Last night Spirit of Tasmania IV arrived in Scotland where it will be mothballed for up to two years.  It is a shocking decision guided Jeremy Rockliff’s best interests, not Tasmania’s interests.

While the ship’s maiden voyage is now over, the ferries fiasco is far from it.

Yesterday we found out that a full review of TT-Line’s finances in underway while the GBE’s debt has been in breach of its conditions for six months. TT-Line is now borrowing money just to pay the interest on its unsustainable debt. 

How on earth did the Premier not know anything about this when I asked him last week?

If TT-Line were a private company administrators would have been called already. 

We also heard that TasPorts takes no responsibility for the debacle, despite having blocked TT-Line’s access to the site for a year.  And the new Infrastructure Minister, Kerry Vincent, seems to agree.

One man has been there the whole time: Jeremy Rockliff.  Yet he doesn’t seem to know anything about it.  He didn’t know:

• His Government needed to build a berth for the new ships;
• TT-Line negotiated a secret bailout with a foreign government for a Finnish shipbuilder;
• How much local content is in the ships, despite committing to spend $100 million on them;
• How much it will cost taxpayers to leave the ships in Scotland;
• That TT-Line had advertised the CEO role could be based in Geelong; and
• TT-Line was in breach of its debt agreement with TasCorp for six months.

Today I call on him to end the charade that these ships are going to be leased out.  Let’s bring them home to Tasmania.  Finish the fit out and make sure they are ready to go as soon as the berth is.

Dean Winter MP
Labor Leader