Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I was not going to get to my feet tonight, but after that pathetic effort from the Deputy Premier I must, because we did not besmirch the reputation of any public servants in our debate today about referring the leader of government business to – you are not going to stay to listen to this, Treasurer? You throw accusations around, now I am on my feet and you are going walk out. You are the ones who are tearing down the reputation of the Tasmanian Planning Commission. Out he goes. He does not want to listen to this, for the record.
The Tasmanian government are the ones that are besmirching the record of good people who are acting in the interests of Tasmania – the Tasmanian Planning Commission and the panel – based on utterly flimsy advice that the proponent of the stadium and the government’s own agents edited ‑ actually sent track changes documents to edit. The government has been waving that around and using that as a pretence to walk away from that process and to bring forward special legislation.
The Premier even took the remarkable step of saying that he believed that they went into the Tasmanian Planning Commission panel – which he appointed; it was his order that set up this process – have gone into this assessment process with a preconceived view on the project. It is utterly shameful that the government are tearing down independent experts in this way – an ex‑deputy solicitor‑general no less, an ex-treasury boss, and other experts in administration and planning.
We mentioned the names of senior public servants, including Kathrine Morgan‑Wicks and including the board of the Macquarie Point Development Corporation, but it was in the context of them editing a letter from a law firm and sending back tracked changes, as is their right. We made that point. They are the proponents of the stadium and it is completely their right to edit a representation to ensure that it reflects their view and to send it into the assessment process that is assessing their development.
We do not make any judgement on them in terms of that action; it is what you would expect. It is the government and the leader of government business that we condemn for waving around that representation, pretending it is some kind of legal advice that says that the planning commission’s report cannot be relied on, and using that as an utterly flimsy justification for attacking the credibility of that panel and walking away from that process.
It is on the government’s head that they are going to do this. What we got out of today’s debate was a spectacular own goal from the leader of government business. He admitted that the government basis for bypassing the Tasmanian Planning Commission’s process and passing special legislation was not based on impartial legal advice, as they had been saying. They had been saying that they had this legal advice that there is apprehended bias in the planning commission’s report and therefore it cannot be relied on. He acknowledged today that it was not advice and it was not impartial. It was acknowledged that it was cooked up, or at least worked up with the assistance of the proponent.
What we had there from the Treasurer and the Deputy Premier was a spectacular case of the pot calling the kettle black. While he accuses and points to us Greens for besmirching the reputation of public servants, he and his government and the leader of government business and all the way up to the Premier are using this flimsy legal argument to tear down the credibility of the planning commission and tear down the credibility of the panel that they appointed. This is because they know that they are doing their job: they are looking at the stadium closely, they are assessing all of the issues, they are flagging the issues that need to be dealt with, and it is very clear that if they were allowed to do their job all the way through to conclusion, the stadium would not pass – the stadium would be recommended for refusal. It is utterly clear.
The supreme irony here is that the place to prosecute the arguments that the proponent is making in its representation are public hearings. The POSS process provides for public hearings, where if you have a criticism about something that the Planning Commission has done, if you do not think their assessment or the scope of their assessment is correct, you take that case into the public hearings. You bring your lawyers in with you and they represent you there. For the Deputy Premier to be attacking us for besmirching public servants is absolutely hypocritical. That is what his government is doing all the way to the top, to the Premier.
