Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, I thank the member for Bass, Mr Ferguson, for his comments. I will be speaking on behalf of the six Greens MPs from the true opposition in this House, the crossbench. A position that the Greens are proud to hold in this parliament.
I acknowledge that we are listening today on the lands of the Muwinina people, the country of original owners and custodians of the lands around Kunanyi and the shores of Timtumili Minanya. On behalf of the Greens, I pay my respects to all Palawa/Pakana and their elders. We recognise that this country was stolen and was never ceded to colonisers and Aboriginal people have never ceded their rights to law on Country. Since colonisation, they have continued to demand justice through treaty, land returns, and protection of culture across Lutruwita/Tasmania.
Last year, the Premier met with community elders, looked them in the eyes, and made a commitment to progress truth‑telling and treaty. It was a welcome announcement that the Liberals did fund a truth‑telling commission, but it was totally overshadowed by their announcement that they would be abandoning their promise of a treaty. It is a massive betrayal of Aboriginal people and another broken promise from a non‑Aboriginal person in power. Uncle Jim Everett, puralia meenamatta, was crystal clear before he walked out of the reconciliation breakfast in June. He said, ‘Don’t give up on us, put treaty back on the agenda.’ I am calling on the Premier to fulfil his promise to Aboriginal people and follow the lead of Victoria, who recently legislated a treaty, and to commence that process here forthwith.
As representatives of our communities, the central question we all need to ask is what would a good government do for Tasmanians in this Budget? A government that cares for this island and its people, a government that values the amazing world around us and that believes in fairness and justice, a government that knows it has a responsibility not just to Tasmanians now, but with an eye to future generations? This is always the starting point for the Greens. During the state election, we showed what’s possible if the government got its priorities straight and focused on addressing these questions. With the policies we announced, we showed it is possible to invest more in the essential and underfunded services that Tasmanians rely on instead of making massive cuts, at the same time as raising the revenue that’s needed to set the budget on a path of repair. We showed it is possible to care for nature ‑ the very thing that makes Tasmania so special in all the world ‑ and to support jobs in our cities and our regional areas.
The election policies that we took to Treasury were fully costed by them and they improved the bottom line by $1.4 billion. We didn’t do that by cutting services, which the Treasurer has said has to happen. In fact, our plan invested more into health, housing and other essential areas. How did we do it? We did it by stopping the vote for a stadium, by scrapping misguided spending, and by making big corporations pay their fair share. That’s what a good government should do.
Before I give more details on behalf of the Greens MPs about our vision for Tasmania and how we’d pay for it, how we’d walk back the gross debt burden that the Liberals have laid out for future generations, and how we’d do it in a compassionate and future-focused way, I want to address the accusation the Premier made about us yesterday in Question Time. He said that every question the Greens ask is ‘Armageddon by nature.’ By implication, the Greens are always describing the worst of things. Premier, we don’t apologise for being truth tellers in this place or strong advocates for change. We represent people’s concerns in the community. We represent the voices of scientists and independent experts. We speak about the unvarnished reality of how things actually are. We’re forthright about what the government needs to do to fix things. That’s because the people who elected us expect us to fight for real outcomes, and real outcomes mean making things better in the community’s interests, not prioritising corporations and their profits or Liberal mates.
Tasmanians overwhelmingly want strong government services and democratic institutions, and that’s because when the chips are down – and they sure are down for a lot of Tasmanians at the moment – when you don’t have a house to mortgage or private health insurance to get you into the surgery you need, you have to have public and community services there to back you. Tasmanians also overwhelmingly want to make sure that the laws we have are for everybody. They want to make sure that we have strong institutions to make sure vulnerable people, like children, are protected.
Premier, we won’t stop talking about the harsh realities of daily life for more than a quarter of Tasmanians who are totally overwhelmed by the cost of living. They struggle to pay their bills. At least 81,000 among us are skipping meals every day and going hungry. While the government prioritises some $70 million in debt servicing a year for a stadium, which is what the Coordinator-General has proposed, tens of thousands of people are literally going without food. People who call an ambulance when they’re desperate are still waiting longer in Tasmania than they would in any other Australian state. Our children have the worst literacy and numeracy in the country, and there’s no extra money in the Budget to help children struggling in school who are falling behind on reading and writing. There’s nothing there for extra teacher support or the wellbeing of staff. As for the Premier’s rhetoric about kids who are dreaming big and the prospect of a stadium in the future, right now children literally can hardly dream about a future with a good job if they can’t read and write, they haven’t got food on the table and they’re worried about their housing.
