Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Thank you, honourable Speaker, and I want to thank all members for their contribution, because I think what I got from that debate that there is almost furious agreement that $1.13 billion is not where the cost of this project is going to stop. I think the Treasurer and the minister responsible in particular, his acknowledgement – or his, you know, retort – that the two companies that most want this information are the two tendering companies is an admission of fact that the estimate has gone up.
Make no mistake: the Macquarie Point Development Corporation and the government already have this figure. They’d be utterly negligent if they didn’t have a more updated figure than the $1.13 billion that the Premier announced last year when the Planning Commission handed down its recommendation not to proceed with this development. They would have this figure and so it is utterly an admission from the minister, with the two companies wanting this figure, that it has increased. The question really is by how much the estimate. Then yes, of course we accept the fact that no one will really know until, as Mr Vermey has said, there is a negotiation and a contract is agreed.
Of course no one’s going to know. But the point is we all know it’s going up, and the point is it’s in the interests of Tasmanian taxpayers; it’s in the interest of transparency and the very people that are going to fund this project for the government to be making that really clear, and –
Mr Winter – How is it in the interests of taxpayers that you release the number during a live tender process, though?
Dr Woodruff – I’ve already explained that.
The SPEAKER – Order.
Mr BAYLEY – I want to draw on Ms Johnston’s point, a very good point – it was only yesterday which was the deadline on which – the previous motion that the Labor party supported – yesterday was the deadline for when that information would be produced. Somehow and somewhere in the Labor Party’s mind, in the span of a day, it’s now inappropriate for that information to be released publicly. Kudos to Ms Johnston. I think it is more about the fact that this is a motion that orders – and an order has a lot more parliamentary weight behind it than a ‘calls on’. I guess the Labor Party knew that the government would utterly ignore the ‘call’ of this House to release the information.
Look, for the benefit of the minister, we do have doubts around the advice from the Macquarie Point Development Corporation. The Macquarie Point Development Corporation hasn’t been transparent about this project and how it is rolling through. It’s taken question after question after question to actually unpack issues associated with it, including the energy for the development, including how the power is going to be supplied to the project. It would be utterly expected for a proponent in this space who knows that the price has already gone through the roof to not want to see that price revealed. Now, the Treasurer made a very good point in that 70 per cent of parliament voted for the order and for the stadium. That is a matter of fact. I don’t want to reflect on the vote, but it’s a matter of fact.
But that is the very reason why we need this transparency around this information. Because it was based on the commitments of the Premier. It is public knowledge, and it is utterly clear that in the Legislative Council the support of numerous members was based on this pledge of $875 million. He didn’t say ‘not one red cent more’, but that is the obvious implication when it comes to that. So, that is very much why we need to see this information, because Tasmanians deserve transparency around the issue.
Just to a point that Dr Woodruff made: every dollar over the $875 million is a dollar that’s not being spent on the services that we need and deserve. That’s absolutely true. But every dollar over $875 million is going to be borrowed and needs to be serviced as well. We can’t forget the fact that our budget and the general government sector is going to be paying every single year for decade after decade. We’re going to be paying to service this debt going forward.
That’s going to cost us nurses, teachers, police officers, park rangers and the like. I want to finish, I want to commend Mr Vermey, he’s a true believer when it comes to this project, that is well understood. But true belief alone doesn’t deliver the transparency Tasmanians deserve. This motion is about giving Tasmanians that transparency. We know that $1.13 billion only scratches the surface of what this stadium is going to cost.
