Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I thank members for their contribution. I thank the member for Clark, who just resumed her seat, for that contribution because I completely agree: the Labor Party will be complicit in this white elephant – and you know what? I think they know it. They know it here and now and they know what they’re doing is actually the wrong thing.
Just to respond to some of the comments that were made as part of that debate, I just want to overall make the observation that I found the retort to our motion and the rejection of our motion utterly pathetic from both sides of this Chamber. To start with, the Treasurer, I hardly want to dignify the claim – and unfortunately Mr Vermey demeaned himself by starting to go there – but for the Treasurer to keep pointing to the Eden Project as some kind of wedge against us is just utterly pathetic. That was a project that could have brought a whole range of benefits to the state that the Greens looked at. To think that it was going to be a 50 metre dome exactly as was proposed in Cornwall is just utterly ridiculous. Even if the Mercury may have photoshopped it like that, Mr Ellis, I would have thought that that project would go through a proper planning process, it would be moderated and designed to fit with the landscape and the planning scheme and indeed, I would have thought that the Eden Project would be a good corporate citizen that respected stakeholders and neighbours such as the RSL. Utterly pathetic.
For the Treasurer to say that we are simply making stuff up and talking gobbledygook is utterly disrespectful, including to his own Treasury because he pointed at things like the Northern Access Road, but that’s exactly what his own Treasury has identified in the PEFO.
Back in June, barely four or five months ago, the Treasury wrote a range of issues could further impact on the cost of the stadium, including the cost of related projects to support the stating stadium not included in the $945 million including the northern access road. These costs were not included in the revised estimate report, and they represent unfunded budget risks.
We are the laughingstock. The Treasurer talked about us being the laughingstock if this project doesn’t go ahead, but in fact, we are the laughingstock. Where the laughingstock because of the Spirits fiasco, and everybody is laughing at you over there on the government benches. They’re laughing at us as well because we commissioned a bunch of experts and paid them hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend a year looking at a major project, and when they say, ‘You should not do this,’ we throw it out. The Premier throws it out within half an hour and says, ‘We’re going do it come what may’.
The joke’s on you, government, and the joke’s on you, the Labor Party, because people genuinely are looking at us and wondering how the hell can we get into this situation.
The Treasurer talked about the TSO’s $4.45 million. I remind him that the Planning Commission identified that the panel does note that the agreement with the TSO adds to the cost of the project and is not taken into account in this topic – the net social benefit.
If the Treasurer wants to accuse us of adding a figure in that is already part of the $1.13 billion, I call on him to release a very detailed cost estimate of this project that tells us exactly what is in it and what isn’t in it, because at the moment the public don’t have that before them.
One of the most telling things about the Treasurer and Mr Willie’s contribution here is that neither of them spoke about the debt-servicing expense of this borrowing. Neither of them went to try to undermine whether it’s the Coordinator-General’s figures of $45‑75 million a year, or it’s the Treasury’s figures of $30 million to service only the Macquarie Point borrowing.
That to me tells us everything we need to know because that debt servicing is what does come out of what we pay every single year and that is what is driving the cuts to our services, to the Neighbourhood Houses, to the Chigwell Garden and Play Group, to the Arts funding and all to pay for a third stadium. A stadium that Tasmanians don’t want. A stadium that Tasmanians don’t need, and a stadium that Tasmanians clearly can’t afford.
I do want to finish by echoing Mr George’s call on the Treasurer to come in here and apologise for besmirching the name of Dr Nicholas Gruen, engaged by his government to do this report, and tarnished his name, his credibility tarnished simply because he gave them an answer they didn’t want to hear.
Time expired.
Motion agreed to.
