Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I rise to speak on this order as a proud Greens member for Nipaluna/Hobart – this beautiful city and its people, both of whom I love with all my Green heart. I acknowledge the tens of thousands of years of Palawa history here in the foothills of Kunanyi on the banks of Timtumili Minanya. Here, Nipaluna, is where the Muwinina lived, loved, fought, played, and raised their families for millennia until they were wiped out by the colonisers. The blood and the story of the Muwinina is written in this city’s soil and its soul. That demands of us respect and reverence, not what Professor Greg Lehman has described to the Tasmanian Planning Commission: ‘Black-cladding’ in the stadium’s Aboriginal culturally informed zone – the token gesture to replace the promised Aboriginal Reconciliation, Truth and Art Park.
In this great city, its heart is its people. What a big heart Nipauna/Hobart has, and in many ways, in physical terms at least, that heart beats most tangibly along the waterfront from Salamanca to Sullivans Cove – an extraordinary and rare place rich in Aboriginal and European heritage – a living, working port. An urban landscape like no other anywhere. A rareness and values that this order wilfully disregards and trashes. So too with the sacred ground of the Cenotaph. Our shrine of remembrance and its careful sighting and sweeping views across the Derwent and south to Storm Bay. It’s a place John Wadsley from the Friends of Soldiers Memorial Avenue described to us as: ‘Not just a monument. Every element of the setting was purposeful’.
We know that, as community members and leaders, every time we gather there to honour, to grieve in silence, those thousands of Tasmanians killed in war and at that quiet, sacred place, be reminded of its terrible and infinite cost. In less than a fortnight we mark the Cenotaph’s centenary. Given the likely vote on the order, it will be a day of very mixed feelings for our veterans, I’m sure.
The Tasmanian Planning Commission confirmed no mitigation can offset the harm the proposed stadium would inflict on the Cenotaph. The lack of respect and honour for the Cenotaph in this order is egregious. It was only a week ago, in a briefing to us that the state president of the RSL implored us to vote ‘No’. Mr Mike Gallagher described the stadium order as ‘immoral.’ It is. It’s utterly immoral. In my view, it’s immoral to degrade the sacredness of the Cenotaph.
It’s immoral to endorse the prioritisation of public spending on a sports stadium over our hospitals, over building new social housing, over giving our kids the well‑funded education they deserve, or – and here’s a novel idea for the major parties facilitating this travesty – investing in climate action and environmental repair as the natural world breaks down around us.
I am here on behalf of the Greens to tell everyone of those thousands of Tasmanians who’ve contacted us begging us to oppose this order, and the many, many, many thousands across the island who feel absolutely gutted today, not to despair. There is a long, long way to go before a single sod of the estimated 220,000 cubic metres of poisoned soil at that site is turned. The fight will go on. The vote on this order will not be the end of it; you can be sure of it. In Tasmania, we are well seasoned to standing up to government and corporate bastardry and so strong is the public mood on this issue, I am certain there will be a rising up in the wake of this vote. Long live the spirit of peaceful non-violent resistance that defines so much of our modern identity as Tasmanians. The struggle will go on. We will rest, but we will not quit.
I had another speech written for today, a speech more hopeful that common sense would prevail, that the evidence and the clear community feeling would speak for themselves. I’ve ditched that speech now. We know now how the vote will almost certainly go. So laying out all the evidence, the irrefutable, independent, expert evidence for why this order should be resoundingly rejected seems moot now.
Everyone who supports this order has presumably read the Tasmanian Planning Commission’s final report. We all know, after a year of meticulous and methodical assessment, the panel recommended the project not proceed. We all know the likely benefits, according to the experts, will be less than half the cost. Overwhelmingly, the benefits will go to the AFL and gambling businesses, and the costs will be borne by the people we were elected to represent and their children and their grandchildren for generations.
We all know that this publicly‑funded monstrosity will have massive cost blowouts. The Premier’s promise today of an $875 million cap on the state’s contribution is meaningless. He has made such promises multiple times before. At the 2024 election, it was $375 million, he said, and not one red cent more. Well, it is now apparently capped at $875 million. That’s 50 billion red cents more, all of it coming out of the public purse and all of it funded by debt at a time when net debt is projected to reach $13 billion within three years. This for Australia’s smallest and poorest state, when both Moody and Standard and Poor’s have both just downgraded our credit rating, citing ballooning debt and the stadium in their risk assessment.
