Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I tell you what, Senator Brown, if you want to stand up and say that the Australian government won't fund a stadium, you do it today. You've got an opportunity—there's another Labor speaker—and I am looking forward to that being put on the record. But, if your view is the AFL should fund it, then make that clear in the next contribution and the Australian government won't fund it. We should be putting the asset as a united team on the AFL, as has been suggested by Senator Lambie, to fund the stadium. Let's get them to do what they're telling us we need to do and not have Tasmanians have to choose between whether they get Commonwealth funding for a hospital bed or a football stadium. Senator Lambie is right, and we should be backing this point. Gillon McLachlan and the AFL should be doing the right thing by every person who wants an AFL team. They should be funding it. That $4.5 billion sloshing around over the next few years could go to something good, like building a stadium if that's what they think we need to have.

Having said that, though, Senator Brown was also right on the fact that we are the only jurisdiction being asked to build a stadium, just to have what everyone else has. They love picking on the little state. Yes, we have 12 senators and I think it's time we made our voices heard, collectively. The AFL can no longer treat us like mugs. If they have a really good case to make, I hope they make it. I hope they can tell the Australian government why using $375 million dollars of that finite resource, taxpayers' money, is better spent on this than on anything else—than on housing, than on more roads, than on hospital beds or on sorting out the scourge of family and domestic violence. If the AFL actually wants to point to reasons for why funding a stadium with taxpayer money is more important than funding any of the things I just mentioned, I would love to hear it.

That's because when I go out and face the voters, they are not going to take the lines that the AFL might offer me. I'd love it if they had to go out and face the electors like members of parliament have to. But they don't; they can get away with seeking to blackmail our state. But we should not allow that to happen. The AFL should do the right thing and the Labor Party should make clear what their position is—state and federal.