Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I’m finding this debate unedifying. We’re talking about 20 minutes each, here, and we’re not talking about a compulsion for every member to use it. We utterly don’t expect every Liberal member to get up and say anything, let alone 20 minutes worth of content or 40 minutes worth of content. This is not something you have to do. You can opt out of this as you will. You are opting out of your responsibilities as it is. If you don’t want to take the full 40 minutes, then that is your prerogative, but don’t deny us as the crossbench the opportunity to represent our constituents and make sure that all of their views are on the record.
This is not your average motion. This is not just a three- or four-line motion that we get to run through here, and we can amend and we can talk about. This is a complicated order – a piece of legislation, effectively, that details the basis upon which this mega project would proceed. And it would proceed against the expert advice, against the advice of the very people this government and this parliament stood up to assess this development. That panel is utterly unequivocal in their view. They haven’t said, ‘You shouldn’t build it, but if you did, you should do it this way’. They haven’t said, ‘Oh, maybe you can do it, but do it with different colours or a different kind of roof’. They have basically said, in no uncertain terms, that this project should not be built. That is the process we in here stood up.
The Leader of the House is clutching at straws to talk about the budget process and talk about our 20-minute contribution. We have Estimates, we have Estimates reply. We are going to scrutinise the Budget to the nth degree and we will take every single minute of our opportunity. What we are wanting here is another 20 minutes to go through the details of this proposition, this order, and the motion.
Mr Ellis, this is not a filibuster. This process is a limited 35-minute debate. We’re going to get to this today. Whether we debate for 20 minutes or 40 minutes, we have agreed with the Leader of the House that we will sit as long as it takes tonight to deal with this order. You, with the complicity of the Labor Party will have the passage of your order today.
What you are denying us, as the crossbench, is the opportunity to do justice to our constituents, the people that have voted to put us in these chairs, and actually have the conversation about this project because it is a massive project.
I mean, compare the pair: compare the Tasmanian Planning Commission’s report, a year’s worth of work, millions of dollars, five expert members in law, planning, administration and in Treasury writing a very succinct, well‑written and clear recommendation that this project should not be built because of its impacts on the city, its impacts on the economy and a range of other fatal flaws, including the opposition of key stakeholders – key stakeholders that would normally be held sacrosanct.
Compare the pair: this is the government’s response. It’s a flimsy PR document full of nothing more than platitudes and quotes from either vested interests or punters on the street. It’s embarrassing that this is the level of information that legislative councillors who haven’t made-up their mind are being asked to decide upon: an expert independent panel that took years to complete and this PR pamphlet.
As members of this place, we need to properly represent the views of our community, to have the time in this place to put on the record the concerns expressed by the planning commission, to pick through this document and make sure the issues are well understood, and also pull apart the flimsy arguments of the government. This is nothing more than a PR document that is trying to take advantage of the fact that the Labor Party has already rolled over and acquiesced, and abrogated its responsibility to hold this government to account.
This is not the end of the world. We are talking about 20 minutes to give a handful of us additional time. You don’t have to take it. We don’t expect you to take it. But don’t deny us the opportunity. You just shut down the opportunity to go through a detailed process to look at the order, to ask questions about the order. That’s a vote that’s behind us. But now we have the opportunity to coming up to debate the order. An additional 20 minutes over and above the existing 20 to make it 40 minutes is not an unreasonable ask given the gravity of this decision.
Time expired.