In the beginning, three years ago, after Jeremy Rockliff and Gill McLachlan stitched us up and sold us out, the cost of the stadium was projected to be $715 million. Not long later, it was revised upwards to $775 million, then it was $945 million and that was the cost the TPC based its report on and its finding that the stadium would add $1.8 billion to net debt within a decade.
Now, of course, as we know, the cost of the stadium is projected to be $1.13 billion, and we all know that cost will absolutely rise, and it will be the people of Tasmania who bear that cost. This was confirmed by panel member and respected Life Fellow of the Planning Institute of Australia, Mr Gary Pratley, who told us at the TPC hearing last Thursday that construction costs are soaring, in some cases, he said, up to 300 per cent. We all heard the former Treasury secretary, Martin Wallace, last week when he told us that, on the current projected cost of the stadium of $1.13 billion, the interest payments on the borrowings will reach $90 million a year and rising within five years and adding $1.5 billion to our net debt within the same period.
Now, to anyone who has forgotten what Mr Wallace said or not fully heard it, I’d like to read it back into the Hansard. I asked Mr Wallace, ‘Just on the interest cost, by your estimation at $1.13 billion, would you have any picture of that?’. He said, and I must say Mr President, it was a very impressive display of high‑speed mathematics. He said:
Yes. The latest budget came out, obviously, a very short time ago and it shows that at the time when most of the borrowing would happen, it looks like the borrowing rate will be about 6.4 per cent. The core cost of the stadium is $1.1 billion. We have included the things that are absolutely essential, works that are necessary to make it operational, and they add about another $250 million.
The way it works out is if you add those things together and take off the Commonwealth contribution and the AFL contribution, the state will be borrowing $1.1 billion. So, $1.1 billion at 6.4 per cent is $70 million a year, except where you have to borrow the interest as well. The reason for why you have to borrow that much and why you have to borrow the interest is because the state has an underlying significant cash deficit for the foreseeable future without the stadium, so any cash that adds to that has to be borrowed.
So all interest payments have to be borrowed. For example, the first year you’re paying $70 million, the second year you are borrowing another $70 million. The interest on that first $70 million is at 6.4 per cent, so roughly $4 million to $5 million, so next year you’re borrowing $74 million. The following year, you are borrowing $80 million, so within about five years, you’re going to get a debt associated with the stadium of, say, $1.5 billion, not $1.1 billion, and the interest costs at that stage will be $90 million a year, and he closed with this: It is a completely untenable situation. With the greatest of respect to the member for Montgomery, that is not chump change. It’s billions in debt that will be paid for by generations of Tasmanians financially and socially as public services are stripmined to pay for Jeremy Rockliff’s vanity project.
We also heard Mr Wallace refute the oft‑repeated mantra from government that the stadium will bring a whole raft of intangible benefits. The former Treasury secretary told us every possible benefit was incorporated into the cost‑benefit analysis, and none of the social costs. He also scoffed at the totally unsupported claim by the Devils’ Brendon Gale that this stadium will lift the economy in Tasmania by $2.2 billion in 25 years. The independent expert finding, the planning expert finding, is that:
The project represents a significant net cost and will diminish the economic welfare of Tasmanians as a whole, and it offers almost no scope for the site to become a vibrant, active place that is attractive to visit outside of major event mode. In very simple terms the stadium is too big for the site and the benefits it will bring are significantly outweighed by the disbenefits it creates.
And yet here we are.
I also want to acknowledge and thank everyone who came along to brief members of the Legislative Council last Wednesday and Thursday. They were illuminating discussions. I take the opportunity to read into the Hansard the words to us of our highly, internationally‑respected author and historian, Richard Flanagan, when he said:
This catastrophe should have been killed off by the TPC report and the Treasury’s pre‑election financial outlook. That it wasn’t speaks to a government without moral compass or fiscal responsibility. We are teetering on near bankruptcy. Federal intervention is openly discussed nationally, including in Moody’s downgrading report, which specifically cites the stadium as a cause for its action, yet instead of addressing our profound social and economic problems, instead of focusing on healthcare, homelessness, education and debt, the government, to its immense shame, has spent two years focused almost entirely on one unaffordable stadium.
And Richard says to us:
I, like so many Tasmanians, am grateful that you are treating this issue with the gravity it merits. In our recent history, the upper House has shown itself to be the conscience of Tasmania. I hope it will be so again.
