Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I rise to speak in support of this motion. I will start at the end of the motion, on the question that’s been asked of the honourable member for Nelson – and thank you for bringing on this important motion. The question is what ‘provide to the House’ means in the context of providing to the House details of revised costings of the proposed Macquarie Point Stadium. One way government could fulfil this, should it pass, is to simply provide confidential documentation to members to consider. That wouldn’t be good enough, to be honest. It’s not something I would want to be part of. This is the money that belongs to the Tasmanian people. We’re talking here about public money, and it was one thing earlier this year to be broadly accepting of the government tabling its alleged P90 assessment or providing it as a confidential briefing to members of this place, but when we’re talking about what the ultimate cost of this massive infrastructure project will be to the Tasmanian people, to provide that information in confidence to a small group of people, in my view, is completely unacceptable. So, I look forward to the honourable member for Nelson’s answer to that question.
I’m very thankful for all the people who I represent as the member for Hobart, who remain implacably opposed to the Macquarie Point stadium, and the intergenerational theft that it represents. I’m thankful to the honourable member for Nelson for bringing this motion forward, because it is an attempt to counter what has been an extraordinarily opaque, secretive and dismissive approach to transparency around stadium costings by this government. We become inured to political dishonesty in this job. We become accustomed to premiers and ministers being either loose with the truth or not even telling the truth. When you run through the timeline in this notice of motion, it is quite striking how deceptive on costs this whole project has been. Just the language, we have gone from the former premier and treasurer who signed us up to this folly, Mr Gutwein, committing the state to a new stadium at Macquarie Point and telling Tasmanians it would cost him the order of $750 million. That was four-and-a-half years ago. Then we had only six-months after that statement, by the new premier, Jeremy Rockliff, such a definitive statement on the 18 September 2022 when he announced Macquarie Point as the preferred new stadium location. Our Premier, the then new premier Jeremy Rockliff said in a media release, ‘The government is firm that it will cap it’s investment at $375 million.’ Well, a couple of things here, it’s not the government’s investment, it’s the investment made by government on behalf of the Tasmanian people. But that language, ‘The government is firm that it will cap its investment at $375 million.’
It wasn’t very long after – it was five months after that – where the then premier, just before the March 2024 state election, in fact, it was the day, as I recall, after the election was called, where the Premier stated in a media release a re-elected majority Rockliff Liberal Government will cap Tasmanian government capital expenditure on the Macquarie Point Stadium at the currently budgeted $375 million, and ‘not one red cent more.’ That is language that the Premier and other ministers, used anytime they were talking about stadium costs from that point, for a time. Now, the ordinary person who operated on the basis of trust and faith in politics, might listen to that and think that was a firm commitment that the Tasmanian government will cap its expenditure at $375 million and not one red cent more. It’s such definitive language. Of course, in the lead-up to a state election, it was a really important turn of language, in order to persuade voters very worried about this project that it was in safe hands with a Liberal premier who made a promise that the state, therefore, the public expenditure on this project would be $375 million. That was reiterated not long after the 2024 election when the then minister for sport and events, Nic Street MP reiterated our funding to this project is capped at $375 million.
Now, that was in September 2024. Fast forward a little bit to May 2025, and we’re being primed for a higher cost of construction – that is, a higher investment of public funds – when the new minister for business, industry and resources, the now Treasurer, Eric Abetz MP, released draft enabling legislation for the stadium and provided a revised total cost estimate of $945 million. Again, this was part of warming up the Tasmanian people to expenditure on a stadium, which seemed to be ever creeping up. Even when those of us of rational mind looked at the $945 million as a proposed cost for a very large stadium on a contaminated and constrained site like Macquarie Point, we understood that $945 million was likely to be a very conservative estimate, if not downright deceitful.