Not to mention adults in Tasmania with the lowest functional literacy rates in the country. This Budget this year has the last funding for the essential work of the 2610 literacy program. That is an outrageous shame. It is a cut that Treasurer Abetz has put into this budget and there’s no commitment to that in future years.
That’s why we are so opposed to how the Liberals have written their priorities in black and white. They’re making cuts in short‑sighted and harmful places to community and essential services, they’re shielding multinational companies from paying their fair share of royalties to bring in the revenue we desperately need and they’re continuing to subsidise retrograde and harmful GBEs like Forestry Tasmania and racing. But perhaps the most worst is that they are choosing to fund a third stadium when over 2800 State Service jobs are right on the cutting list, according to Treasurer Abetz, and there are over 5000 people on the housing waiting list who desperately need a home, the highest level ever in Tasmania.
Anglicare’s Social Action and Research Centre’s recent figures about housing and homelessness in our state are very damning. There’s a growing number of Tasmanians who are living in conditions more commonly seen in developing countries because there’s no housing they can afford here. The number of Tasmanians seeking housing support since last year has increased by 34 per cent.
The CEO of TasCOSS, Ms Picone, told the community sector that government spending on the stadium could pay for a house for everyone on the housing waiting list, or an energy efficiency upgrade for every single Tasmanian household. Just let that sink in. This interim Budget of Treasurer Abetz is heartbreakingly out of touch. It will have brutal impacts for Tasmanians because he’s told us that it’s nothing compared to the austerity cuts he is committed to next year. Despite what Labor says, they’re backing in this Budget through their unconditional support for the stadium.
Members interjecting.
The SPEAKER – Order. Sorry to interrupt, Dr Woodruff, but I remind members of conventions in this House: when the leaders of the party speak, we do so in respectful silence. I note that Dr Woodruff was silent for both the Premier’s and the honourable Leader of the Opposition’s speech, so I ask that she is shown the same courtesy, please.
Dr WOODRUFF – As the Leader of the Opposition has said time and again since Labor backflipped on its original opposition to a stadium, they will give their unconditional support to the Liberals and they will back it, whatever the cost.
Mr Willie – I’ve never said that.
The SPEAKER – Sorry, Dr Woodruff. Honourable Leader of the Opposition, there are other forms of this House that you can use to address the comments of Dr Woodruff. Again, I repeat, there are to be no interjections and you can take this as your first warning for the day because I have already asked for silence during the honourable leader’s speech.
Mr WILLIE – Point of order, Speaker, personal offence. I haven’t actually said any of those things.
The SPEAKER – If you want to address the personal offence, you can do that on Adjournment today.
Dr WOODRUFF – Do an Adjournment on the stadium.
Mr Willie – I have not said either of those things. I ask her to withdraw.
The SPEAKER – You will have an opportunity to address it at the end of this speech.
Ms Finlay – That’s not how personal offence works.
The SPEAKER – It is to do with the order of business, which is before the House. Sorry, Dr Woodruff, I apologise for this interruption to your speech ‑
Mr Willie – She’s saying mistruths.
The SPEAKER – Mr Willie, I have asked for silence during Dr Woodruff’s speech. You can have an opportunity to make a personal explanation at the end of this order of business, which is at the end of when we deal with this appropriation bill. It is not appropriate to do so now. Thank you, Dr Woodruff.
Dr WOODRUFF – Thank you, Honourable Speaker, and it is very telling that Labor are arcing up on this matter. I’m really happy to speak to the Leader of the Opposition personally and lay out all the times he has made those statements to the media. I remember, I was there.
Mr Willie – Where?
Ms Finlay – Find evidence of one. Put it on the record once.
The SPEAKER – Ms Finlay, this is your third and final warning for the whole day.
Dr WOODRUFF – This budget, with these essential service job cuts and the thousands more to come, shows the real cost of the stadium that Labor is willing to support, because this budget is concreting in $2 billion extra in debt across the next decade and it will likely steal $7 million out of the operating costs to pay for the interest on that debt year on year. In case people don’t understand what that means, the operational bit of the budget ‑ Labor and Liberal members ‑ is the part that should be funding nurses and teachers. Essential public workers are being denied a fair deal for pay and conditions by the Liberals right now. Teachers and nurses are being forced into industrial action to get fair compensation. From community gardens, Neighbourhood Houses, family violence services, commission of inquiry initiatives, and TasTAFE arts and lab-tech course cuts, millions are being clawed back from those who need it the most.