If I had asked any of you three years ago would you support a team if it rips hundreds of millions of dollars out of health, education and housing, I suspect all of you would have replied of course not, but that’s where we are today. All members in this place have been under enormous pressure and we have been politically blackmailed. We have been told that without the stadium there is no team. We are voting today only on the stadium order, but it is a fact that every contract, any contract, can be renegotiated. If we had a Premier who put the public interest first, and if he had an actual spine, he would have started negotiations to renegotiate that contract straight after the Tasmanian Planning Commission’s final assessment report. But he didn’t, and now we’re contemplating the approval of a project that will be a money‑sucking black hole in the heart of our city.
The strength of feeling across all political divides and across the island is intense. I know that honourable members have many outstanding, heartfelt, detailed emails and letters from our constituents across the island. Here’s one that arrived late last night that really struck me. The person who sent this to us has asked to be identified simply as Jo, but honourable members will have received this email and know who I’m talking about:
I’m writing to you on the eve of your important vote on the stadium. My family’s been in business for 40 years in this state. Over this time, we’ve provided income to over 200 Tasmanians and generated many thousands of dollars in GST receipts to the state. You’d have never heard of us. Not your fault. We’ve been quietly going about our business, our choice. We’ve received no handouts. We have over the years fought against local governments and water authorities that have charged excessive rates and punitive measures on selected businesses, all to no avail with no assistance, quite the opposite from the state.
To now see our state government bend over backwards to the AFL is a step too far. We’re not only intending on exiting our business assets in the state, but our personal assets as well. The only reason I’ve never bought a ticket to watch the Hawthorn Football Club play at York Park is because the times I went there as a guest I saw many mayors and general managers of councils, GBEs and heads of state parliament there. Did they pay for their tickets?
Meanwhile, the government claims it brings millions into the state but there’s no proof. I’ve caught planes home to Tasmania during these high peak times cheaply. I call bullshit. I’m old enough to remember the Silverdome, Derwent Entertainment Centre and York Park being promised to bring colossal revenues to the state: all bullshit. Where are those venues now? Sold off for peanuts.
Last week, I attended an event in Hobart and spoke to a prominent Tasmanian businessman who said, ‘We should just build the stadium regardless of cost because if the state goes broke, we’ll all be bailed out by the federal government.’ Is this a sound financial argument to proceed with the stadium? No.
She says:
Melbourne is an ugly, grey drab place with AFL bunting everywhere. Hobart and Tasmania deserve better.
She finishes with:
Tell the AFL to piss off back to Victoria and take their ugly stadium with them.
There’s a lot of talk about young people and their aspirations for the future and I understand that, and I also appreciated Lily’s presentation to us last week, but it is not possible to speak for all young people on this project and no one should try to. Young people in Tasmania are diverse and they all have different hopes and dreams for the future. I will read now from Amy, who’s 19 years old:
My name is Amy. I’m 19 years old and currently living without a house. I have physical disabilities including a gastrointestinal disease that I’ve been deemed category 1, urgent, since April 2025 and it’s caused a severe decline in my health. All of this on top of my severe mental health issues. I’m unable to work. I’m extremely worried about the stadium being built as I fear it will deeply affect mine and many others’ futures. With funding for classes at TAFE being cut, years of waiting on Centrelink to approve my disability support payment and lack of access to proper care, I’m struggling to see a way I can survive in Tasmania.
I fear the stadium will make these issues much worse for me and people like me, with the mass amounts of growing debts making it impossible for vulnerable people to survive here. I believe more Tasmanians are anti‑stadium than pro‑stadium but are having a hard time expressing their opinions due to the backlash anti-stadium people get from pro‑stadium people. I thought I’d reach out to you because I feel you’d take mine and other vulnerable people’s concerns more seriously. Please don’t ever let people bring you down for making the right decision. I thank you so much for it and the Greens Party for trying your best to make a real change.
I’ve already noticed a lot of people my age moving away from Tasmania due to these growing issues. I want to love Tasmania, but it’s getting harder and harder with life getting more expensive …’
We received thousands of emails in not dissimilar terms.
If you’re more concerned about what business thinks, here’s a quote from Graham Cox, the CEO of the Hellyer gold mine:
… I say to the leadership of this government: the state is broke, you have multiple failures on your hands, have the lowest credit rating in the country, and can’t afford to build a new stadium. You were elected to Parliament to serve the people and businesses of Tasmania. Never forget that …
We are headed for – and it’s just a fact – an era of profound stadium austerity.
