Legislative Council, Monday 21 October 2024

Mr President, I wish to raise an issue on adjournment regarding TasPorts – I was considering including this in my noting of the GAA Report, however it is a little unclear as to when I will be able to deliver that.

Due to this uncertainty and after listening to the TasPorts CEO on ABC radio I found his comments not reflective of the experience of many TasPorts key stakeholders and customers in my electorate – many of which I will speak about when I note the Report hopefully in coming weeks – and on this occasion I am not speaking about King Island.

Mr President, I wish to raise an issue on behalf of the West Coast community about TasPorts actions in another of my small LGAs.

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"The Montello Primary School community feel "disrespected and unheard" following school funding announced in the state budget.

While the government committed a further $2.5 million, taking the overall state funding to $9.6 million, Ms Forrest said it "always was underfunded and inadequate".

You can read the rest of my comments relating to the funding allocation to Montello Primary School announced in the State Budget, and as reported in the Advocate newspaper at the link below:

https://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/8768512/montello-primary-school-feel-unheard-after-state-budget/?cs=87

Alternatively, my full budget reply speech is available here:

https://ruthforrest.com.au/18-parliament/1239-2024-25-budget-reply-speech

 The section of the speech relating to Montello Primary School is here:

Time to be honest about the challenges and work together, before it's too late. The 2024-25 Tasmanian state budget is a catastrophe.

There is no plan to stop debt servicing costs eating up more and more of revenue each year. By 2027-28 almost 10c in every dollar of revenue will be devoted to debt servicing.

Which leaves less and less each year to provide services.

Even with debt servicing costs, operating expenses are projected to fall over the forward estimates.

Exclude them and adjust for inflation and the fall in real terms is 13 per cent.

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Legislative Council, Tuesday 17 September 2024

The Budget catastrophe

Mr President let’s cut to the chase.

This Budget is a catastrophe.

Where do I start – everywhere I look there is bad news. The Treasurer's own speech lacked any vigour – rather sought to blame others and tell us all to stop whinging.

Mr President, my speech today is likely to be seen by the Treasurer as a huge whinge and it that’s the case I am OK with that! 

The Treasurer may have been better to stop whinging himself and take some responsibility.

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Political parties continue their misinformation campaigns rather than honestly discussing our financial problems, writes Ruth Forrest

The gravity of the state's perilous fiscal position, as forensically detailed by Saul Eslake in his recent report, was rather predictably matched by the dismissiveness by major parties of the recommendation to raise more revenue from our own sources.

Mr Eslake spelt out what most of us knew, or at least strongly suspected, that we're spending more than we're receiving and that an increasing share of what we're spending are debt servicing costs and amounts to settle past accumulated liabilities rather than on current services. In real terms spending on current services is falling.

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Denial of budget reality is no longer an option for Tasmania.

The government last week released the Preliminary Outcome Report for the 2023-24 year, revealing the latest on the state's finances. On Monday of this week, leading economist Saul Eslake released his long anticipated review into the same subject.

First the good news on the 2023-24 year.

Revenue was $500m higher. Despite reduced GST, specific purpose grants were higher, as was own-source taxation and dividends from government businesses.

It was pleasing to see more own source revenue as that's what we need if we are to keep providing services that people expect, need and deserve.

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