of how that dirt could be safely removed so as not to affect the health of workers, so as not to provide environmental contamination beyond the site and where it would go; the truck movements to get the soil out safely through Hobart and to a site to dump it – that is massive. Normally, in the normal course of work, you would expect hundreds of pages of conditions to be supplied to a planning authority to govern that sort of work.
In the permit conditions we have in the proposed bill by the government, there are four pages for the EPA. I do not know if the EPA thinks that is enough, maybe they do, but how would we know? How would we know if we cannot sit there and ask them the questions? Can you explain to us whether you think the conditions that have been prepared are reasonable? Do they match what you put in your submission? What has been left out? What would be the consequences of not having a permit condition for something that you have put into your submission that has not ended up in this bill? What will that mean? What are the risks of not having the full scope of the permit conditions that the EPA or another regulator might have recommended? We need to know that information. We have to ask those questions on behalf of Tasmanians, everybody.
Regardless of whether people want to see a stadium built or not, the majority of Tasmania for sure would want to know that the government was managing serious environmental contamination properly. They would want to have confidence in that. They would want to have confidence that the centre of Hobart was not going be a traffic snarl during and surrounding events. They would want to know that there are not going be additional harms done to the Domain and Cenotaph sites in addition to that which is already going to be caused if a stadium were to be built.
These are reasonable questions. We will not have an opportunity to ask them at any other point. We will not have all these regulators before us in the estimates committee process. We will not have TasWater there. We will not have Hobart City Council there. We also will not have those regulators in a space where they can answer questions and help us understand what their intention was in what they submitted to the government in a way that is not mediated by a minister.
It is so important, because the government has done a lot of this stuff behind closed doors. As we were informed in the briefing that we got, there were to be at that point two one‑day workshops of government staff sitting there designing these permit conditions They, the government staff, not the regulators – I would be interested to hear from minister Abetz whether that is true or not. Were the EPA, Hobart City Council and TasWater staff sitting there when the permit conditions for this bill were being written? That would be useful to know.
Regardless, we have a right to know and understand for ourselves the issues to do with pedestrian safety, heritage impacts, toxic waste disposal, the flooding, and the evacuation risks. We have a right to know whether the conditions have properly been prepared by the government or not.
Minister Abetz made a good point in a question this morning. He said, ‘I am not a mechanic. I do not understand what the right thing to do is when it comes to the Spirits.’ Well, we are not planners. We are people with brains, and we are people with a responsibility, but we are not planners. The government is taking this outside of the very process that they ordered, the POSS process. They are subjecting parliament to an unprecedented situation in Tasmanian history, a process which is by any measure extreme – we would call it corrupted. It throws out good planning processes.
It is also bizarre that at the same time there is another planning process happening in parallel with the Project of State Significance. They are planning to commence public hearings and they are going on at the same time. Who knows when we will get to hear the information from the EPA, TasWater, and the Hobart City Council that may well come to light in a process from the planning commission organised process.
What we know is that when we sit in this Chamber – in a process that the government has rushed forward so that we do not get to have that public information and we do not get to have the regulators really give vent their views – we will not have had a chance to ask them those questions and understand their views unless we have a mechanism to bring them before us in parliament.
Regardless of what you think about whether or not we should build the most complex, most expensive, biggest infrastructure project in Tasmanian history, I really hope that members will support us returning to parliament for our proposal, which is two days in the week after Estimates, before the Estimates reply week when the government is planning on debating the legislation – we understand latest information might have changed – so that we can call these agencies before us and have an opportunity to ask them the questions. Obviously, we are not scrutinising them, we are just seeking information. Obviously they have provided information to the government and we want to know what that is. We want to understand the changes, if any, in the permit conditions attached to the bill. That is the most important thing.
It is incredibly critical that Tasmania have all the information about this large development that has not even stopped at a billion dollars. If it is only 50 per cent designed, who knows, that might only be 50 per cent of the price. I would not be surprised at this point if it might end up being $2 billion.
We have been called ‘kooky’ before, but we have been right every time.
Mr Abetz – You are not wrong there.
Dr WOODRUFF – We have been right every time, right from the beginning.
The SPEAKER – Thank you, members, that will do.
Mr Ellis – How is the Eden Project going?
The SPEAKER – The Leader of the Greens has the call.
Dr WOODRUFF – I want to thank the other parties. We have had a chance to speak to not every independent, but most of the independents. We have spoken to both the other parties. We really hope that members will support this opportunity for us to have our best opportunity to debate this critical bill. I know that the information – it sends an important signal to Tasmania that there is nothing to hide. Those agencies should have the information that they provided be made public and we should have an opportunity to do a match between what is in the draft permit conditions, and seriously consider whether we are concerned with things that were not translated and whether it is a problem or not.
I strongly hope that other members will support this. It is not a lot of time – two days. Not every member would need to be there. We have not prescribed the days and we have not prescribed the way it would run, but we would expect, as I said in the motion, that it would be in an Estimates style running, so it is available for people from the public to listen, and it would be in some process of sworn testimony so that people would appear before members in a matter to be determined by the Chamber, some schedule of regulators and agencies so that we could have the conversation in more detail that we will not have time to have during the debate of the proposed stadium bill. I really hope that members can support this because it is fantastic transparency. It sends a good signal to people in Tasmania that we are all taking this matter seriously.