It’s ironic that in the other place today they’re debating a bill, the UTAS bill, which provides for rezoning of land north of Churchill Ave for UTAS to sell so it can earn some income expected to be around $100 million to chip in towards its STEM facilities. The state government is not making contribution to the university’s STEM facilities. The state government is pouring money into a stadium we don’t need, while the University of Tasmania will try to flog off land to self‑fund its own STEM facilities.
Even in this year since mid‑2025, there have been a plethora of news articles and commentary about stadium austerity, the cuts that are already happening, and the fact that they will be deeper come next May.
A story in the Mercury on 23 September about exacerbating housing costs. The story in the Mercury on 1 October about St Helen’s private mental health facility facing imminent closure. Also the Mercury, 4 October: Saul Eslake warns government infrastructure agenda poses a threat to the budget. Also in the Mercury, a story on 8 October: grants program to help new Spirit ferries disappears. October reporting the City Mission shed staff because of funding cuts. Another story in the Mercury on 15 October about a delay in providing the replacement breast screening bus. Another story the next day: 12 TAFE courses cut, resulting in lack of career development and jobs for designers, technicians, marketers, producers and craftspeople.
It is galling to hear people talk about the jobs and opportunities that would come from this stadium, references to being able to undertake courses and apprenticeships partly through TAFE – a singular focus on one class of worker. Wouldn’t it be great if our focus on that group of workers was about pointing them towards building more social housing, for example? Essential social infrastructure, upgrading our health facilities, for example? No. There seems to be a view that the only good job here in Tasmania is one in a high‑vis vest. I think that workforce, that talented and skilled workforce, could be directed towards projects with much more social value, but no.
More clippings: a lack of mental health support for veterans. TasCOSS criticising government decisions to limit funding of services in the budget. A story here with community services organisations coming out expressing concern about budget cuts to social and community services. Another story a few weeks later about social and community services fearing further cuts, the Mercury, an article on 7 November about environment budget cuts where we saw, for example, in this year’s state budget, across the forward Estimates, the axes taken to funding in the environment and climate portfolios, story union signal job cuts amid spiralling finance finances. Mr President, I could go on, and on, but I will spare you that.
Savage austerity is coming and, regrettably for community representation, it will be very hard for any member of either House who voted or votes for this order to have any credibility criticising the government for not adequately funding public services, for sacking public servants or for hiking up taxes in the future. That is the cold, hard reality of it, as is the fact that this is not, as has been suggested in debate today, just the first step in a development application process for the stadium. It is the first and it is the last.
This debate and vote we are having today and tomorrow is the planning process, then it will be Mr Abetz and his all powerful secretary of State Growth who execute the development of this project, who approve conditions and enforce them, if there is even to be such a thing, and that is a huge worry. As we established in Legislative Council Estimates, there’s up to 220 000 tonnes of soil containing asbestos, lead, mercury, zinc, arsenic, cyanide and other potential chemicals of concern on that site. As was confirmed in the Tasmanian Planning Commission hearing last Thursday, it’s uncertain that the TPC was told about that volume of contaminated material. What is certain is that the Macquarie Point Development Corporation is working to an environmental management plan for that site that was written in 2021 for the previous, widely‑consulted and popular mixed-use master planning and development of that site.
We have no reassurance from this government because they can’t provide it, that they know how to deal with that level of contaminated waste. What we do know is that there is a cap on the Copping (C cell) of 45 000 cubic metres a year and that’s the maths of it. As a citizen of this city, who is here to work for and protect the residents of this city, I would like to understand how on earth the government, through Macquarie Point Development Corporation, plans to deal with that level of contamination on site in a way that doesn’t pose a significant risk to public health. Presumably a significant proportion of that fill, for a period at least, will have to be stored on site and what a windy little site it is.
We also confirmed during budget Estimates that the minister for Macquarie Point Development Corporation regards the Davey Street upgrades for pedestrian improvements as unnecessary to the project. They’re certainly unfunded. Again, when that question was put to the Tasmanian Planning Commission panel last week, they said it is not possible to proceed with the project without ensuring community safety through those pedestrian improvements. So, none of these concerns are ameliorated or resolved in any way by the provisions of the order. An order which did not change between the enabling legislation, the draft order and the final order.
I reject assertions made by a number of members that people who are opposed to this stadium are anti‑everything. We are fiercely pro‑good‑development in the right places. We are fiercely pro this beautiful Georgian Gothic city. We are pro the development of Macquarie Point under the previous heavily consulted master plan. A genuine place for people 365 days a year.
