Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin - Leader of the Greens) - Mr Deputy Speaker, in considering this no confidence motion, where the Greens are coming from is not looking at the Liberal Party and Jeremy Rockliff in the whole entirety of his time in parliament. We have spoken on that many times and that really forms the bedrock of his performance as a Premier. That is the very shaky and weak foundation on which he now stands as Premier.
In drawing my mind to the no confidence motion in front of us today, what I am thinking about is today and the current situation today. It is in that context that I, reluctantly, cannot find any other way in my heart except to vote in support of this motion. That really comes down to the actions of Jeremy Rockliff as Premier in the last week.
I have to say how saddened I am on behalf of victims/survivors and advocates for improving the situation for all children in government institutions about Premier Rockliff's failure to stand up to the appalling mismanagement of the children and young people portfolio by his minister, Roger Jaensch. It has been his comments in parliament today that really hardened my resolve that Premier Rockliff is no longer fit to govern Tasmania. He is now in charge of the most important body of work that has ever been done for the Parliament of Tasmania and the people of Tasmania. That is the commission of inquiry - the 3000 and more pages, the two years of work into a decades-long investigation about the conditions under which children suffered terrible forms of abuse in Tasmanian Government institutions.
It was that work which he is now responsible for implementing. We have not heard the Government's response and we are still waiting and hoping that the Government will provide a strong response. I need to separate here the agencies that are doing the work in responding to the 191 recommendations of the commission of inquiry and the ministers who are responsible for making decisions about those agencies' work and the Premier who is responsible for leading the ministers, for directing the ministers, for making sure that they attend to all of the spirit and the detail of the recommendations of the commission of inquiry.
We have heard this week that the minister for children and young people, Roger Jaensch, does not accept the findings of the commission of inquiry. He does not accept that there is a live and current risk of child sexual abuse for detainees in Ashley Youth Detention Centre, almost all of whom are there on remand without any conviction, most of whom have never been convicted of a crime. They have been parked there and while they have been parked there waiting for some form of justice, they are living in circumstances that have been described by the UN special rapporteur into the Special Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (OPCAT) representative, that have been described as suffering human rights violations. They have been observed.
There have been witnesses who have given testimony that the children and young people under restrictive practices under lockdowns are living in situations of solitary confinement on a daily basis and they are not being let out for the minimum prescribed times of 10 hours, many days, most days in fact, for far less than that.
The Commissioner for Children and Young People has been clear that every single day since June last year children at Ashley Youth Detention Centre are suffering under restrictive practices. The minister has the shame to stand up and try to euphemise that language, try to pretend it means something else. Then he went on and went further, doubled down and tried to justify it because of operational expediency because there were not enough staff. There is no justification for causing human rights abuses to children and young people. There is no justification, no possible explanation for not accepting the finding of the commissioner of inquiry that children are at risk of child sexual abuse still today.
There is only one correct response from a minister for children and young people and that is to say, 'That report is appalling. It moves me and grieves me to hear what is happening to children in Ashley Youth Detention Centre. I will move heaven and Earth to make sure I get those children into a safe place until we can build a therapeutic facility'. We have had TasCOSS, we have had Colony 47, we have had many justice organisations and other social sector organisations write to the minister and the Premier just this week. They have made it very clear that there are alternatives on the table. There are options available where the community sector can come together and want to work with the minister to develop the alternatives.
The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre has put up its hand and says it can work with Aboriginal children, they can provide safe places. They need the support of Government and they have the skills and expertise. The minister will not meet with them and will not explore those alternatives. Instead he is confining them into -
Mr Jaensch - I am sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker, Dr Woodruff is -
Dr WOODRUFF - You will have your turn, you can say whatever you want.
Mr Jaensch - Mr Deputy Speaker, Dr Woodruff is making things up. She needs to check her facts with the people who have written to me, who I have spoken with, who I have meetings arranged with.
Dr WOODRUFF - That is not a point of order and you can sit down. You have your time later.
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER - Minister Jaensch, that is not a point of order, please -
Mr Jaensch - Hansard will record that I interjected.
