Ms BURNET (Clark) – Chair, I’m very pleased to present my response to the Estimates and, like Mr Fairs, I’d really like to thank the support of the deputies for both committees I chaired and for Mr Fairs and his work in looking after Committee B, as well as the staff for doing a power of work to deliver this compressed festival of Estimates. I know it was a difficult struggle with such a tight timeframe, but for me, it was a good experience to hear from each of the members and their contributions, their interests in the Budget, their concerns. So it was a great gift for me to experience the Budget and hear from everybody; to see the committees in action. Sitting in on so many sessions provided me with the perfect learning opportunity for me to understand other portfolios that fell within Committee A, and to gain a greater understanding of the importance of prudent financial management.
I want to put into context how we got to this point when we were considering the 2025 Budget and what really should have been shaping the Budget. I’ll just run through a few things that happened before the Treasurer, Eric Abetz, delivered his budget.
Over summer, we saw fat globules of fish landing on beaches and polluting many of our beaches. It raised alarm bells for many coastal dwellers, and many of us who are concerned seeing this climate and commercial catastrophe unfolding on our very shores.
Also from that time, there was the dumping of thousands of kilograms of emergency‑use antibiotic florfenicol in fish pens in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel. It was twice the amount that has been used in a whole season for Norwegian salmon, but I’ll go to that in a moment. We know that this is going to be used in an emergency context, for emergency use in Okehampton Bay. I’d just like to quote from an article put together by members of Safe Water Hobart:
Seven hundred kilograms of florfenicol used in just 13 days is an awful lot. This treatment dose is more than triple the antibiotics used in Tasmania in all of 2024. The Tasmanian salmon industry often claims to follow world’s best practice. However, 700 kilograms is twice as much antibiotics as Norway uses to produce 15 times more farmed salmon.
I raise this because of significant impacts on our state’s reputation. With our state’s laissez‑faire attitude to big salmon farming, we need to consider the impacts of climate change, of international markets, of local environmental stressors that were disastrous over summer and continue to be, and are threatening to be for the summer ahead.
In other events this year, during caretaker mode, we had the huge Marinus deal pushed through, with no notice. You might recall that in just 11 months ‑ and this is separate to what happened during caretaker mode ‑ but in just 11 months, Marinus’ projected costs went from roughly $3.8 billion to $5.5 billion, before being erratically revised.
During caretaker mode again, TT‑Line was provided a line of credit of $75 million with the suggestion of a future $25 million, which now looks inevitable and even insufficient. TT‑Line have now been referred to ASIC by the Auditor‑General because of potential insolvency. or concerns about it being insolvent.
I suppose the message there about these things that happened before the election, during caretaker mode, was that it’s a very similar pattern to what happened previously with TT‑Line before the previous election. I just wonder how that was all taken into account, all of these big‑ticket items were taken into account, when putting this Budget together?
If we just stay with TT-Line for a minute, and I know this has been prosecuted many a time in this House, but there were too many mistakes along the way, with the Devonport 3 costs escalating from an original $90 million to $500 million. The Spirit vessel replacements – we’re now looking at $900 million total cost for vessels, with bailouts to Finnish shipyards along the way. Then we have additional costs such as the hull strengthening and the costs associated with the vessels storage being berthed in Scotland, then in Hobart, now in Victoria. I know that decision‑making is not easy, but high sitting fees for directors and senior executive salaries for some of our senior public servants and those on GBEs should in some part reflect good decision‑making. I hark back to 2020 when Saul Eslake said, ‘The Spirit replacement delays were costing the Tasmanian economy at that point $350 million per annum.’ Ironically, if you line up all those costly mistakes and delays – and there were international reasons that were out of the government’s hand – but mistakes or delays they were, you could fund a stadium by now.
The Treasurer’s austerity budget delivers a debt of billions over forward Estimates and with its increased borrowings and interest to repay. This will be all the harder following the downgraded rating from Moody’s than Standard and Poor’s, all occurring after the Budget. There are major concerns when you have downgrade by rating agencies. I found the Treasurer’s response to the media after one downgrade and then another breathtaking because it is said to the world, ‘There’s nothing to see here. We can manage debt. We won’t let TT‑Line fail. We will build the stadium despite the backdrop of debt’, despite the concerns raised about the millions of dollars to pay just on the interest, in an environment where those borrowings will cost more with the downgraded credit rating and higher interest rates. This track record, all of the things I listed and more, casts doubt on the government’s ability to deliver the stadium project, throwing forward Estimates into severe doubt.