I note mention of support by the member for Elwick is contingent on government commitments. The member for Elwick says it’ll be on the government to stick to the spending cap and meet conditions in the order. This begs the obvious and worrying question: if they don’t, then what? By then it’ll be too late. The blunderbuss will have left the station.
I noted the member for Elwick’s tabling of an exchange of letters between her and the Premier in the interests of transparency. I respectfully suggest it would have been more transparent to keep Tasmanians in the loop as these negotiations were happening. I know that certain assurances have been made by the Premier. I know there’s been about $105 million-worth of sweeteners, and I know that apparently there is a level of trust in Jeremy Rockliff’s word.
Well, I take members back to May of 2022. We were the signatories to a tripartite agreement in support of the team. We feel passionately about this team, and I won’t allow anyone to take that away from us. We’ve been fighting for this team for 20 years, since before Nick McKim was the leader of the Greens. At that time, when the bid went in, the Premier looked me in the eye and assured me the team was not conditional on a stadium. I am too trusting; it’s one of my flaws. It’s the same commitment he made to the public.
To this day, there’s an August 2022 Australian Associated Press story on the AFL’s website detailing the deceit in the both the headline and the lead.
Headline:
Premier confirms new stadium won’t be part of Tassie’s AFL bid.
Lead:
Tasmania confirms their formal proposal for the league’s 19 licence won’t include a new stadium ahead of a vote this month.
I will pause for a moment there to note that is in line with the AFL taskforce’s advice and recommendations They described a new stadium to support the team we’ve earned and deserve as a longer-term aspiration. Perhaps, at a point, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, when we could afford such a thing.
Ever since the Premier told this first big lie to me and to Tasmanians, there have been promises after promises. Lie after lie.
The price of entry is cheap, but the club we belong to, of people who made the mistake of trusting this Premier, is getting pretty crowded. I respectfully reassure the member for Elwick that I’ll keep a seat warm for her in this club of broken promises. Sadly, Mr President, I expect to have her join us before too long.
There’s been much commentary in the correspondence and emails we’ve received about both the major parties selling us out. There’s been particular criticism of the Tasmanian Labor Party and its craven capitulation on this issue. Ever since Rebecca White lost the leadership, Labor has been as shameless as the Liberals and the Mercury newspaper in their unconditional support for this project, and it really has been unconditional. I have spoken to numerous Labor Party members, some former sitting members, who are disgusted. This issue has split and fractured the party because Tasmanian Labor is writing this government and the AFL a blank cheque.
The sitting was suspended from 4.00 p.m. to 4.30 p.m.
Continued from above.
Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, as I was saying before the break, in the interests of simply laying out the truth, which is one of our most important jobs as elected representatives, the Tasmanian Labor Party has signed a blank cheque for this government on this stadium. This is despite 11 years of wantonly reckless spending on the part of government, a government that is clearly inept at delivering on major projects and infrastructure projects like the wharf for our Spirits. Despite this, despite their faux outrage at the way the Liberals in government manage money, the Tasmanian Labor Party has given the Liberals a blank cheque.
I thought a lot last night, for obvious reasons, about what’s important in a Westminster system. What’s important is being able to stand up and speak the truth as you see it. What’s important is being able to speak that truth on behalf of the people you represent. What’s important is a strong and effective opposition in the house of government. Tasmanian Labor is a weak opposition. There have been no questions on the stadium, no scrutiny of this enormous project in the House of Assembly question time or in Legislative Council question time, I believe, since Rebecca White was toppled as leader. I stand to be corrected on that, but I believe that is true.
During the debate in the other place on the order, when the Liberals and Labor stood together to wave it through, there was only one speaker from our weak opposition on that order, and that was Labor Leader, the honourable Josh Willie, the member for Clark himself. If this is a project that’s so darn good for Tasmania, why are other Labor members not prepared to stand up and defend it, not prepared to face up to their constituents on this issue? It’s a reasonable question.
On scrutiny in Estimates across both Houses and four committees, our official opposition party asked not one question about the stadium. During the Tasmanian Planning Commission hearing, our official opposition started off the hearing by asking a few questions about themselves and then asked no more questions of the expert independent panel on the stadium in four hours of hearings.
Ms Lovell – That’s not true.
