Ms O'CONNOR question to PREMIER, Mr ROCKLIFF
The release of parts of the deal you signed with Gill McLachlan confirms you have effectively signed a blank cheque for a new stadium at Macquarie Point. Tasmanians will be on the hook for a minimum of $644 million and bear all the inevitable cost overruns. The deal you released is also missing schedule 6, which relates to ground hire terms and where ticketing, marketing, catering and merchandising would be detailed. We have no doubt, and perhaps you could confirm, that schedule 6 will also massively favour the AFL.
It is clear now you were not just a pushover for the AFL but they walked all over you, grabbed your keys and can now plunder the Treasury. Have you checked whether there is still a kitchen sink on the 11th floor?
Premier, it is such a shocking deal for Tasmania where people sleep in tents and die waiting for an ambulance. Can you acknowledge that the depth of your folly on this stadium will be carried by generations of Tasmanians?
ANSWER
Mr Speaker, I thank the member, Ms O'Connor, for her question. I reject the premise of your question outright. We have been the first government ever, since decades of fighting, to secure our AFL team. The economics stack up, where we spend once on infrastructure and create an economy that grows and supports, in the case of the stadium in isolation, some 4200 jobs in construction.
It is important to recognise the other $700 million plus investment, the Bridgewater bridge, which is bouncing out of the ground. Another example of great infrastructure. That will be completed and then we will go to the Mac Point urban renewal project, including the multi-purpose stadium. There will be 4200 jobs in construction; $300 million of economic generation activity; $85 million a year after that. That is $2.2 billion overall over the course of the next couple of decades, securing an AFL team and working in partnership with the AFL, where they will be investing some $360 million in Tasmania and of course, the $12 million a year over 12 years, initially.
Every day-and-a-half we spend $12 million on average in our health system. The $12 million investment is going to secure that $120 million-a-year economic activity not only for jobs but providing the aspiration and the pathway for young Tasmanians, who are excited about that. Every time you get up into this place, every single time the Labor Party get up and denigrate the AFL, the stadium and Macquarie Point, you kill the dreams of thousands of young Tasmanians.