Then, May to September, so within the space of four months, the government announced another revised cost estimate of $1.13 billion. It was in September last year. Then we got, when the State Policies and Projects Macquarie Point Precinct Order was put to this place after it regrettably, with Labor’s help, sailed through the lower House in December last year, we had the Premier committed to capping the state’s contribution to the stadium at $875 million. We had correspondence exchanged between the Premier, Treasurer and members of this place that made a commitment to cap the state’s expenditure at $875 million. I understand why some members who voted for the stadium order would like to think that they got a meaningful assurance out of government on costs, probity, oversight and the like. But I put to you, Mr President, that that assurance was meaningless. It had as much meaning and substance as every other promise the Tasmanian Premier or Treasurer or minister had made about what this stadium will cost and what the state’s contribution will be. We’ve seen the sands shifting on this project since the very beginning, so why would anyone think they were telling the truth when they said $875 million? You can believe people with a good heart for the best of reasons, but it doesn’t mean the people you’re believing are telling the truth. It was simply, I think, disingenuous on the government’s part to make that promise to this place. They knew it couldn’t be kept; they knew it.
When we heard from the honourable member for Elwick that she quite rightly expects the government to stand by its word on costings, my question is, which word? Which statement at which point and to who? The letter that contained that promise on 4 December last year lacked substance, lacked integrity; it pointed to a P90 cost assessment that indicated the government, on the information available and its analyses, had a 90 per cent certainty that the cost of the stadium would be $1.13 billion and therefore on the basis of a P90 assessment – which it would never let this place see – it said it could make a concrete reassurance to this Council and certain members in this place that the state’s expenditure, the expenditure of Tasmanian public funds, would be capped at $875 million.
Now we can see that that was simply a cynical attempt to buy votes in this place. It was. You make a promise to members of parliament who want to believe they’re doing the right thing, doing the right thing by their communities, you make a promise that has all the dressings of a good faith argument, but no attachment to reality. Ever since then, we have seen the government wobbling around on stadium costs. We’ve seen the other place and this place seek some clarity on revised and updated costs. We’ve had the other place pass a motion that called on the government to present revised costings – a motion that acknowledged the conflict in the Middle East was part of accelerating increases of construction costs.
The government at the time had told the parliament, told the Tasmanian people, that they couldn’t provide that information, denied the reality of the influence of the Middle East conflict on supply chain issues, and basically gave the middle finger to the House of Assembly. That’s what they did, because the House of Assembly made a very clear resolution that it wanted to see revised costs.
I put it to you, Mr President, we cannot believe a single word this government says on stadium costings. Nada. None at all. They will say and do anything to skate through the political week, to take the heat off themselves. We should all be completely unsurprised if the contract for the stadium is not resolved until after parliament rises this year.
The member for Mersey asks a very good question on the costs, the likely cost of this stadium: where will it end? It’s too late now, because the order has been passed by the parliament. We don’t know where it will end. We do know that in AFL media circles, they’re certainly pointing to a higher price tag than $1.13 billion. Common sense tells you, and it told us at the beginning of the invasion of Iran, common sense tells us that the price of this stadium, of its construction could not be fixed at $1.13 billion. That’s why the Greens were so cynical about this purported P90 cost assessment – a 90 per cent probability, the government said, that costings would come in at $1.13 billion, and then subsequently when various arms of the parliament sought to get clarity on the actual costs and raised the issue of the Middle East conflict with government, we had premiers and treasurers going, ‘No, no. Our absolute certain cost estimate of this project is $1.13 billion. The state’s contribution will be capped at $875 million.’ More lies. Let’s just call it what it is. More untruths.
It is very important that we have some measure of transparency on this project, and particularly at a time when 1700 state servants are going to be thrown on the scrap heap; where we’re having more than $700 million cut out of the Health budget over the next four years; where there are cuts across all agencies. There are cuts to the Tasmanian Fire and Emergency Services. There are cuts to our emergency responders, to our resilience and recovery unit.
There are cuts across the board, and part of the reason there are cuts across the board is because that despite their personal self‑belief, the conservatives in government are terrible economic managers. They really are. They’re lousy economic managers, Mr President, and while they trash budgets, they underfund our social infrastructure; and here we are, Mr President, with a projected deficit. Last time I looked it was somewhere like $9 billion within the next 18 months/two years. Part of the reason that we’re here and that this government is sacking people is because since 2014 it’s mismanaged the budget. The other significant part of the reason that we are here, Mr President, is because this Premier and this government attached us to the AFL and gave the AFL everything that they demanded at the expense of what will be generations of Tasmanian people.
