Adjournment Speech – Road Damage in Northern Tasmania

Legislative Council, Thursday 12 September  Ms FORREST (Murchison) – Mr President, I rise on adjournment to raise an urgent matter and to make a bit of a complaint and ask the government what response they are going to provide. Members will be aware that the north west of the state, many in the north and […]

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Superannuation – Measures and Data

Legislative Council, Wednesday 18 September 2024 Ms FORREST question to LEADER of the GOVERNMENT in the LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL, Mrs HISCUTT Referring to the Budget for 2024-25, could you provide measures/details of: (1) Tasmania’s Gross State Product; (2) The service cost for current employees of the General Government who are members of the defined benefit superannuation schemes; […]

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We need to face what the budget figures have been trying to tell us for years, and it’s not good news

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. […]

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The gravity of our state’s challenges means we need to start thinking very differently

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. […]

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Servicing our past sins is costing more, which takes away much-needed funding from current services

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 […]

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‘I think the parents are feral not the child’: MLC’s passionate response

I post this to continue the conversation in a respectful manner and urge readers to take a forward looking approach to this very important issue.   I do have real concern about condoning any physical violence (including smacking) of children. We are so much better informed about child development and their capacity to communicate which […]

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Blame games have no place in helping deal with our state’s financial woes

The day of reckoning is looming. The report by respected economist Saul Eslake into the state of the state’s finances, a condition of Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN) agreement with the minority Liberal government following the March election, will be made public before the 2024/25 state budget on September 12. Ever since the 2008 Global Financial […]

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