Ms BURNET (Clark) – Deputy Speaker, this morning I woke to a storm. It was very atmospheric and it really made me think about what we might be considering today. We’ve come to a point where we’ve had a lot of discussion about the Macquarie Point stadium, the whys and wherefores, the pros and cons of it. I’d like to acknowledge everybody who’s been on this journey, whether they have been for the stadium, whether they’ve changed their mind along the way, or whether they have been opposed to the stadium. We’ve heard from members of the crossbench. Every member of the Greens has spoken. It was important that we put our concerns and the concerns of our electorate, our constituents, on the record and I’m proud to be able to do that tonight.
Here we have this order presented by the Treasurer and Minister for the Macquarie Point Urban Renewal Project. These are two important portfolios, the yin and yang of this debate, if you will. We’ve been discussing a number of matters around the Budget. I believe everybody in this House did a reply speech in relation to the Budget. We cannot separate the Macquarie Point stadium and all that it represents, and all those threats to good economic management without thinking about the Budget.
I will start by addressing some of Mr Abetz’s comments when he moved the motion in relation to this order. The minister talked about borrowings for infrastructure projects and suggested that there was never any question raised by the House about borrowings for schools and bridges, and those other necessary infrastructure projects; so, why then would we question borrowings for the Macquarie Point stadium? As I argued this morning, there are infrastructure projects and then there are other infrastructure projects.
If we look at the TT-Line’s debt crisis and poor project management, the ferries need replacing and money needs to be spent. That the project hasn’t been managed all that well I will get to in a moment. If we look at Tasmania’s ageing school buildings, some of those aren’t fit for purpose. They shouldn’t have young Tasmanians in them. They need replacement or they need serious repair. Those are important projects for our state. They’re a ‘must have’, not a ‘maybe we could have’ which the stadium is. Then if we compare this to the TT‑Line debacle, the multi‑million dollar borrowings and poor project outcomes, these issues as yet have not been resolved. We hear today from the Premier, that TT-Line has been referred to ASIC. These issues have not yet been resolved and they are still to play out.
The minister suggested that the government has learned from the mistakes of the ferries failures. Have they learned better fiscal management? Have they learned better infrastructure management? I think these issues have yet to be determined and I think the jury is absolutely out on the matter. Before we jump into another significantly large, if not the biggest infrastructure project, we have to consider the risks. The Tasmanian Planning Commission, in their interim assessment, pored over those risks. They looked at it from every angle. They received multiple reports on transport risks, on financial risks. That was a considered proposal. Then, when we had the response from the government, it was pretty much less considered. Now, we have an order to consider and the order is a bit of a pulling together of all these different components.
Many of us in this Chamber have been members of planning authorities before and many of us do come from a local government background. And I have to say, and I think Ms Rosol said it well, that there are concerns about considering an order of this magnitude, if you like. There are 157 pages of considerable detail and we don’t even get to discuss it, which is a travesty, in my opinion. This is something that should have been teased over. We should have really gone line by line to get an understanding and to do it justice and do the justice of those people who have been involved, the public servants who’ve been involved, the members of the TPC. They could be proven wrong. But their considered recommendation, I think really should stand the test of time. There was so much consideration poured into that and unfortunately the government has dismissed many of those findings.
I’d like to remind the House on the return to local economies as a result of major sports facility developments. There’s an American think tank, Brookings, who in an article stated a new sports facility has an extremely small, perhaps even negative, effect on overall economic activity and employment. No recent facility has been self-financing in terms of its impacts on net tax revenues. Regardless of whether the unit of analysis is a local neighbourhood,, a city, or an entire metropolitan area, the benefits of sports facilities are diminished. I think the point is, and it’s been made again clearly by the work borrowed from the report done by KPMG, which the members of the Planning Commission panel used as their modelling, the cost benefit analysis should be much higher than that was identified, which is 45 cents to every dollar spent.
Again, Ms Rosol, to borrow her example, that community gardens, neighbourhood houses, are given much greater return to their economy. When we invest in projects, no matter what the Treasurer might say when we invest a lot of money and all the borrowings that we have to make and the interest that we have to pay, it comes at a cost to other worthy projects for our communities in all our electorates across Tasmania ‑ in health, in community services, in education, in housing. We all suffer, and we are all diminished as a result.
The minister referred to the divisiveness of this issue, and Mr Garland really drew our attention to this as well. This has been a very divisive issue for Tasmania and divisiveness is something which should be, at all costs, avoided where possible. Tasmanians are divided by this issue. This has been an abject failure in taking the community with you. In part, this is because of the significant physical impacts on the city, as the stadium will loom large over heritage features of the city. It is a massive financial burden which is being covered over the time and it is those environmental aspects, which I will get to in a moment.
