Acting Premier Rockliff Recently Claimed he ‘Respects the Will of the People’.
If he genuinely respected the will of the people, he would park his arrogant, elitist attitude at the Parliament House door. What he should be doing is discussing how the next four years of our parliament will work, with all our elected MPs.
A little humility wouldn’t go astray either since Mr Rockliff also needs to remember that despite that clutch of 14 seats he holds in the blue corner, around 60 per cent of Tasmanians didn’t vote Liberal.
So this ‘mandate’ he’s also claimed to have is a fiction.
‘Mandate’ has to be the most overused – and misused – word in the political lexicon. Mr Rockliff doesn’t have a mandate.
Nobody does. Tasmanians elected an interesting and colourful mix to represent them, one that’s even more colourful and interesting than those elected last year. It could and should be seen as a recipe for optimism and positive change. He also needs to seriously reflect on the fact the majority Tasmanians voted for candidates that were either Independent, Green or Labor.
It’s pretty obvious they’re sick of the blue or red recipe, they want a refreshed government with more spice, more ideas, and more vision for our island’s future. Arguably, the only ‘mandate’ from this election is that Tasmanians expect all of those 35 elected MPs to work together, to form an open, transparent, and functional parliament – as well as a collaborative minority government.
One that lasts four years and doesn’t succumb again to self-interest and entitlement, or to the political tantrums that have characterised the recent behaviour of a couple of egotistical ego-driven men.
– Anne Layton-Bennett, Swan Bay
A Call for Premier Rockliff to Step Aside
Mr Rockliff, I am shocked at your incomprehensible bad behaviour. You don’t care at all about Tasmania and ALL Tasmanians, only those who shout you $$$$ dinners and who voted for YOU. Shame on YOU.
Honestly Mr Rockliff, you failed to step aside, and forced us to expend our money on yet another election. Shame on YOU.
You make promises and spend our money, and simply lie over and over again to us, the Tasmanian people, you are in bed with foreign salmon corporations, you waste out money (NOT yours) on logging our forests for woodchips, you want to shove a wind farm on Robbins Island a known migratory species breeding ground, you want to WASTE our money on an ugly unwanted stadium, you keep spending OUR money and will bankrupt the State and the list goes on?!?!?! You failed to keep your promise on Marinus!!!!
The budget is a disaster but you still state you want to spend! Shame on YOU.
Oh! and the 15 year LATE State of the Environment Report and lack of any action since published highlights most clearly you don’t give a damn about our environment. Shame on YOU Mr Rockliff.
Get that smirk off your face please. The majority of Tasmanians did not elect you.
You are not a leader. I ask that you step aside immediately please.
Seems to me you got your nose out of joint when the ‘no confidence’ motion was put forward. Accept your fate for goodness sake.
We don’t want YOU as Premier.
– Maria IE Riedl, Battery Point
The Indie Scare
In a recent poll shared by Pulse FM showing The Liberals ahead of Labor in the upcoming Tasmanian state election, the Tasmanian public should note the high independent vote, including 10 candidates in Braddon. It should come as no concern to minor parties like the Greens as a threat because there was a similar display in the 2021 election with the independents having a very strong presence in Clark.
But, unless they have a certain unity, the votes are spread over dozens of candidates and will not ‘’squeeze out’’ the Greens.
As seen in the Teals, they can rapidly switch on their platform they campaigned and do not become necessarily progressive.
There could rightly be a cross-bench opposition if Labor do make up ground on the Liberals. The Greens have a real chance to take Labor seats like they have been doing and is the trend throughout the world, and should focus on seats where their vote is low to ‘’shake up’’ the status-quo and get preferences from traditional Liberal voters over Labor, something that may have been overlooked in the recent federal election for the Greens.
From talking to dozens of people around the state, the key issues are ambulance ramping, the stadium, cost of living, housing, fish farming, environmental protection and Tasmania’s contribution to the Middle East with Currawong Industries’ presence and the involvement of UTAS.
– Karl McBeath, Hobart
Group Projects Not Just for Kids!
As a late diagnosed neurodivergent woman, if I could turn back time and relive my life with the knowledge I now have, the one thing I would do is push back at school more every time a teacher had a “group project” as the only option for an assessment.
The reason the teachers “enforced” and “extolled the virtues” of the group assignment was because “ when you are an adult, you don’t get to choose who you work with, and this is good practice for when you are an adult in the real world”. There are entire university units based on the vital benefits of collaborating with others to achieve a more robust and effective outcome for projects “in the real world”.
