Andrew Wilkie:
Our final speaker is Senator Jacqui Lambie. Before politics, Jacqui of course was a soldier in the Australian Regular Army for almost 11 years but famously was elected to the Australian Parliament under the Palmer United Party banner in 2013, but soon went solo and became independent. Since then Jacqui has established and led the Jacqui Lambie Network and was re-elected to the Senate in 2016 and 2019. To say Jacqui is outspoken is an understatement. So hold on to your seats and stand by, because I suspect Jacqui has had a gutful of this stadium.
Jacqui Lambie:
Yeah, I’m beyond a bloody gutful mate. I’m absolutely beyond it. I cannot believe the ignorance of the Liberal Party. I’ll leave Labor out for the time being. I’ll come back to them. But what blows me away, somebody tell these guys, they’re not sitting in their lounge room with their choo choo train ride going around a table and playing on the Monopoly board. They are playing with our goddamned bloody money. And tell somebody, tell them when it comes to economics in Tasmania, we are nearly on our bloody knees. We are nearly on our knees.
We don’t need a new stadium. This is absolutely a joke. I can assure you there is nothing more that pisses me off, like you Craig, when we have a very viable option out there and it is York Park. It is York Park. Why should my families up there on the NorthWest coast and over the East coast of Tasmania have to travel so far? Have to travel so far to come and watch their football down in Hobart? First of all, let me give you a reality check. They’ll be lucky if they can afford the fuel. Then they’ve got to pay for the tickets. And I’ll tell you something, sure as hell you are not staying in a hotel. You are driving home with your kids in the car and putting them at risk at 10 o’clock at night after a game just to give your kids some opportunity to see their sporting heroes. That’s what you are doing. So not only are you wasting money, you are putting people’s lives at risk. That is what you are doing.
That AFL Academy for our kids – Launceston is the centre. It is fair for everybody and the AFL. Somebody tell them the biggest AFL crowd is in the North of the state. You want to make it a war? I’ll bloody make it one.
That is the reality. That is the reality. But this is reality as an adult. As an adult in the room, you must prioritise when you have a bucket of money, and that bucket of money must go to those who need it the most. We still have a 50% illiteracy rate in this bloody state for our kids. How is that going to build our future? We have a health system that is beyond ‘on its knees’, and my God, don’t wait and get into a GP quick enough. We haven’t got psychologists out there for our kids to see. They’re waiting 8 or 10 weeks and you wonder why we have, well, we have a whole generation that have mental health illnesses out there because they can’t get in to see anyone.
Whatever happened to helping our generation below? This is not fair to them – that we’re going to leave them with a massive debt. But more importantly, what really blows me away. I know that many of you don’t know this, probably none of you. I went to see the AFL. I thought, fuck youse. I’ll be honest with you. I’m coming to see you, I’m gonna sit across the table from you. Forty five minutes I was there. What an embarrassment to the AFL. Guess what the AFL’s worried about? It might put a little bit of dent in their brand. Oh, thank you for telling me that because now I’m coming. You are going to get a dent in your brand because I am coming.
What you have asked us to do down here, this is how it went down. This is how it went down. Peter Gutwein went down there and they decided on a few frothies and got half friggin’ pissed that they’re going to bring the stadium with us. They’re going to have a stadium with a roof on it. Nobody else has ever been asked to do that. They come down here with an offer, the AFL, I can tell you now that they did not think in their wildest dreams that these Tasmanian idiot politicians would even accept. They walked all over the top of them.
They don’t care, those other 18 clubs down there, and I’ll tell you why – because when it comes to picking up those rookies, we’re going to have a good hit for those first five or six years. They want to blow us out. They don’t want us in there. So they come down with this demand, right? When it comes to the draft picks, we’re going to get nice draft picks for those first five or six years that we are in. Those eighteen teams, they’re going to sit back. They’re going to sit back. It’s not fair to them. So they don’t give a stuff whether Tasmania’s in it or not and that is the truth of the matter. They don’t give a stuff, right? So they come down here with his big, yeah, let’s do this guys. Let’s do this, thinking, thinking that they didn’t know how stupid, as we do, how stupid these Liberal, Labor state governments are down here. These people, how stupid they actually are. They fell for the shit. They fell for the shit at our expense. And that is what is going on here. They fell for it. They took it. And this is the situation that we’re in.
Well, I say this, we have a federal election coming up. Yeah, we have a federal election coming up, Anthony Albanese. And you’re still not hearing it from me. It damaged you in the state election, mate. So not only am I coming for the AFL, I’m coming for you because I know how close those lower house seats are down here. I know how close they are, mate. I’m very aware of that. So I am asking you, Mr Albanese, I’m simply asking you this. He needs to quarantine that $240 million of the Australian taxpayers money until the AFL and the state government go back to the table and renegotiate that deal. He needs to do that because it has been made quite clear from both of those reports. First of all, Tasmania cannot afford this. We cannot afford this. Secondly, we don’t need this. We have a perfectly good ground up in York Park.
So, I say it. And as well, there’s been no transparency. It was done over some frothies. The big boys got excited there, you know, like we, you know, just normal stuff here. Bit excited, right? Let’s get this stadium with the roof. No thought process behind it. We fell lock, stock and barrel when the AFL pulled one over our eyes thinking there’s no way Tasmanians will buy into this. Well, Jesus Christ, that’s what they were thinking. How embarrassing for us down here. They just pulled one straight after it and we took it, right? Hook, line and sinker, we took it. At what price? At the price of our services ’cause that’s the price we’ll be paying, not to mention the price that generations and generations in the future will be paying – our own kids. So I simply say this to you, Premier, and I make this very clear. I want to reiterate what I said to you 12 months ago, when it comes to that bloody stadium, mate, you can stick it fair where it fits! Thank you.
Andrew Wilkie:
Well, I don’t think you’ll get a better line up of speakers in this state.