Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, it was very disappointing to hear that contribution from the honourable Mr Vermey. I think it’s beneath him to come up with some of that dishonesty, essentially, and hyperbolic spin, which has obviously been prepared for him by somebody else.
We came here in good faith trying to establish some of the facts. Some of the facts have been disputed. I note that really the only fact that’s been disputed that we’ve presented in our motion is about the additional expenditure elements.
There’s been a minor brouhaha from the Treasurer and the Leader of the Opposition about whether or not we should include the cost of the Northern Access Road, the car park, the event buses. The Planning Commission says that we should. We know we should, but let’s even leave those to a side.
No one else has actually addressed any of the other points that we’ve made in this motion. They are all statements of fact, and it is convenient to try to pretend that the things that we have on this page are not true or will not come to pass. However, all the evidence is that they will, and they have not been disputed by any of the Liberal or Labor members who have spoken.
This state will spend a minimum of $1.13 billion. Of that $865.7 million will be funded by the state government. The Treasurer says we don’t understand operational borrowings, infrastructure; that’s just all designed to kind of muddy the waters.
The bottom line is Tasmanians will be paying for this project. Whether it comes from the capital infrastructure bucket or whether it comes from operational funding doesn’t really make a difference. At the end of the day, year on year, according to the government’s own Coordinator-General, there will be at the moment looking at $70 million coming from the Treasurer’s operational budget to pay for the interest on all that money.
Tasmanians understand what interest is; they’re not stupid. They know that when you borrow money for a house you have to stump up every fortnight and pay the money back with interest. That’s what will be happening. The estimate we have on the table at the moment is $70 million a year.
Why do we care about that being a big number? I know why I care, as the member for Franklin. It’s because in the last week I spoke personally with two different neighbourhood centre general managers, and I’m not going to say which ones they are, in my electorate because they may not be comfortable being named. They’re waiting to hear if they have the budget. What I heard is they still did not have the money last week for their community connectors. These are the people who are on the ground in our electorates at Neighbourhood Houses, organising for food to be handed out to people who are desperate, organising to help older people, people with language difficulties or difficulties accessing the internet, being able to get onto Centrelink, being able to get onto aged care. These are the people who organise breakfast, keep the doors open and keep the community running. Those people weren’t being paid for their work. This is how penny-pinching the Treasurer already is.
The budget submissions he gave to community services asked them, not ‘What do you need?’, but ‘What can you cut, what can you do less of?’ What an absolute injustice to be saying that to organisations that have been receiving the same base funding, I believe, for over 10 years without CPI. They have been ground into the ground. It is such a disgrace.
What is even more disappointing is the Labor opposition not raising a peep about this, not at all concerned about the $70 million, at the baseline, that we’ll be spending paying the interest year on year for the loan to build the stadium. At the same time, they are outraged at the government’s mismanagement of the Spirits, rightfully outraged that there will have to be another loan sought of $75 million to bail out that whole big mess. That is a reasonable concern, but why isn’t Labor concerned about that amount of money every single year for decades to come being eaten out of Neighbourhood Houses, being eaten out of public sector wages?
The situation we are in now where public sector workers want a pay rise, it’s fair, it’s not surprising. Labor is talking about that as an issue. However, do they understand the money will not be there if they support the stadium? The money will not be there for the 26Ten literacy support, which the government is looking at winding up. This is an appalling situation where Tasmania still has one of the lowest levels of functional literacy in the country. We haven’t shifted the dial there. We are certainly not shifting the dial in schools when we’re hearing from 300 educators, principals and teachers, in the latest survey that they don’t have the money to support the wellbeing of students in nine out of 10 schools in Tasmania.
The Premier said this morning, ‘Oh, but we’ve been been investing so much money.’ Yes, and it’s not meeting the need or the complexity that’s in the community now. What does a government do that really cares about those people? It doesn’t go and spend money on stuff on eBay that we can’t afford. It puts the money into paying the bills. The bills are the food that people need to eat, the 81,000 Tasmanians who don’t have enough food, who are skipping meals every day, who are hungry. We don’t know what that’s like in this room, but they are hungry for days at a time. That’s what the latest survey told us.
The Neighbourhood Houses are the people at the front line. Anglicare is at the front line for all those people, the people who are sleeping rough. Regarding their latest survey, yes, we should be shocked to the core. We expect the Labor Party to be fighting for these people. To fund a stadium for decades to come, with the interest we’ll be paying off, beggars belief. We are hoping that Labor will really listen to the people in the community.
The honourable Mr Vermey said, ‘The Greens are at it again.’ Yes, we are at it again, and we are proud of the fact that we are coming in to speak for the majority of Tasmanians who have said, poll after poll, that they don’t want this stadium to be built because we have two already –
A member – You still voted for them to be on that side of the Chamber.
Dr WOODRUFF – because we know there are other ways to support the Devils and fund them. Of course, there are. Of course, we supported the idea of putting the money out there to support our team. Of course, we will do that. That is what we will do.
A member – You’re the one that teamed up with them all the time.
The SPEAKER – Order. The honourable member for Franklin can make a contribution soon.
Dr WOODRUFF – We supported the alternative. We support a Plan B because we want the Devils team to be there, instead of spending $70 million a year on keeping the interest rate going to build a stadium that would be an excrescence in the middle of Hobart, an outrage for our returned veterans, another blight for Aboriginal people, for palawa people, at the place that should be a reconciliation space, instead of a stadium we can’t afford and don’t need.
The Liberals are looking after business and industry leaders who Mr Vermey says want it built. Actually, they don’t all want it built. That’s not even true. The TCCI certainly weren’t happy when they spoke out about it. There are many other businesspeople who don’t believe the bumph that the Liberals are trying to sell. Treasury was crystal clear. If only the Liberals and the Labor Party listened to Treasury in its pre-election statement. We cannot pretend that we can grow ourselves out of the debt burden the Liberals have piled onto us. It is going up from $4.2 billion to $13 billion. That is an appalling situation for somebody who cares about business. We care about that because that’s money that’s not going to people who are homeless, money not going to neighbourhood centres, money not going to schools and teachers. That is why we will do everything we can to stop this stadium being built.