Yet here we are with politicians, the people that vote on legislation and budgets that we the people of Tasmania literally live and die by, and they are upset that they don’t “have a choice about who they have to work with”.
Jeremy Rockcliff was the Minister of Education in 2016 when the Education Act was rewritten, which was supposed to fix the issues with this state’s school attendance, literacy etc, and our outcomes are worse now 9 years later.
If I could turn back time, I’d point out to my school teachers that they were expecting children to work at a level of social interaction and cooperation that elected adults weren’t capable of in parliament. In the “real world” you don’t get to “choose” who you work with… so the question begs, with all the undisclosed corporate donations the political parties received, do they actually LIVE “in the real world”?
Are they mature adults that deserve the responsibility and privilege of making decisions about the laws and budgets that impact all of us? Or are they spoilt corporate children that need to repeat a level and learn to cooperate with people “in the real world” better?
Clearly they didn’t learn how to “play nice with others” when they were at school, or have all the corporate donations given them collaborative amnesia?
We the people have spoken, we have cast our votes and elected who we have elected, it’s their job now to work with the people WE elected!
– Emma Hamilton, Campbell Town
Tail Wagging the Dog
“It is estimated the difference in income earnings between Bellerive Oval and Macquarie Point would be almost $6m a year for the Devils.” according to Stadiums Tasmania boss; James Avery; (Mercury 15 July).
Nothing new but it does need to be put into perspective. All the Devils need is $6m a year in additional revenue or grants and the team does not need a new stadium.
With the State in debt, the full stadium cost will be met by additional Government borrowings. Interest costs alone could be $60m a year or ten times the $6m.
What the Devils team is asking from Tasmanians is they fund the $960m+ stadium so that the Devils can earn $6m additional revenue.
What the AFL is demanding from Tasmania does not make any sense. AFL are stumping up only $15m towards the new stadium. Seven games per year in Hobart represents only 2% of the days in a year. The Tasmania people are left with the responsibility and risks for funding all of the final construction cost, and for the revenue risks in operating the new stadium for the remaining 98% of the year.
This is the proverbial “tail wagging the dog”.
– Robert Stewart, Rosny
ABC’s Hydro Tasmania Conflict – A Timeline Needed
Seems to me that the ABC response hasn’t addressed the issue which you may want to follow up.
Greg Pullen [https://tasmaniantimes.com/2025/08/abc-hosts-family-tie-to-hydro-sparks-outrage/] raises the issue that for a long time he worked on energy matters including listening and doing interviews with Leon Compton but only heard yesterday his declared conflict of interest due to Leon Compton’s wife being in a senior position with ABC.
The ABC response implies previous declarations. I haven’t heard such.
The question is when did his wife get the job and how long after this did he first declare the interest (day and date). Anyone who heard the interview would conclude that he declared the interest and then did a soft interview – i.e. declared it but didn’t act on it. Can you get a response that addresses the issue and not a standard ABC response? The ABC needs to be kept accountable.
– David
Marinus Link – The Secret Business Case for AI in Melbourne
“Yes the Marinus business case as written, doesn’t stack up. The whole deal has been wrapped in secrecy and deception and above all else national security.
The Tasmania Times article regarding AI data centres high lights the military applications for this technology and their massive cooling and energy requirements. Would the announcement of a $2b AI data centre located on the Tamar have been made prior to signing Marinus if we weren’t going to the polls, I doubt that very much.
However the Marinus deals includes high volume and high speed data cables linking the Tamar with Melbourne. These follow a different route than the NW power cables, yet are an intricate part of the project. The end use for all that ai capacity isn’t Tasmania, it was always Melbourne.
If one AI data centre can draw 300MW of power, three times what Boyer currently uses and Tasmania only produces 2600MW in total, ai is the business case for Marinus and its end use becomes the justification for the secrecy and urgency. The Melbourne end use for that amount of ai processing power is what no one is talking about including Prof Bruce Mountain, yet he was advising Singapore investors.
Singapore and Melbourne are sister cities in the ai “forth industrial revolution” both are SMART, Digital Twin Cities requiring masses amounts of energy and cooling to run the AI data center’s in order to bring all the individual data metrics being collected up to something called “Digital Maturity”.
The advantage that Melbourne has in this technological arms race is its access to Tasmania and the capacity to build large scale AI data centers on the Tamar River, powered by reliable Hydro power. Marinus is being rushed through to secure the business case for Melbourne as an AI capital for SE Asia, Pro Bruce Mountains colleges would be well aware of that.