I just take a slight issue with a couple of things that have been said by previous contributors. I note Mr Edmunds has left the Chamber, and I haven’t read the TT‑Line annual report yet and do look forward to the briefing tomorrow. You can deflect from your failures to scrutinise government on the stadium by pointing to the TT‑Line but I can’t see the basis in logic that the TT‑Line is a much more ghastly picture for the state than the Macquarie Point Stadium, particularly the evidence that Martin Wallace, former Treasury secretary, gave through the Tasmanian Planning Commission process and the briefings that we had where he said, ‘It is simply untenable that you’d saddle the state with that level of debt’.
On the member for Montgomery’s contribution when he talks about, ‘we’ agreeing to a $1.13 billion stadium – we didn’t all agree to that. It is true that a majority of members in this place, particularly of the major parties, agreed to support the stadium order, but a number of us, on the evidence, decided in all good conscience we couldn’t agree. I don’t agree that we all, by sheer virtue of us being members of parliament, agreed to a $1.13 billion stadium. The Greens remain implacably opposed to this folly because we know what cost it will come at.
I am sure honourable members have had ongoing conversations within their communities with Tasmanians who are really worried about the social and economic cost of this project, Mr President. They understand that it’s about political choices, and when they see stories in the media of ambulances that don’t arrive on time and a health system which is clearly struggling and already underfunded and about to be gutted even more, Tasmanians are able to draw those connections between political choices and social and economic consequences. I don’t think any member of this place, particularly major party members of this place, should allow themselves to believe that because the order has been passed, that this has broad community acceptance, because it doesn’t.
In closing, of course at the completion of the stadium project procurement process but before any contract is finalised and signed, this House should see the highest likely cost of total project construction based on the tenderer’s bid and the proposed final contract terms. It is unlikely to be at $1.13 billion and we’ve already had that confirmed by the Treasurer and Anne Beach from MPDC in sideways language at a recent press conference. Of course, the House should see the estimated state contribution component of the total project construction cost, whether the state contribution remains at $875 million or is a revised amount.
I just remind honourable members that, contrary to multiple statements made by government ministers and, in fact, the head of MPDC about likely cost blowouts and the impact of the Middle East crisis, we now have more softening up from government. We now have confirmation of what we all knew to be true. We’ve got Ms Anne Beach saying that cost pressures will play a part in the outcome, and she said to the media a week ago:
We need to consider as we go through this process cost pressures that are in the market and the cost build as it is today.
I’ll pause for a moment here. The normalisation of deviance – where we’re simply expected to just accept after a year of asking questions about increased costs, where a GBE bureaucrat goes, ‘Oh yeah, well, of course costs have gone up. Of course, costs have gone up, and partly they’ve gone up because of the war in the Middle East’, as the House resolved and understood and as was denied by the Premier and the minister responsible for that time.
Then we’ve got the Premier, who said back in 2024 ‘not one red cent more than $375 million’, saying the final cost will be publicly revealed before the contract is signed. But when asked, ABC reports, whether he could promise the state’s input would be limited to $875 million, as previously flagged, he repeatedly skirted the question:
We’re working through a very rigorous process –
Mr Rockliff said –
We’re at stage 1 and we’re working through and continuing that to get to stage 2 and, of course, signing the contract. And I’m not going to detail costs. They are being, they continue to be worked through.
Well, how utterly galling. How galling. He expects that the Tasmanian people have the memory retention of a goldfish. Most Tasmanians will remember when he said two short years ago ‘$375 million is the state’s capped contribution and not one red cent more’. It is now half a billion dollars more than that and he still can’t commit to $875 million.
We have been led down this path by a Premier who was so desperate to get a team. He sold out this state, and he has been untruthful with the Tasmanian people about the true costs of this folly ever since he signed up to it. So, at a bare minimum, we should see those costs before they sign the contract. On that basis, of course we will support the motion.
