Tasmanian Labor stands for well-paid, safe, and secure jobs.
Good jobs start from a great education, which is what the university is proposing through its massive investment in the Hobart CBD. In all, $700 million worth of construction activity will have been completed in Hobart by the end of next year. The Forestry building will open in 2026 for over 3,000 staff and students.
The move puts education into the heart of our capital city. It builds world-class facilities in a more accessible location for all southern Tasmanians. It will revitalise the city and rebuild our state’s education assets.
The proposed Legislation to stop the university from selling or leasing assets is an embarrassment. Having been Education Minister for most of the last decade and watching UTAS commence the move of over half the university into the city, Jeremy Rockliff suddenly decided he would intervene to stop it. It is the worst of cynical politics and awful policy that will place our university at serious financial risk and scare investors away.
The Liberals plan to team up with the Lambies and the Greens to put a handbrake on UTAS, freezing the university’s assets, and preventing any development on its vacant land in Sandy Bay.
Labor will strongly oppose Jeremy Rockliff’s anti-development, anti-education Legislation.
Jeremy Rockliff’s plan will prevent the construction of nearly 2,000 new houses, in the middle of a housing crisis.
It will mean the university cannot fund its new $500 million STEM facility, at a time when young people are leaving for the mainland in numbers not seen since the nineties.
It is a plan that will do serious damage to the finances and long-term viability of the university—our state’s only university—in an era where young people will need degrees in unprecedented numbers.
And it will irreparably harm Tasmania’s reputation as an investment destination by pulling the rug out from under a development process the government has supported for the best part of a decade.
The Labor Party wants world-class educational facilities, run by a strong university. We want a facility that drives research and innovation across industry for the next 50 years and we want the jobs that come with new construction – including hundreds of apprenticeships for our young people.
Tasmanians need to see a future for themselves here, secure jobs, with good pay, and promising career prospects.
This represents a chance to reach for all of that, and that is why we’re standing strongly against the Liberals’ Bill that keeps us in the past.
Dean Winter MP
Tasmanian Labor Leader
