Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

A decade ago the satirical ABC comedy Utopia joked about a planned infrastructure project in Tasmania so foolish, so wasteful and so misguided only a monorail around Salamanca wharfs could be seen as more outlandish. Do you know what that joke project was? It was a football stadium on Hobart's waterfront. Now, in a case of life imitating art, that very prediction has come to pass when in May this year our Prime Minister, Mr Anthony Albanese, announced a quarter of a billion dollars of federal government funding for a stadium on Hobart's waterfront. The rest of the bill has to be footed by the Tasmania state government and other counterparties. It has been made very clear in Tasmania that we can't afford a $1 billion AFL stadium, which, by the way, most predictions have realistically increasing to at least $1½ billion if not $2 billion.

Ambulances are constantly ramped, and my fantastic state parliamentary colleagues have recently got up an inquiry into this. People are living in tents. Indeed, Mr Albanese drove past people in tents on his way to announce the stadium funding. There are so many other critical issues we need a billion dollars for in Tasmania rather than the bread and circuses that are being offered to us by this Prime Minister.

I want to say, as an ex-AFL player myself and someone who closely follows the AFL, which I know most Tasmanians do, Tasmania is one of the founding football states in Australia and has a long history of making rich contributions to the national game. Indeed, at the AFL shindig here last night I saw a lot of prominent Tasmanian players. They were ex-AFL players but nevertheless legends in their game, like Brendan Gale from the north-west of Tasmania and Matthew Richardson and others. We deserve our own team. We want our own team. Most Tasmanians would love an AFL team, me included, but not with this price tag—not with a billion-dollar plus price tag at a time when we desperately need the funding for other, more important matters.

At the AFL shindig last night I was briefly introduced to the new AFL CEO, Andrew Dillon. I heard the speeches there last night. They're not reading the room. Tasmanians feel bullied by the AFL in this deal—they really do. They're not happy. All the polling shows it. The Tasmanian Liberal government is now a minority Liberal government because of this deal. There have been defectors. It is possible that Tasmania could go to an early election any day because of this AFL deal. There aren't many Tasmanians celebrating what the AFL is proposing for Tasmania. I have absolutely nothing against Mr Dillon—I don't know him at all—but I would ask that he reads the room, as I would ask our Prime Minister to read the room.

In Launceston, in the north of the state, where I am from, we have an excellent stadium that has been used by Hawthorn for over a decade and is getting a $75 million upgrade. It will have a bigger capacity than the $2 billion stadium they're going to build on the waterfront in Tasmania. Why do we need another one? We don't. Most Tasmanians acknowledge that. What we need is for our Prime Minister to increase federal funding for our hospitals, to increase the co-contributions towards health that the Commonwealth makes with the Tasmanian state government and to give us the money we need for other federal infrastructure projects. There are a whole range of things that Tasmanians have been calling for for a number of years.

I want to make it very clear in the Senate today that Tasmanians want an AFL team, but can we just get one without being blackmailed into coughing up a billion-plus dollars of money that's desperately needed elsewhere? I ask the AFL to reconsider the terms of the agreement. By the way, they were very proud of what they'd achieved for the AFL, but it's not achieving anything for Tasmania, in my view and in the view, I would say here today in the Senate, of most Tasmanians. We want an AFL team and we deserve an AFL team but we don't deserve to be bullied into spending over a billion dollars for a stadium that no-one wants and that we don't need.