Ms O’CONNOR – Ms Lovell, I take your interjection and I take it gladly. I always welcome interjections and in your contribution you are most welcome to correct the record. It will be interesting to see how many genuine questions, and not Dorothy Dixers, Labor will put during the scrutiny of this order. I believe, as do many of the people I represent, that Tasmanian Labor is betraying its own people, betraying people who count on a public health system that works for them, ambulances that turn up on time, help finding a home; all sorts of community supports relied on by people who’ve been supporting and voting for Tasmanian Labor probably all their lives. What a betrayal. Tasmanian Labor, our weak opposition, has sold out their people, their own people, through a great act of political cowardice. Never again will they be taken seriously when stadium austerity bites the people they were elected to represent.
The Greens, in the other place and in this place, have been consistent and strong on this issue since day one, just as we’ve been consistent and strong in standing in a tripartite way in support of Tasmania getting its licence to enter the national league. It is a fact to say we’ve earned this team. It is a fact to say we deserve this team. It’s also a fact to say we’ve been shafted by the AFL who’ve asked this of Tasmania, the smallest and poorest state. It is so highly regrettable, bordering on tragic, that something we’ve all longed for, a Tasmanian AFL team, has become so divisive because it has been attached by the Premier, by the Labor Party, and by the AFL, to the stadium.
Something that could have and should have united us is dividing us. This island, which for generations major political parties have been manipulating the people of, dividing us over land use very often, forestry, fish farms, canal estates; this was one thing that could have brought us together.
I, too, am a founding member of the Devils. I’m one of more than 200,000 signed‑up members. I know that the Devils have players now on contracts. I know that we will enter the VFL next year. I know there are a lot of good people working with and for the Devils. It is just highly regrettable that the stadium and the team have been so cynically and inextricably linked. It didn’t have to be that way.
It was not what the AFL taskforce set out in their report. They found that a Tasmanian team could be viable and sustainable. In making that statement, they did not link it to a brand‑new stadium. They indicated it could be a longer‑term aspiration. A state of a little over half a million people, with one big stadium in the south, Bellerive, and one big, quite handsome, being refurbished stadium in the north at York Park, and yet our Premier, who is supposed to be looking after the interests of all Tasmanian people, agreed without asking Tasmanians, without taking it to Cabinet, and certainly without asking Treasury, that we would have another brand‑spanking‑new stadium in completely the wrong place, as the evidence tells us. It is a matter of great regret that the Devils have been caught up in the toxic politics of this issue in this time.
I thank the independent expert members of the Tasmanian Planning Commission for their dedicated and thoughtful gathering of evidence, assessment, and making of findings and recommendations that were unarguable ‑ unarguable, Mr President. They acted in the public interest. I’d like to thank them for making the time to come and brief us last Thursday and answer any questions we might have. It was an excellent opportunity to learn and understand more.
In a way, it’s my political naivety that I thought hearing from the experts themselves, having the facts established, might be persuasive enough. I thought, add that to the two credit rating downgrades within the space of less than a fortnight and surely an independent thinker would reach the conclusion that this stadium is the wrong project in the wrong place at the wrong time, at a price we don’t know what will be yet but will certainly be unaffordable. That cost – we can’t get away from this – will be carried by the people we represent. It doesn’t matter what assurances the Premier makes. Any blowout in that cost will be carried by the people of Tasmania. It’s in the AFL contract.
I want to thank Our Place, the community organisation which has spent the last at least two years working across the community, gathering information, sending us information, lobbying through democratic processes ‑ all elected representatives, holding public rallies where people who felt so strongly about this could gather on the lawns – three large rallies over the space of two years; three rallies that filled parliament’s lawns, organised by Our Place. I’m very thankful for the work that they’ve done.
I also want to thank the Tasmanians who wrote to us in their thousands ‑ heartfelt, honest, informed emails, the vast majority begging us to do the right thing. Thank you again for engaging so respectfully and meaningfully in the democratic process.
I know there’ll be heartbreak across the island if this order passes, and genuine fear for the future, where the weight of debt and underinvestment in our people becomes increasingly and painfully clear. I say to those people: do not lose heart. The Tamar Valley pulp mill, through a similarly manipulated and corrupted process, was also approved by parliament. It was also vehemently opposed by a significant majority, either on environmental or probity grounds. But it’s never been built. The Tamar Valley today remains a place where the air is clean, the vistas are many and glorious, and the winemakers’ grapes still produce the finest cool-climate wines in the country.
The struggle for our city, our people and our future – it continues. I’ll drink to that.
Mr President, I condemn the order that’s before the Council.
