You can watch Richard’s presentation here or read the transcript below.
I don’t have time today to dissect the absurd claims made for the benefits of this stadium, which is now being ludicrously spun by the Government as a cross between the Louvre, Las Vegas and the Parthenon. I only note that when Minister Guy Barnett updated the Ministerial Statement of Expectations for the Macquarie Point Development Corporation last July, he specifically deleted the clauses that compelled the Corporation to ensure all commercial activities were ‘appropriately costed’, and delivered ‘a commercial return’, thereby freeing the Corporation and the stadium from any sense of fiscal responsibility.
I simply want to make clear today the way in which the Premier has mortgaged the future of our island to this immense folly, threatening a fiscal crisis for the State’s finances, a crisis for which the Tasmanian people will suffer as they suffered through the stagnation of the 1990s because of the excesses of the free spending Gray government that brought the island close to bankruptcy. No one wishes those dark years back, but we are now at a point where we’re perilously close to making the same mistakes with the stadium.