I want to talk about the stadium – it would be remiss and quite unusual for me not to talk about it – but during Estimates and during some of the discussion in this House, the stadium has become the elephant in the room. Labor refused to acknowledge the impact of the stadium on the Budget. The burgeoning costs associated with the project, the multitude of reports. There are so many things to consider, but end to end, I would love to know and I haven’t done the calculations, but I would love to know how much in total we have spent so far on the stadium. Ms Johnston asked the director of the TPC, Mr Ramsay, about the costs associated with the TPC considering the stadium, and that was around $1.3 million for that work, which was a significant amount of work and I commend the work and the information that’s been provided for by experts along the way. It hasn’t been listened to. It has been denied. It has been ignored quite often, mostly. More’s the pity, because it’s important when you are dealing with public monies, to get the advice, to heed that advice, to base your decision on that advice, but certainly heed that advice is number one.
The TPC estimated that the public loan costs will be $1 billion at the end of the construction period and $1.8 billion after 10 years. There are calculations to suggest that that’s about $4100 per household in Tasmania, which is the highest amount, I will say again, the highest amount that any community has to pay for the building of a stadium. It’s more the pity for Tasmanians who will not necessarily benefit from a stadium, $4100 is a significant impost on households, and we don’t have necessarily a high level of income for many Tasmanian households, but that’s what we’re expecting them to pay. No doubt there will have to be other sources of money, perhaps through increased taxes, which hasn’t been ruled out, but there will be costs associated with the stadium. We will never forget, I don’t think, Tasmanians will never forget how much this stadium may cost them.
Events will be unaffordable because of austerity measures, so many of the people who won’t benefit because of the stadium will be suffering from a lack of services provided to them through community houses, through Neighbourhood Houses or through those services that will be cut and through those public sector services that will be cut because of the austerity budget.
I’ve laid out some big-ticket items. We’ve talked about TT‑Line, Marinus, the likely possible stadium – that impost and the cost that has already been borne by the Tasmanian community. Now, I want to talk about the other side of the story. We’ve talked about the big-ticket items that the government is hell‑bent on pursuing, but what about the other side of the story? How is it that on the one hand there are many cost savings to be made, and on the other there is the expectation that spending can only occur on a ‘Would be nice to have’ project, such as the stadium.
I will start with the many statutory organisations such as the EPA, the Integrity Commission and the Auditor‑General are underfunded and unable to do the work that is intended for them and their regulatory requirements are underfunded. We know in TASCAT there is a significant backlog. It was revealed by the Attorney‑General under questioning that there’s a likelihood that the Industrial Commission will be rolled up into TASCAT without the services and without necessarily the staff and the skills going with that. We know and we hear it from our stakeholders that cuts to services will bite hard. The stadium is a divisive issue and those who benefit will be the ‘haves’ and those who won’t be able to afford things or those who rely on the services that will be cut.
It’s some comfort that privatisation of the public sector is supposedly off the table, that’s yet to be seen. I know full well that there is concern with Metro about privatisation and that’s privatisation by stealth that seems to occur with a few changes by a lack of love provided to our public transport system. We don’t know if the rapid bus transit, if it’s ever delivered, will be a privatised service, rather than an investment in public transport required now. We see that the government has provided services and increased their subsidisation of private services. It’s a good thing if people are using public transport but it shouldn’t be at the cost of not giving enough love to Metro.
Budgets are a choice. They can be based on ideology, they can be based on need, sometimes it’s favouritism. It might be on impulse, it might be in response to public pressure. Sometimes budget decisions are made on the whim. Budgets in a place like Tasmania have often been shaped by infrastructure needs versus social needs versus environmental needs.
I will talk now about the needs of local communities beyond sign-ons to costly projects like Marinus and the stadium – costly projects that haven’t been delivered well, like TT-Line and the pipeline projects that don’t change the way we shape the place in which we live.
Closer to home, Vica Bayley and I attended the last community playgroup session in Chigwell Community Garden, which is likely to close because of lack of funding. It’s run by the Neighbourhood House, and it shouldn’t be reliant on being thrown a lifeline to survive. This is providing a very important service in one of our northern suburbs. It is a hub for people to be outside, for kids to play outside in a beautiful setting.
One of the various community groups I’ve been contacted by is Learn to Drive, who fear cuts to their programs will make it harder for many groups to gain driving licences and be safe on our roads. The salt‑of-the-earth people who provide that driver mentor training often go beyond just delivering driving lessons. They help with with social needs as well. You’d be fully aware of that, deputy Chair.