Dr WOODRUFF - The eyes of Tasmania have been watching this minister. Victims/survivors have been watching this minister. They have listened to your words and they have measured them up against what the commission of inquiry report said. It is there in black and white. There have been 17 reports and an 18th one yesterday from the Custodial Inspector, all of which have made it abundantly clear, in black and white, that children there are suffering lockdowns, restrictive practices and human rights abuses and they have to go. That is what the commission of inquiry said, they have to leave.
What we heard from the Premier was that he did not remove this minister as he should have done. The Greens called for Roger Jaensch to be removed as the minister. He clearly is incapable of doing the job he has, to get children out of Ashley. The Premier did not support that call. Instead he went in and hardened his support for the minister. He defended the indefensible. He even, tellingly, talked about the fact that it was a high security children's prison that was being prepared in Pontville with therapeutic facilities as well. That is not what the Noetic report called for and that is not what the commission of inquiry would call a therapeutic alternative to Ashley. What it sounds like to us, is the Liberal Government is preparing to build another prison for children at Pontville. The place where the commission of inquiry said there should not be a remand or bail section next to a detention centre, but that is what this minister is drawing up plans for.
Mr Jaensch - No. You cannot just stand there and -
Dr WOODRUFF - You have not given us any more information.
Mr Jaensch - I have but you just do not listen.
Dr WOODRUFF - That is what you said in the first place.
Mr Jaensch - You have just decided on your narrative and you are stuck with it.
Mr WOODRUFF - If you are so confident then why do you not get out and make a commitment to work with TasCOSS and the rest of the sector -
Mr Jaensch - Yes, I am meeting with them next week but you do not believe that, so you just keep making it up.
Dr WOODRUFF - and get those children out of Ashley. Until we have a Premier who is prepared to adopt and fully implement the commission of inquiry's recommendations, we do not have confidence in him. That is what we are hearing today.
You can talk all you like about the future, minister Jaensch, but the future has always been off in the never-never when it comes to action on any of your portfolios. We can put up with the rest of them, but we cannot put up with the ones where you are responsible for children in Ashley.
When I look at the things that matter most to Tasmanians, the things that people really care about, we have had the most frightening research being released in the last couple of days about the situation in the Southern Ocean, the acidification levels are rising.
Ms Ogilvie - Are you still on the motion before the House?
Dr WOODRUFF - Ms Ogilvie, yes, you will have your time when you can talk about yourself, but I am talking about the planet and the oceans. What we have here is real climate action and real climate action is what we need from this Government. While the oceans are acidifying and the ocean ice is melting, while we have UTAS and IMAS scientists pleading with us to take action on the extreme heating of the planet, we have a Premier overseeing a government which, this week, is looking at accepting an expanded coal licence for coal mining in Fingal; that is not ending native forest logging. Until we have an end to native forest logging, we will not end the emissions that come from logging and burning. Every day in Tasmanian forests, we are helping state-sponsored support to increase the emissions that go into the atmosphere which are warming, heating the planet. That is a fact.
If we ended the native forest clear-felling and burning industry, we would have right away, a reduction in emissions equivalent to about one million cars on the road. That is an enormous contribution to a heating planet. That is something our children want us to take action on more than ever before.
These are the things which people in Tasmania desperately want: they want to have real action on climate. They want to have a home. We have heard just this week from the Liberals under Premier Rockliff, is that there will be no housing reforms under his Government. There will be no change to the situation for renters. We have people living in houses, if they are lucky, paying rents that have sky-rocketed in recent years with rent hikes of hundreds of dollars a month. The last Census showed that we had the largest homelessness in the nation. The public housing list has more than doubled in size under this Government. We want people to invest in homes, and that is what the Government should be doing.
Today the Government is bringing on a project of state significance bill that is the first step in a process to build a stadium that nobody wants and that we do not need. The stadium is a terrible deal with the AFL that Peter Gutwein signed us up to as premier and Jeremy Rockliff had the opportunity to rip up but he did not. He should have renegotiated that deal. Here we are 18 months down the path starting a process that would inexorably move Tasmanians towards spending well over $1 billion. This is the Premier who pretends that it would cost $715 million and not a penny more. How can Tasmanians have confidence in somebody who makes stuff up like that? When there is no plan, there is no capacity to cost it, so you cannot say you will build a stadium for $715 million when there are no details about what it is going to look like, what it is going to be made of, how high it is and all of the other costs to do with building a stadium.