There appears to be some “friendly rivalry” between the backers of the two competing Digital Twin Sister Cities, Melbourne and Singapore. Akin perhaps to the rivalry between Districts in a “Hunger Games” tournament.
A proposed Marinus style link between outback NT solar farms and Singapore by SunCo, appears to have stalled with Co founder Twiggy Forest withdrawing his financial backing. Interestingly SunCo also wanted to build a submarine cable manufacturing plant, on the Tamar River because of the area’s cooler temperatures.
Singapore is far more advanced with their ai and data harvesting than Melbourne but they simply can’t cool the data centers quick enough to build a data center the scale proposed for Launceston.
This is a power play by rival sister cities with domestic surveillance, intellectual property rights, crypto currency trading and national security implications.
What exactly does a Digital Twin City produce that warrants this kind of war time, “in the national interest” style intervention. My best educated guess is that a Digital Twin City will produce crypto currency in the form of blockchain tokenised assets, both of real world assets and non tangible assets. Life insurance for example would be a non tangible asset, your digital land title would be a real world asset.
Are Melbourne and Singapore in a race to become the power houses for the creation and trading of blockchain tokenised crypto currencies through massive AI data centres, powered in part by our Hydro power ?
Why are Tasmanians going into a multi billion dollar, inter generational black hole when the Crypto Currency end users are set to be the financial printing presses of the 21st century ?”
– Charlie Biggins, Kingston
Green Energy’s Red Ink
With Marinus front and centre in the Tasmanian and national energy debate, even the Commonwealth’s energy agencies are now waving red flags.
The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and Australian Energy Regulator (AER) have recently told us electricity transmission costs have doubled over the past year.
The question arises, what are the latest total estimated costs for Chris Bowen’s ‘Rewiring the Nation’, the 10,000 km of high voltage transmission lines being built to serve all the new wind and solar farms out in regional areas?
With the rapidly escalating costs for materials and labour, together with delays caused by reluctant landholders in hosting this infrastructure, it is safe to assume the original $20 billion can be inflated by at least 100%.
The much vaunted green energy transition is starting to look increasingly expensive. When is Minister Bowen going to give us a revised total figure for this vital nation-building program? Since transmission costs form such a large part of our power bills it is essential that the total costs to deliver the government’s 82% renewables target by 2030 is spelled out sooner, rather than later, in order that costs can be constrained.
Yesterday’s news from AEMO and AER revealing the latest numbers suggest Marinus and other HV transmission links in Tasmania and on the Mainland are looking increasingly like a very costly tsunami is heading for our shores.
There is a very real risk that the great green energy transition will drown in a sea of red ink.
– David Hurburg, Opossum Bay
Mass Evictions Now Imminent at the Beauty Point Tourist Park
The plight of residents at the park, situated north of the township of Beaconsfield in Northern Tasmania has been highlighted in numerous media reports. Recent moves by park management have seen the issuing of further notices and threats of further evictions. The highly stressed, residents, many of whom are elderly and more than ever frightened and at the end of their tether as the bullying and intimidation continue.
Contact with state authorities, whose job it is to protect residents in such situations, has met with stunned silence. Our state bodies are impotent!
Our Premier Jeremy Rockliff even lamented in his pre-election statement that the situation was dire for those residents, indicating something has to be done – yet still nothing.
So is this the state of our state when it comes to welfare and the much touted ‘kindness’ we are supposed to be so proud of?
Nonsense is the answer.
– Dr Philip J. Tattersall, Beauty Point
Hobart’s Stadium – An ‘Unseen’ Lesson from Cape Town
From time to time Hobart with its harbour and kunanyi backdrop is likened to Capetown with its harbour and Table Mountain backdrop.
Such comparisons are sometimes made by proponents of building a cable car on kunanyi, on the basis that there is one on Table Mountain so we should have one too (albeit that these tourism industry folk usually forget to mention that Capetown’s cable car was built in the 1920s before today’s greater environmental awareness had emerged, and that a century has since elapsed allowing vegetation to cover the worst of the construction scars).
But the industrial football advocates who are so keen to inflict their stadium on us seem to have missed the opportunity to also point out that Capetown has a stadium, so obviously we should have one of them too.
I took these two pics while out on the water a couple of days ago to show how seamlessly and gently the Capetown stadium blends into the harbour front. As is evident from the pics, you can barely see it.
Maybe the industrial football advocates would like to use these pics in their promotion of their unobtrusive Hobart proposal.
– Kevin Kiernan, Fern Tree
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