2024-25 Budget Reply Speech
LAND USE PLANNING AND APPROVALS (STONY RISE DEVELOPMENT APPROVAL) BILL 2024
Governance issues erode public trust
The Premier released his long awaited Fiscal Strategy yesterday.
If credit ratings agencies stumble on a copy we’re bound to be downgraded. It doesn’t comply with the Act.
There are no targets for each of the next four years as required. Only a cut and paste of recycled motherhood statements and objectives plagiarised from Saul Eslake’s Report into State Finances.
Objectives, laudable in that many reflect expert advice of Mr Eslake, however sadly lacking due to any evidence of the means to achieve them.
When Kerry Packer told a Parliamentary Committee back in 1991 that he did everything possible to ensure he paid a little tax as possible “….because as a government, I can tell you, you're not spending it that well that we should be donating extra…." it made it even harder for governments to gain acceptance from electors to increase taxes to pay for services everyone wants and many can’t do without.
What self-respecting political strategist couldn’t win an election if an opposition party even hinted at raising more revenue from increased taxes.
Public policy has been hijacked by political strategists more interested in winning elections than promoting sound policies.
If I’d known where the election campaign was to lead I would have titled these posts: Dispatches from the War Zone. For that’s what it has become.
If one thing has become glaringly obvious since the election campaign began, it’s how totally unprepared and ill-equipped all participants are for the momentous task ahead to get Tasmania back onto a fiscal sustainable path. From understanding the issues, to acknowledging something needs to be done, to establishing frameworks and protocols to tackle the tasks, and then hopefully to implementing the changes and monitoring progress.
It’s official.
The government will have to cobble together a new fiscal strategy by Thursday 3rd July.
There was a fiscal strategy included in the proposed 25/26 Budget but those documents have now been thrown out with the rubbish.
When I was writing Update number 8, I checked the Treasury website to see if the 25/26 Budget was still there because I was curious whether it may mean the government had lodged its mandated fiscal strategy with Treasury.
The purpose of this update is to put the recently released Pre-Election Outlook (PEFO) report into context. What is the purpose of PEFO and why did Treasury issue it in the form it did? It is important to remember the PEFO is prepared by Treasury, not the government or the Treasurer.
The current PEFO might be the most passive-aggressive pre-election financial report in State history. Released in June 2025 is not only a warning - it’s a damning indictment of budgetary smoke and mirrors, political spin, and the kind of financial sleight of hand that would make a used car salesman blush.
Tasmania's Treasury has just delivered what might be the most passive-aggressive pre-election financial report in State history. The Pre-Election Financial Outlook (PEFO) released in June 2025 is not only a warning - it’s a damning indictment of budgetary smoke and mirrors, political spin, and the kind of financial sleight of hand that would make a used car salesman blush.
At the centre of this fiscal farce is the 2024–25 Revised Estimates Report (RER), a document that Treasury officials effectively binned and started again. Under the Charter of Budget Responsibility Act 2007, PEFO is meant to give Tasmanians a clear, honest account of the state’s fiscal position heading into an election. But when Treasury turned to the RER looking for suitable forward estimates, they found what appears to have been a patchwork of half-truths and conspicuous omissions.