Ms BADGER (Lyons) – Honourable Speaker, it comes down to what has been laid bare. This is a huge amount of debt and, whether the Treasurer wants to get into a debate about what is or is not in the substantial capital expenditure, at the end of the day, the amount of intergenerational debt that this is going to bring to Tasmanians and future Tasmanians, is not something we can grow our way out of.
I want to bring the House’s attention to an exchange in this place from 9 September this year, when member for Clark, Mr Bayley, asked the Premier questions about the stadium and part of the Premier’s response was that we had to continue to grow the economy to continue to invest in enabling infrastructure. As I just said, and as Mr Bayley pointed out at the time, we cannot grow our way out of this much debt.
The Premier also said that,
If governments of all persuasions over the last 100 years had the belief not to invest in key enabling infrastructure because it doesn’t come back and benefit the community more broadly, we’d be living in paddocks and caves.
Perhaps the Premier is blissfully unaware that Tasmanians are living in paddocks and caves. They are living in our parks and even without trying to build a stadium, this state cannot build enough houses or houses that are an appropriate size for people who need them. Anglicare’s report for housing, the Housing Connect Front Door Service, a quarterly snapshot for September 2025, came out yesterday. Recommendation 2 of that report is about funds for delivery for more crisis accommodation and transition houses and social homes, and that includes an increase in crisis accommodation that is safe and suitable for women and children fleeing domestic and family violence. It particularly looked at the needs of women in regional and rural areas, such as my electorate in Lyons.
It is incredibly concerning to hear the ongoing stories of people who are not having their basic and essential needs met. Again, it goes back to this being a political choice of where we invest money, where we concentrate the management of these different projects – be it major or absolutely basic that people deserve to have a home, a roof over their heads.
It was concerning to have a constituent come into my office who was leaving an abusive relationship. She’d been going through the court system, dealing with the police, and someone from the court system had been accompanying her to her hearings as a support system. As we know, there are various programs that run for different court hearings, depending on what people are going through and what sort of trauma‑informed support they need. At her latest court date she was told that the person who would normally come in to support her through that service could no longer come because that service needed to be cut back. This is an example of an essential service – a really basic, humane service that we should have in Tasmania in 2025 – that has been cut. Yet, we are more than happy to spend $49 million on event buses. If they should be upgraded anyway, why isn’t that being done now? as member for Clark Ms Burnet pointed out, it’s pretty stark in Metro’s report what we need to be doing now.
TAFE course subsidies have been cut and numerous members from across this place have spoken about that and last night so did I as well. Something I didn’t get to in that speech was specifically on the arts in the screen and media courses that have been cut. In the 2022 report, ‘Creative Value: Results for the National Participation in the Arts Survey,’ which is produced by the Australian Government and Creative Australia, the section on Tasmania showed that 78 per cent of people who participated in that survey believed that creative activities should be an important part of our education system because of the social benefits that the arts brings to us, the cultural inclusion. Yet, we are seeing subsidies for those courses and that critical training being cut across Tasmania. That is not good enough. The arts are incredibly inclusive and it is something that we can have to bring everybody together, yet here we are cutting the courses from the TasTAFE education system.
A doctor from the north of the state contacted my office, and I believe other members as well, and he had a child who was planning to enrol in the Certificate III in Music at TasTAFE next year – one of the courses that is going to be cut. That doctor is one of the only specialists of his kind on the north‑west coast and he bulk bills. For him to support his son studying the course that his son desires to do, he has to leave Tasmania. We are losing a specialist in the field as we are cutting education opportunities for young Tasmanians. For what? Just so they can play football? There is so much more to it. We can do it another way without the debt as well.
It’s not a unique story; it’s something that we’re all hearing. All members are getting stories like this sent to them. Is anyone listening?
What about funding for the SES volunteer service? We are living in an age of climate change, a climate crisis. It is being driven by extreme weather events that are only going to keep getting worse because we’re not properly taking the action that we need to. The SES is chronically underfunded. We had an SES member who reached out to my office because the funding arrangements that they have in place aren’t actually feasible for them to be working to undertake what is expected of them in a timely manner when they get called out. They have 20-year‑old packs and equipment for regional and rural searches for people who might be lost, and helping recover people in car accidents in really remote and isolated locations. They have ageing vehicles and poor communications equipment. Additionally, we keep hearing and we heard it again at the Central Highlands on the weekend – or those of us who actually showed up – and I note the members of the Labor Party who also came along and a member for Mr Di Falco’s office – the lack of communication and the digital divide in this state, the lack of connectivity, that needs serious investment as an essential service.
However, no, let’s just pop some lights up down at the stadium. Let’s seriously sort out our priorities and invest in what is essential instead of what is not. If we’re going to go into intergenerational debt, it has to be for something that is actually going to benefit everyone in Tasmania, not just here and now but into the future as well. It is a political choice to be spending the money, as this government is, to facilitate exclusively the stadium. It is simply not good enough and we have to see them do better.