The whole process of abuse of Tasmanians trust is exemplified in what has happened with the stadium. We had the Liberals again abusing cabinet-in-confidence process to make sure that Tasmanians do not know what happens. The commission of inquiry needs Tasmania to reset the culture of secrecy and the lack of transparency. That is the way this Government has done business and it has created a lack of transparency at the highest levels of the public service and that has led to secretaries spinning stories to protect ministers, to protect decisions made by this Government in Cabinet about, for example, the stadium.
It was this parliament that had to fight tooth and nail to try to get any information about the stadium. We still did not succeed, or did we? Is it true that Treasury never provided in the advice to Cabinet about the decision to build a $715 million stadium? If that is the case, then no wonder Tasmanians do not have confidence in the Government.
The Premier can rattle off the list of things that have been done and they are great things, but they would have been done regardless of who is in Government because agencies do the work. We might like to pretend that we have the power, but that is not the case. It is not the Liberals who are pulling the strings of the people who are working in the hospitals, in childcare centres, in schools, and the people who are working to build roads and bridges. There are things in train now that the next three governments will be working on. In all likelihood, the Bridgewater bridge will still be going when the next government comes to power, and that government will claim the Bridgewater bridge. It could be the Labor Party, the Liberals, the Greens - it could be anybody. They will claim it, but it is not the work of the government of the day. It is the work of the agencies.
So, the Premier rattled off a whole list of things, but what he did not talk about was trust in him, and trust in his Government. He cannot pretend that it has not been mortally wounded by the decade of secrecy and spin, lack of transparency and accountability, the focus being on managing the ministers and the government of the day, so that public servants do not answer the questions that they are asked in a direct and transparent way, and so there is no consequences for that behaviour.
We have had $4.5 million committed this week to enhance the State Service culture and leadership because that was one of the commission of inquiry's recommendations. What is that going to achieve? We can set all the policies and procedures and systems in place, but it is not enough if the culture does not change at the top. If senior public servants continue to turn a blind eye to the questions that other parliamentarians and members of the public ask them, then what is going to change?
When Jeremy Rockliff became premier, he talked a lot about making meaningful action towards transparency. We have not seen any changes in this Government's active disclosure of information. He talked about rebuilding community trust in government institutions and agencies but that has to start with him at the top. It has to start with sharing information. What we saw in the debacle in parliament over the last couple of months with trying to extract information about the information, and then trying to extract information about the Marinus Link just shows that it is all talk.
We ordered parliament to provide the documents on the current costing for Marinus Link. All we got in response was letters from Marinus Link and Hydro and TasNetworks that were all clearly in reply to a different question. It was not the question that parliament had asked them to answer, it was the question that Mr Barnett asked them to answer. So, the response that we got was, 'We couldn't give information. That would be breach of tender contracts that are in train. We couldn't give information about commercial in confidence negotiations'.
That was not the question that parliament asked. We asked to know what the latest cost estimate was for Marinus Link, North West Transmission and Battery of the Nation. We did not ask about the negotiations for commercial in confidence transactions to do with those matters.
That was a recent example of this Government's way of trying to make sure that parliament and the people of Tasmania do not have access to the thinking behind the biggest financial decisions that will affect us all as a state for decades into the future. The Marinus Link project is far bigger than the stadium. We are talking multi-multi-billions of dollars, and a large proportion of the billions of dollars that cost to build the cable will end up being paid for by Tasmanian taxpayers through our power bills back as our way of paying off that debt over decades.
