GRIEVANCE DEBATE

Mr WILKIE (Clark) (12:30): The majority of Tasmanians have a monumental grievance right now—that, at the demand of the AFL, Tasmania build a third AFL-grade stadium in a state of about half a million people when we already have two stadiums on which AFL games are played. For a start, there's the very good facility up in Launceston, which has a capacity just shy of 20,000 spectators, and across the river from the electorate of Clark, there's the stadium in Bellerive, which also has a capacity of about 20,000 spectators.

So why on earth would the AFL bully the Tasmanian government, and, through it, the Tasmanian community, to build not just a third stadium at beautiful Macquarie Point but a third stadium with a roof? For heaven's sake, why does the AFL insist that Tasmania spend all of that money to have a third stadium at Macquarie with a roof? It beggars belief.

No wonder a clear majority of Tasmanians think this proposal—well, this demand—by the AFL is not needed. They don't want it, and they can't afford it. I make the point repeatedly that we already have two stadiums on which AFL games are played very successfully, and, frankly, they rarely fill.

Why they would want a third stadium with only a capacity of 3,000 extra seats beggars belief. The majority of Tasmanians don't want it. There has been poll after poll after poll which has shown clearly that just about everyone in Tasmania wants a team and just about everyone in Tasmania reckons we deserve a team.

I mean, we're one of the foundation states when it comes to providing players to the AFL. But a clear majority of Tasmanians don't think we should go ahead with this. We shouldn't be spending billions of dollars on a stadium at a time like this.

Let me dwell on the issue of the cost. When the Tasmanian government agreed to the AFL demand for a stadium, the Tasmanian government said that it would originally cost $715 million, of which only $375 million would be taxpayers' money, and the Premier famously said that the taxpayer would spend 'not one red cent more'. What's happened since that announcement?

For a start, the Tasmanian government hasn't been able to find one single equity investor from the private sector. And why would they? Because a detailed analysis showed that the return on an investment for an investor, whether it be the private or the public sector, would be about 50c in the dollar.

No wonder the whole idea of a private investment in this was nonsense from the start. Anyway, time goes on. Now we're up for the whole $715 million.

As time went on, the cost increased to $755 million. It was then put at $945 million, all from the taxpayer. And just recently the Tasmanian Planning Commission had a detailed look at this and put the cost of the stadium at $1.13 billion, and calculating the cost of debt over a decade, the cost—all to the taxpayer!—will be an estimated $1.8 billion.

I mean, this is just going through the roof. This is in a state of half a million people. Mind you, to complicate things even further, I can't find a competent engineer or architect in Hobart who says that you can build a 23,000-seat, roofed AFL stadium in Tasmania, where the costs of building are higher than the mainland, for anything less than $2 billion.

So, if you add the cost of debt over 10 years, we're looking at a total cost to the taxpayer—wait for it!—of about $3½ billion. That's about 10 times higher than what Australian taxpayers were originally promised would be the bill. No wonder the majority of Tasmanians think we can't afford it.

It's because we can't afford it! The state is broke. For a conservative government, you'd think they would take financial management more seriously than others.

The state at the moment is heading for a forecast debt of about $14 billion over the forward estimates. Then you've got to add a couple of billion dollars for this stadium—heaven's sake! One of the most upsetting things in recent times was this Tasmanian Planning Commission report.

Knowing that the Tasmanian Planning Commission was looking into this in some detail, those of us who don't want the stadium thought: 'Okay, we'll finally have a detailed report. Common sense will break out, and the government will use it as an opportunity to reverse out of this agreement with the AFL or to renegotiate the agreement with the AFL to at least not have a roof on the stadium.' I'm told by engineers and architects that'd probably save about $700 million.

But what did the Tasmanian government do on the day the report was released? The Premier thanked the commission for their work and said that they would ignore the report. After a couple of days of soul-searching the Labor opposition came out as well and thanked the commission for its work and said they would ignore the report—that politicians know better than engineers, architects and professional project managers.

So they're going ahead with the stadium, and the TPC report is being ignored. We might cut the Tasmanian government some slack if they had a clean track record of competence at developing and delivering projects and if we could have some confidence that they would do this right. But those of you who have been paying attention to the media in recent times probably have been unable to avoid the fiasco with the new Spirit of Tasmania III and Spirit of Tasmania IV ferries.

Let me tell you what happened with them. The cost for them was additionally put at $850 million for both vessels. It then blew out by another $94 million because the cost of steel went up and the contractor went broke, and the Tasmanian taxpayer had to pay the foreign shipyard a bailout.

Then we learned in just the last couple of weeks—it was one of those whoopsadaisy moments—that the Tasmanian government has announced the hulls are not strong enough, the hulls on both vessels need to be strengthened, and it's anyone's guess what that's going to cost. Two large Bass Strait ferries have got to have their hulls strengthened. What is that going to cost?

For a start they'll have to sail the ships to somewhere like Singapore. They have to slip them, put them in a dry dock and, what, replate the hull? How many hundreds of millions of dollars is that going to cost?

That of course is not the end of the ferry saga. It turns out that when the ferries had been built someone realised they'd forgotten to build appropriate berthing for the ferries in Devonport. The ships are twice the size of the old Spirits.

They need totally new berths. They were initially estimated, before they forgot to build them, at $90 million to be completed by 2024. The cost of berths, which they've now started to build, has blown out—wait for it; as I said, this is one of those whoopsadaisy moments—to $493 million.

That's the cost to now build the berths, and they won't be completed until 2027 if you believe the state government's current figures—for heaven's sakes! This is the state government that reckons they're going to build a stadium for $1.13 billion. I reckon, as do a lot of other people, with the cost of debt over a decade it's going to be more like $3½ billion.

It's not like everything else in the state is fine. It's not like we've got nothing better to spend our dough on down in Tasmania. There are currently over 5,000 applicants on the waiting list for social housing.

That's up 10 per cent in the last 12 months. There are an estimated 600 applicants on the public-housing waiting list that are entirely without housing—that is, sleeping in a tent or in a car. That's in a state of about half a million people.

Yet the state government thinks it's okay to spend billions of dollars to buckle to demands from the AFL to build a third AFL stadium, within sight of one of the existing AFL stadiums, with an additional capacity of only 3,000 more spectators. This is just madness. It's not just housing that's in strife in Tasmania.

Look at health. Our elective-surgery waiting list, as of August this year, is over 9,000 people out of a state of half a million people. That's up 11 per cent over the last 12 months.

The median wait time in Tasmania for the public dentist currently averages 1,366 days. That's nearly four years to see a dentist if you've got a toothache and you can't afford to go to the private sector. For heaven's sake!

Have we got a grievance? Yes, we've got a hell of a grievance. I'm giving voice to a great many Tasmanians when I say that of course we want a team, but we won't be bullied by the AFL, and we won't send the state further into bankruptcy by building this ridiculous stadium that the Premier and the opposition leader, I'm sorry to say, have turned into a vanity project that they will build against the advice of all the experts.

Who knows where the money's going to come from? From my children and their children.