The Tasmanian government is considering leasing out the two new bass strait ferries because the port infrastructure won't be ready until well after they arrive. In Devonport today, Premier Jeremy Rockliff revealed the berth won't be ready until February 2027.
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00:00It's been the Labor opposition that's sort of chipped away at the story, uncovering,
00:06I guess, mess up after mess up with it all.
00:10You know, first we found out that, you know, all this bailout had been paid out to the
00:15Finnish shipbuilder who are building the new Spirits of Tasmania.
00:19Then these things started coming out where it was like, maybe the, you know, even though
00:22the ships were delayed, maybe the berth that was being built for them was actually not
00:28going to be ready in time for their arrival.
00:31Now, you know, through a lot of questioning in Parliament over months, it became clear
00:35that we'll, you know, the government was looking at an interim solution.
00:40Today we found out that this interim solution is not viable and is in fact unsafe.
00:46Now a bit of context here, Spirit of Tasmania ships, obviously they bring in like a whole
00:51heap of tourism, they're relied upon for freight and things like that.
00:55So, you know, a lot of people in the tourism industry have sort of described that, you
01:00know, within the, you know, the hardships of COVID, the idea of these bigger and better
01:05ships arriving was sort of this beacon of hope.
01:08Now what we've found out today is essentially this berth for the new Spirit ships won't
01:14be ready until February 2027.
01:16This is despite the fact the first of the ships was actually due to arrive in the state
01:21at the end of this year.
01:22So you're talking brand new ship with, you know, no infrastructure to operate from.
01:28Like I said, they were looking at an interim way to make that work.
01:31And today they've revealed that they can't even do that.
01:35So it means that we, you know, Tasmanians can't, you know, interstate as people visiting,
01:39they can't use these bigger and better ships until February 2027.
01:45So it's been, you know, it's obviously been, because we're talking like tens of millions
01:50of dollars, we're talking about lost tourism revenue.
01:52We've seen people stepping down across like the ferry operator TT line, you know, people
01:59in the TAS ports and even the infrastructure minister and deputy premier ended up sort
02:04of resigning over his handling of the whole saga.