The project just doesn’t stack up on so many counts. At every turn, there’s a ‘you’re with us or against us’ on this stadium and there’s little rational debate, I am afraid. The division and its impacts have not been handled well and I believe that this responsibility lies squarely at the feet of the government, particularly with little regard for compromise. The costs to the north‑west footy fans to go to games in Hobart has been brought up by the member for Braddon, Mr Garland. That’s why York Park is the pick for many as the home of football in this state, central to everyone and, therefore, it is an equitable outcome.
One other thing that impacts every Tasmanian is this massive debt that the TPC has calculated and this debt is for every household: $4100. The government would accumulate $1 billion in debt in construction costs, which rise to $1.8 billion over 10 years. So, the construction cost equates to an excruciating $5900 per Tasmanian household not reliant on Commonwealth support and, as I have said before, this is the biggest burden that any population that has a stadium thrust upon them has to pay.
Why is it that the poorest population in Australia has to pay the most to have this stadium delivered? What of external revenue streams? Have we heard that there will be no gambling‑related advertising associated with the Macquarie Point stadium? There is significant harm from online gambling, and it would be an absolute travesty, but the AFL will need to get their pound of flesh, and I will assume that it would be they who would reap the benefits of gambling revenue or perhaps the state has some gambling revenue taxes in mind.
Division, as I was saying before, is a favoured political currency. Who benefits? Not Tasmanians, but those in power when you get division. The minister, Mr Abetz, used the analogy of the culturally elite of Paris and Sydney with the building of the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House, and how the culturally elite didn’t want to see it but then it was of benefit to them in the long run. However, what I see this translate to is referring to the good burghurs of Glebe and across this state who are concerned about the visual and cultural impact this will have on the human scale city that is Hobart, which has significant heritage values, which with the building of this stadium, are completely disregarded.
I want to talk about a couple of things featured in the order and, again, the massive amount of spending or the lack of costing as part of the overall project.
The Greens have raised many times the issue of the northern access road. It’s being funded as part of the Urban Congestion Fund, a road that effectively leads to the port, and of course the event plaza, which is costed at $75.9 million, but it’s not even a through road, so it’s interesting that this should come out of the Urban Congestion Fund.
Mr Abetz – It was the Hobart City Deal.
Ms BURNET – There were other projects earmarked for these funds that would benefit other road users, which were part of the city deal, actually, minister Abetz, but this is really enabling the stadium build.
The Tasman Bridge upgrades, for starters, would be a winner and benefit for many more southern Tasmanians often stuck in congestion. If we look at the construction issues which have not been addressed on this order, there is a stark admission in the EPA’s submission, and that is the environmental issues with with the fill, which Ms Badger touched upon.
In their submission, they say there isn’t enough room in southern Tasmanian landfills to accept all the contaminated soil that will have to be excavated. The management plan doesn’t even include the mass that would need to be moved for the car park. I could talk about the car park, but that’s a very expensive car park to build in the brownfield site.
Third, I wanted to raise the issue of transport, any transport issues for the stadium. There are so many unknowns and assumptions in this modal shift, which is expected, it is cringe-worthy. For example, the rapid bus transit, which, uncosted, would move supposedly 3 per cent to 6 per cent of game-day patrons. We await the business case for this. There’s $49 million allocated for event buses, which minister Abetz said was actually to make school buses DDA compliant. Getting that modal shift is a big ask for Tasmanians who do not catch public transport; they they steer well away from it, which is unfortunate, but it’s going to be very difficult to get that modal shift.
I remind the House that Metro, a key sponsor of the JackJumpers, couldn’t even run their shuttle buses up the Brooker on game day. We need to see a lot more detail before anyone can take seriously the proposed modal shift that would be required to get 23,000 people to events without causing complete chaos, read that as congestion, across Greater Hobart.
We have a responsibility to make choices on how dollars are spent for this state. We have given budget reply speeches, and we will have 70.5 hours of Estimates committee work to scrutinise the government’s budget, and no extra time to scrutinise this order.
This has not really been aired as a gendered issue, but I might make the point. We’ve heard about family violence; it’s been raised by a number of speakers. Footy is predominantly a male game. It’s been championed by two male premiers. We’ve heard one member, one female member of the government, and really, I think there’s concern, and I would like to imagine what this House might have done if we’d had a different interpretation or a different approach to this if it wasn’t football.
We know that people are passionate about football in Tasmania, however during this debate, there has been little said about grassroots teams and facilities. In many other sports, such as soccer, rugby, basketball, hockey, netball, played by many Tasmanians every week, they get crumbs comparatively. Aussie rules is receiving the lion’s share of sports funding when you take into account the Macquarie Point stadium. I have to wonder that if there were requests for funding for a national netball team, would we be having this debate?
In closing, this has been a significant issue felt acutely across this island. The Greens have represented concerns of many thousands of Tasmanians. We have listened to those concerns. We have also shared the desire of so many Tasmanians to have an AFL team. However, we vowed not to do this at any cost. We do not want to see generations of Tasmanians paying for this football stadium folly. We also hope that those in the other place can consider the best interests of all Tasmanians and generations to come, and not throw caution to an ill wind.
