2024-25 Budget Reply Speech
LAND USE PLANNING AND APPROVALS (STONY RISE DEVELOPMENT APPROVAL) BILL 2024
Governance issues erode public trust
There’s a sliver of hope—just a glimmer—that when the dust settles on this election, the battered survivors might finally face up to the fiscal mess Tasmania is in. But it’s a long shot. Because right now, neither major party seems to grasp the depth of the hole we’re in, let alone how to climb out of it.
The risk? That once the post-election spin dies down, our fiscal crisis will be tossed out with the campaign signs - forgotten, ignored, and unresolved.
Take the Premier’s appearance on Stateline last Friday, he claimed Tasmania could "very easily" bring the budget back into surplus by cutting health spending from $10 million to $7 million a day. Obviously not something he is going to do, but the point is that’s a tidy saving of about $1 billion a year. The problem is this wouldn’t be enough to find a path to surplus. And it certainly isn’t “very easy”.
There’s a slither of hope, a small shaft on sunlight trying to shine on an otherwise bleak election battleground, that when the dusts settles, the survivors – I won’t call them victors at this stage – might help to build on what we've learned, to build a better future.
It’s only a slither of hope at this stage. The major parties don’t appear to really understand the hole we’re in and the actual task ahead. The risk is, when the battle is over and the armistice terms agreed, our fiscal problems will be taken out with all the wounded and forgotten.
The government’s attitude to our woes has always been a bit too flippant, as was again demonstrated in the Premier’s widely aired interview on ABC’s Stateline on Friday 4th July. He claimed he could very easily bring the budget back into surplus by cutting health spending from $10 million per day to $7 million per day. Basic arithmetic says that would save around $1 billion per year.
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.