Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Honourable Speaker, I rise, obviously, to speak in support of this motion, because it is necessary. It is necessary because not only do we have no trust and no confidence in the Premier in the Chamber, because of his misleading so many times about the amount of money that the government will spend on the stadium and the amount of money that the government will borrow for the stadium – but I rise also to speak for all those Tasmanians who have no trust in the Premier and no confidence in him as the Premier.
We are constantly hearing from people across Tasmania, but particularly in my electorate of Bass, from people who are deeply concerned about this stadium and what it means for our state. They are deeply concerned about the amount of debt that we will go into if this stadium is progressed. They are deeply concerned that they have been told one thing and constantly something different is happening. They have been told that only $375 million will be invested into the stadium by the Tasmanian government – not one red cent more – and yet we know now that that is not true. We have actually known it the whole way through, but now we know definitely and clearly with the evidence that is coming forward that there are no private investors that consider this a good investment for them to place their money into. Yet the Premier will still choose to go ahead and invest our state’s money into a project that private investors will not touch. The Premier will go ahead and put his ego project ahead of the interests of Tasmanians. The Premier will go ahead and submit to the demands of a corporation, the AFL, over the people of Tasmania.
This is not satisfactory and we cannot continue this without challenging the Premier, without calling out what he is doing and saying that we have no confidence in that. Tasmanians have no confidence in that. We need a change of course in this state and this is an opportunity for the Premier to consider what he is saying, consider what he is doing, to look at a different pathway and stop leading Tasmanians into significant debt that will hang around for generations of Tasmanians.
The Premier is constantly talking about what a wonderful project this will be for the future of Tasmanians, while willfully ignoring the fact that the children of Tasmania, the children of today, will have this debt as a burden over them into the future. I am not sure that any number of football games they can watch in a stadium is going to make up for that level of debt that they have, because it will mean that we do not have the money to invest in other things that will benefit the future of children, the children of Tasmania.
It is time to move beyond the lies. It is time to move beyond the deception and it is time to speak truth. We call on the Premier to do that and until he does, we can have no confidence in him.
