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. 

Further evidence of endemic inadequacies was provided by the Labor party when it released its mandated fiscal strategy. It acknowledged something needs to be done although the suggestions were sketchy at best, whilst a marked improvement on past efforts. 

The Labor party identified $1 billion of budget savings for the general government sector over the next four years, adding a few extra $s in years beyond to get the number over the magical $1 billion mark, a figure which makes the message a bit easier to sell. 

Gosh, a billion dollars that sounds a lot of money. That should fix things. 

Unfortunately, it’s only about one tenth of what will be required to meet Labor’s target of returning the general government sector (this excludes government businesses) to a balanced cash position over the medium term (which usually means three to five years), given that more borrowings aren’t sustainable, and selling government businesses and raising more taxes have been ruled out. Whilst this is ‘a start’ we really need to have a clearer understanding of how to achieve a balanced cash position especially as a longer term target is to generate cash surpluses needed to reduce debt. 

Furthermore, and encouragingly Labor acknowledged this, a broader focus on the total state sector is required. There’s a lot of problems and debt lurking out there. 

Labor has accepted we have big problems and made a few suggestions but in the scheme of things only paid lip service to the Charter of Budget Responsibility Act 2007 which requires it as an opposition party to have a fiscal strategy. 

Which is one more than the government have at this stage. 

The theatrics in the Lower House of Parliament leading to the Premier’s obstinate decision to seek yet another early election has triggered a tsunami of further stuff-ups. The 25/26 Budget was abandoned. The last set of budget figures, the Revised Estimates Report for 24/25 in Feb 2025, were misleading massively understating future outlays, giving Treasury no alternative but to go back to the drawing board to provide a set of PEFO projections.  

But projections aren’t forecasts. It’s politicians who are supposed to make policy changes. Labor found a modest amount of savings and issued a fiscal strategy to satisfy legal obligations but which in no way can be construed as charting a way forward. It hatched a plan to spend $1 billion less. Less than what? What is the base case, the starting point? There isn’t one. The governments attempted 25/26 budget is in the bin.  

We are currently in a giant void. That’s what happens when you surround yourself with a firebreak of political minders and cheer leaders. You might miss seeing the wood for the trees, or the possible unintended consequences of a visit to Government House following two days of theatre in the House of Assembly which has got us nowhere. 

Even though it’s the clear legal obligation for the Labor party’s fiscal strategy to set out fiscal objectives and targets for each of the next four years which they failed to do, in the circumstances of the current ten car pile -up to which we are unfortunate bystanders it would have been difficult. 

It’s up to the government to clearly state what they’re going to do. A clear fiscal strategy as required by the Charter of Budget Responsibility Act with achievable targets for each of the next four years is the minimum we need. Promising unachievable surpluses in distant years is nonsense for a party which has been in government for 11 years and knows or should know how to suck eggs. 

For the future we need enhanced protocols. We need more seamless transitions across election cycles which should be fixed IMHO. We need better informed members.  That may mean more support staff. This situation has clearly demonstrated how desperately we need a Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) acting for the Parliament and for all members. The Public Accounts Committee has been undertaking an inquiry into to establishment of a PBO but, as with all other inquiries on foot – nothing can proceed and no report prepared until Parliament resumes and the Committee re-establishes. All because we went to another early election! 

Surely, we can find a non-partisan path out of the wilderness. For goodness sakes we agree on 95 per cent of issues. Let’s discuss the other 5 per cent robustly if we must.  

However, we should never ever allow those discussions to interrupt the sensible path forward which most Tasmanians want.  

Tasmanians are being held to ransom by the idiocy of our leaders. 

We shouldn’t be going to yet another election with only a transitional Supply Act in place to keep the place ticking over while election candidates offer half-baked solutions to problems they don’t fully understand partly because the business of government stopped before we had a chance to fully find out.