Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand for housing, schools and cheaper power bills. I don't stand for a stadium. That's why I got the federal funding for the Hobart stadium GST free. It puts $220 million back in the state piggy bank to spend on essential services. I didn't want Tasmanians to be worse off, because the Tassie Liberals are determined to build a stadium no-one asked for in the first place. It's bonkers that they're still pushing forward with this billion-dollar idea when the budget is struggling to afford the basics. It's a billion-dollar idea when we already have two stadiums in Tasmania. Last week the Hobart Hurricanes, God forbid, finally won the Big Bash League—and guess what? It was at Hobart's Bellerive Oval, and it looked incredible decked out in purple. Bellerive is good enough to host a Big Bash League final, an Ashes test and a regular AFL game, but apparently it's not good enough for the Tassie AFL team.

What good is a stadium when Tasmanians can't afford to rent and are sleeping in their cars? They're not going to sleep in the stadium, I'm telling you now. For half the price of the stadium, we could build 1,000 homes. Imagine what that would mean to people who are sleeping rough right now; the people who are couch surfing but never sure where they'll sleep the next night. I've spent time wondering about that myself—'Is this the last night that I'm sleeping in a bed under a roof?' It's an awful feeling that buries itself in your stomach and doesn't go away. Building a stadium won't take away that feeling for people. I fully support Tasmania having its own AFL team—I'm even a member—but we can't pretend that building a stadium is even half as important as building more homes. The Tassie Liberals said they could do both. The state budget says they can't. By prioritising a stadium over housing we are missing a wide open goal.