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”.

If he’d read Treasury’s Pre-Election Financial Outlook (PEFO), page 30, he’d know the real gap is $2.7 billion per year. That’s the figure required to return to surplus “quickly,” as he stated. And even if he’s aiming for a 2030 target, that’s only five years away. The scale of the challenge is almost three times greater than he’s claimed. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a fiscal fantasy.

It all calls to mind the old Irish joke about a lost tourist:

“How do I get to SurplusTown?”
“Well, I wouldn’t start from here.”

But here we are. And until the political parties acknowledge where “here” is, every roadmap to recovery is just another bit of campaign cartography drawn with a crayon.

Labor, for its part, claimed to find $1 billion in savings over four years as part of its “Fresh Start Strategy”. That’s about $250 million a year. It’s not nothing, but nor is it enough. Worse, much of it is based on shaky assumptions.

Take the $50 million Labor expects to save by capping travel budgets. It seems this number was arrived at by looking at a one-year overspend in 2024/25 of $46.4 million actual versus $33.7 million budgeted. That $12.7 million difference was simply multiplied out over four years. But there’s no solid basis for this forecast. Travel allocations don’t appear in future budgets. They only show up in retrospect via financial reports.

It’s easy to paint public servants as globe-trotting freeloaders—but applying arbitrary caps without knowing future needs or allocations is performative, not practical.

And if Labor had been using the 2020-21 numbers - when COVID kept travel spending under budget - they’d have shown a loss, not a gain.

The first step is to know where you’re standing. What’s desperately needed post-election, whoever ends up forming government, is a cross-party commitment to establish an agreed set of fiscal facts. Is the shortfall $1 billion a year, as the Premier says? Or $2.7 billion, as Treasury states? It’s a basic question. And the answer profoundly shapes what comes next.

From there, we need a medium-term plan, spanning five to eight years, to close the gap sensibly and sustainably. That plan should mix better budget control, own-source revenue measures, a review of federal-state arrangements, and perhaps even a case for Commonwealth debt relief. That’s serious work. It demands serious leadership.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, we aim for one-third of that $2.7 billion gap, around $900 million, from spending restraint. The rest would need to come from smarter budgeting and new revenue. Either way, it requires clarity and honesty. Two qualities in short supply so far.

The deeper problem is that government overspending has become the norm, not the exception. Between 2019/20 and 2021/22, the so-called COVID years, the general government overspend was relatively restrained: $262 million. Scrutiny was tighter, spending more targeted, and parliamentary committees and the Audit Office were actively monitoring emergency outlays.

But in the three years since? Overspending has ballooned to $2.3 billion, nine times the COVID-era total. Health alone accounts for $1.2 billion. We have seen a $3 billion overspends over the past seven years in the General Government sector, that is $3 billion above what parliament approved in the budget. Some of which was tied to important measures like abuse survivor compensation, but much of which wasn’t

And let’s not forget the cost of democracy. According to PEFO, the three state elections in the past seven years have cost Tasmanians $4.4 billion in additional spending, largely tied to pork-barrel promises made to win votes.

That’s a stadium and a half every time we go to the polls.

We need to get back to basics and exercise some budget and spending discipline.

The COVID years actually showed us what’s possible. Evidence shows spending over the 2019/20 – 2021/22 years was closer to budget, had more robust scrutiny, and emergency outlays that were at least tracked and explained.

What changed? It seems spending discipline disappeared. Two early elections suspended Parliament and paused all committee work. Oversight stopped. So did restraint.

And the culture shifted. Today, it seems departments spend freely, expecting Parliament will eventually approve the extra cash often after the money’s already spent—or committed.

What’s needed now is a renewed commitment to spending only what Parliament has approved—and treating the budget like a binding contract, not a loose intention. No more blank cheques signed after the fact.

One critical step in restoring discipline is the creation of an independent Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO). The Public Accounts Committee has been inquiring into a PBO for Tasmania for some time, and it’s encouraging that both major parties now support it. But it must be genuinely independent, properly resourced, and empowered to cost all major policy announcements and election promises—before they’re turned into fiscal reality.

We need to bust the myth that COVID wrecked our revenue base. It didn’t. Tasmania’s problem is much more runaway spending and a political culture that’s forgotten how to say “no”.

If we want to get to SurplusTown, it’s time to admit where we’re standing. Then, finally, we can start the hard, grown-up work of planning the journey. Let’s hope this election delivers leaders willing to walk that path.

Hon Ruth Forrest MLC
Independent Member for Murchison
6 July 2025