The Board of Marinus Link (MLPL) has recommended proceeding with the Marinus project and each of the three shareholders now need to make a decision before jointly convening to decide.

The decision to proceed wasn’t unexpected. It would have been surprising if they had voted themselves out of a job.

The Tasmanian government owns a 17.7 per cent share alongside the Victorian and Federal governments. But we pay 27.6 per cent of Marinus fees (plus 100 per cent of any associated transmission development in Tasmania).

With the election in progress, caretaker provisions apply to decisions by government. The Liberal government is still the government with full legal powers of a government, but it should refrain from making major decisions which will bind a future government without at least consulting with the opposition. That’s the convention. Not legally binding, just a convention.

Aren’t there two opposition parties? What does the convention say about minority government where there are more than one opposition party? What if cross benchers outnumber any of the opposition parties? Do they get a say?

Just who may comprise the members of a future government may take some time to resolve. Election day will occur on July 19th, but it could well take 2 weeks to decide the successful candidates. The Parliament then must meet. If we have a hung Parliament which seems a likely outcome, it may take weeks to decide who gets to sit on the Speaker’s right. Then comes the need for a new government to legislate a 25/26 Budget Bill, remembering the State will on life support at that stage by a transitional Supply arrangement due to run out by the end of calendar year 2025.

Whilst the government tabled a Budget Bill it wasn’t passed. It doesn’t have any legal status other than as a Bill that has now been withdrawn. Given the reception the Bill received it is far from clear it will be adopted by a future parliament without significant change.

The Premier is rarely seen in public these days without a set of bright blue coloured glossy papers under his arm with bold lettering 2030 STRONG PLAN hoping even the completely disinterested Tasmanians will think he has a plan for a sustainable future despite the contents suggesting otherwise.

The opposition haven’t provided the semblance of a plan as yet, certainly nothing on the public record. It won’t be too long before the law of the land requires them to release a plan of some sort. Acknowledging the problem as well as the plans for addressing the problem is key of course.

But even so, at best it will be a series of promises yet to face serious scrutiny by electors or the imprimatur of Parliament.

The caretaker conventions are completely inadequate in the context of Marinus given the size of the task and the monumental risks attached. It would be folly to impose a project at least five times the size of the Mac Point stadium on top of the grossly deficient plans each of the Liberals and Labor have so far revealed, so for the two major parties to collaborate under the guise of a caretaker convention to tick off the Marinus project would be an absolute travesty.

We Tasmanians can’t be placed in a situation where we wake up one morning and discover Marinus is a fait accompli.

MLPL has had a clear job to do, and that is to do all it can to get Marinus built. Its job is not to investigate future options for electricity production and distribution in Tasmania and select the best. Its job is to try to get Marinus to the start line. Hence we need to take the word of MLPL with a healthy dose of salt.

We need to see the Whole of State Business case for Marinus currently sitting in the Treasurer’s in-tray which he may have discussed with the Opposition. We don’t know. We deserve to know what the future may look like without Marinus. We are always being told how much better we’ll be with Marinus, but rarely what may happen without it. What are the possibilities, and will they be cheaper and/or less risky than Marinus?

Marinus is the classic case of trying to solve multiple problems with one whizz-bang solution which therefore makes it quite complicated.

Unfortunately, the level of public discussion is inversely related to the complexity of a project. The stadium gets a good workout because it not a complex project. Everyone has an opinion.

But a project which allegedly enables cheap power to be imported, expensive power to be exported, causes local electricity prices to fall, consumers to benefit, Hydro Tasmania’s profitability to be restored, and the mainland economy to be decarbonised, is necessarily complex with undoubted trade-offs. Trade-offs between the various goals, and needs to be carefully explained in an updated context of reduced rainfall and hydro inflows and uncertain demand from major industrials, and which in the interests of sensible public policy shouldn’t be decided during a caretaker period of government with a parlous fiscal position, if not least because of the many yet-to-be-determined costs and abundant risks.

On what we know already it will come with the price tag of a mission to the moon.

It may well be there are separate cheaper solutions for each of the problems we face rather than continuing the 10-year search for the magic of Marinus. With the singular focus on Marinus Link, we haven’t bothered to look.