There are events like the graduation for the Be Hers program, in partnership with TAFE, which was a group of multicultural migrant and refugee women who had the chance to learn skills in a group supported by TAFE teachers. It is an important part of our social fabric to be able to deliver those services. If the TAFE course aren’t there for them, it is a significant challenge for those women to gain employment.
While we see elite sport getting handed a blank cheque, community and grassroots sport is left behind. We heard about the North Launceston Football Club. It was a political budget decision by the sounds of it, whether they should get funding or not, which is a travesty of process.
We also know that cycling advocates are concerned about the future of active transport funding grants, which seem to have gone the way of the Collins Street bike lane. Those active transport grants are important for the local councils who have relied on a 50:50 funding split from the state government. These are projects to deliver bikeways and walkways in local communities to keep people healthy and connected. The $4 million over four years that had been allocated has just been popped into the first year and has gone into a project, the Huntingfield pedestrian bridge, which is an active transport link across the highway at the Algona Road roundabout. That was a public works consideration, and the first thing to go in that multi-million-dollar contract was the active transport bridge. Robbing Peter to pay Paul, that money, which should be going to various councils, is now going into what should have been an infrastructure project. We did have a commitment from minister Kerry Vincent in relation to ensuring that we’re thinking about active transport links as part of projects. I’d like to see that in writing. We need that kind of project to help communities across Tasmania stay active, healthy and connected.
The other critical piece of moving people around the city is public transport, which is a significant building block of an advanced society. If you go to any country or any city where there’s good public transport, it speaks volumes. Meanwhile, we have an ailing bus system that has not been shown the love it should have. Only 3 per cent of people bus to work in greater Hobart. Real‑time tracking of buses is still a significant problem. That was denied at the Metro Estimates committee, even though I’ve had personal experience and hear about this all the time from public transport users.
When we don’t have reliable and predictable services, people don’t use them. It’s as simple as that. We need to get to that point where we can have faith in our bus service. We should be aiming for more than 3 per cent of people using public transport, but they won’t use it until those buses are arriving on time, they’re more frequent and the bus services that have been cut are restored. Not that we are going to see that any time soon. Another travesty, another lack of investment in an intelligent way of getting people around their communities and to work. Productivity goes down when you don’t have a good bus service.
We also heard the tale of woe of the Cubic common ticketing for public transport. I believe the project started in 2017 or 2018 and is up from $9 million to almost $60 million, with no clear end in sight. It is a costly mistake to pursue projects that don’t stack up and don’t deliver for a clever city and community. There are fares and bus services that won’t be even considered for reinstatement until the Southern Tasmanian Network review is finalised.
These are just some of those services that will have to give way to make space in the budget for the stadium project. The impacts can be devastating. It’s a false belief that cutting public services will result in good outcomes. When public service jobs are gone in areas such as teaching, we know that teachers are under a lot of stress. That’s just one example. I know of many people in the public sector who are doing it tough because of the stress they’re under.
Planning is a passion of mine, and we know that delivering good planning outcomes is good for the environment, if we are not building on the borders and pushing housing out into bushland, into farmland. It’s not only going to be cheaper to build medium‑density in infill in the inner city, but it’s also going to have better environmental outcomes, so we should be trying to do that. We know that there are advocates ‑ such as the Planning Institute of Australia Tasmanian branch and the Greater Hobart Committee ‑ who are looking at having medium density in infill areas along the Hobart to Glenorchy transit corridor and improving density, allowing housing to thrive and to be built there. As a pilot project it could be really beneficial. We have nothing in the Budget. In fact, it’s been denied. You don’t want to push out on the urban boundaries. We want outcomes that are good for the environment, and we’re not seeing that necessarily in this Budget. By not putting pressure on our stormwater and waterways, we can reduce the impacts and costs of building. We have to be ready for a climate‑resilient future. There’s still a long way to go.
In the couple of minutes that I have left, I’d like to give a shout‑out to minister Bridget Archer and her approach to preventative health, and recognising that there is that opportunity to invest in our communities by making health the first course of things you do to keep people out of hospital. Keeping communities healthy, making them resilient in the face of climate change, is something that we, as a state, should be working towards. There is so much to be done there, and I think that minister Archer and the Premier should be commended for showing leadership in resilience, and being ready for those challenges of an ageing and unwell population. We should be aiming for the healthiest island in the world.
We’ve had lost opportunities with this Budget, and I think there are things that we should be considering. We live with global uncertainty in the face of wars, of other global events, of climate change and natural disasters, and we need to be spending well for our community. It’s so important to get this right. We’re going into an area of spending which I don’t feel is the right thing for Tasmania.