It was not too much to ask to have a conversation about the cost for Tasmanians. That is not something that Premier Rockliff has shown he is prepared to lead. I believe that goes to his inability to stand up to other people in his Cabinet. I believe it goes to his inability to make strong decisions when it comes to conflict with people in his Cabinet. I believe that he has not demonstrated that he is able to stand up to ministers like Guy Barnett, who has been untruthful. He has told untruths previously to Tasmanians in parliament. He was ordered to appear the Supreme Court about that, but he got shuffled out of that ministry, so he was not the minister who had to appear in court after all. Felix Ellis had to appear but he could not answer the question so the case against minister Barnett was not able to be pursued. When you have ministers like that, it is a problem when you have a premier who cannot stand up to them.
At the most basic level, Jeremy Rockliff does not have the confidence - and we do not have the confidence in him - to stand up to minister Jaensch when it comes to the failings in his portfolio about Ashley, and to stand up to Guy Barnett about what has been going on with Marinus Link decisions. Tasmanians are still unaware about those costs.
He did not have the confidence to stand up to the AFL and demand a better deal for Tasmanians so that we hold the licence, and keep our right to have a team but we stand the line for people who need housing, to say, 'We are not going to prioritise building a stadium when we need to be spending a billion dollars on building housing'. Anyone can see that is the most critical priority for Tasmania.
Jostling close next to it would be spending money on hospital infrastructures; expanding, fast-tracking, the Launceston General Hospital. If we cannot build a therapeutic alternative to Ashley in the next year, how can we possibly build a stadium in the next four. It is a ludicrous proposition. It is also ludicrous that Jeremy Rockliff is expecting us to believe it will not be more than $715 million, when every other development that we could find around the state in recent times has more than doubled and some more than tripled their costs. The proposed Wesley Vale race track has more than doubled its price. The New Town health centre that was not built because the cost went up more than twice. The costs have more than doubled for the Glenorchy Ambulance Station also. It is just a statement of fact. So, what we are really talking about is $1.5 billion worth of stadium. Whether we want to go down that track is the decision for us to make today.
The Greens are really clear. It is obviously money that could be spent on houses. We do not even want to go down that pathway. It is Jeremy Rockliff who is continuing to steer us on a dangerous course and is taking with him all the baggage of the other failed Liberal premiers of Tasmania. Will Hodgman and Peter Gutwein, who sold us down the river who would sell our beautiful wilderness to private developers, who have no problems with backing companies against the Aboriginal community and the Hobart community against the law to put a cable car on kunanyi. These are the sort of heart passion projects that the Liberals continue to push and continue want to override the community.
Michael Ferguson spoke previously about planning as being one of the things that he is so proud of. This is the Government that has brought in the worst Tasmanian Planning Scheme we have ever had. You only have to be a builder, a small home-owner wanting to make a change, or a member of the community wanting to have a say about a development - everyone is unhappy with the planning scheme. Every single person in Tasmania thinks it is a dog, compared to what it was. We all thought it could not have been worse and we were all wrong. We thought it was at the lowest bar in 2015 but Peter Gutwein made sure he took us to the next level. It is nothing to be proud of. It is not only bad for developers, it is bad for communities that want to have a say about development.
Jeremy Rockliff has persisted on this course that other Liberal premiers have gone down. What it meant was, that although he is a man of heart, he did not step in and do anything about St Helen's mental health hospital and mothers and babies. He did not do that. He did not do anything effective for the thousands of people in psychiatric distress - people who desperately needed his help, people who are at risk of suicide. He did nothing about those people. He did a tiny little thing for a very small proportion of the patients who were going to St Helen's. However, that is not what was required. Meanwhile, he put his attention on a stadium. That is the problem.
He is looking for the one big fix but Tasmania needs thousands of homes, not one big stadium. We need a lot more resources - nurses in hospitals and teachers and schools. We need many more child safety officers, child protection officers and for the advice and referral line so that there can be responses to the notifications. There were over 700 notifications two weeks ago that were sitting there unanswered.
They are the core issues. Because the Liberals are persisting under Jeremy Rockliff at following the folly of the stadium and pursuing the Marinus Link, they are not focused on the other things Tasmanians care about most. They are not focused on building houses or solving the problem in the emergency departments that are real problems today, or providing the mental health services that are needed for Tasmanians. We are sorry to have to support this no confidence motion today but it has to be done.