This is just the beginning of the Liberals’ stadium austerity era. The Liberals have started the sweeping cuts through their so‑called Efficiency and Productivity Unit (EPU) ‑ the DOGE of Tasmania. That’s Liberal-speak for cutting thousands of jobs and ushering in lower‑quality services for Tasmanians. It comes complete with a Hunger Games‑style portal for staff to recommend cuts. Only Treasurer Abetz, who has championed downsizing the public service for decades, could, without shame or apology, deliver a budget that cuts 2500 jobs and promises another 300 next year. Only the Tasmanian Labor opposition could be so lost in the wilderness that they would support the stadium and the Budget’s harsh austerity that it ushers in.
Who will feel the brunt of these efficiency cuts? Will it be cleaners in hospitals? People who roster shifts in Ambulance Tasmania? School receptionists? Teachers’ aides? Housing support workers? It’s no‑one but the Liberals who believe their spin that Tasmania is in rosy economic circumstances. We are literally being lampooned on the mainland for the parlous shape of our debt crisis, and it’s entirely predictable for those of us who’ve been around for the last 10 years of this Liberal government. The Greens and many others in the community have called out the naked pork‑barrelling by the Liberals in the 2018 and 2021 state elections, as did the Integrity Commission. According to esteemed Australian economist Saul Eslake, these two election spending sprees added $1.4 billion to the budget without any plan by the Liberals about how to pay for it.
Treasury also warned about the financial impact of these spending pledges and the worsening of Tasmania’s financial position without inaction, but were roundly ignored. Saul Eslake has also said Tasmania’s debt ‑ $19 billion across the government and GBE sector ‑ will now be larger than any other state or territory as a proportion of our economy, and that the Liberals’ election spending has made things so much worse. This is money that should have been spent on the most urgent, future‑focused jobs, on preventive and mental health to slow the burden on the hospital system, and on environmental protection and restoration. What’s painfully clear is the Liberals can’t be trusted to manage money. They can’t be trusted to manage government businesses; TT‑Line is insolvent, the Spirits was an epic financial disaster and it’s still going on. After 11 years, the Liberals have destroyed the budget.
However, it’s not too late to improve the trajectory. There’s still time for Liberal members, and Labor members – who seem much more concerned with trying to concoct a Standing Order to shut down this uncomfortable conversation about themselves and their response to the Liberal’s Budget and to the stadium. I would like, and hope, that Labor members, along with Liberal members, will look at themselves and will wrestle with their conscience, because it is an opportunity to do what you know is the right thing. This stadium is not a foregone conclusion. It is not. Every member can look into their conscience. Labor members who I know are unhappy with a vote in favour of a stadium can cross the floor and vote for a better budget outlook. You can make a decision about the future of this Budget, because adding a stadium and $2 billion of debt will not chart the ship of Tasmania into safer waters. It will not. It will entrench austerity.
Future generations deserve a government who will act in the face of a climate and biodiversity crisis. It’s not the Greens who are talking about Armageddon and the disastrous future which could be in front of us. The national and state climate risk assessments have told the government that the climate threat is pressing, needs real and urgent action, and that Tasmania, of all the states in the country, is at higher risk of extreme events like bushfires, floods, sea incursion and very high and damaging winds. The Liberals, in their Budget, have not only ignored the threat, they’ve gone backwards on their previous climate change funding, which was woefully tiny. The Treasurer has seriously underfunded the Tasmania Fire Service, State Emergency Service, Parks, and forestry firefighting services, even with the knowledge that more intense fires are threatening communities, especially in big populations like Hobart. He slashed funding to the climate office by more than $7 million a year, which for everyone ‑ and especially young people ‑ is alarming.
The Liberals have long been blind to the beauty and value of our globally unique forests. They look at Tasmania’s incredible biodiverse and carbon‑rich forests and see them, sadly, as a resource to plunder and exploit. In fact, the Treasurer referred to them in his Budget speech as ‘nature’s bounty’. Overwhelmingly, communities across Tasmania want to defend those precious forests from logging and burning. They are worth so much more to us all standing. They’re valued for their ecosystem benefits; the beautiful and extraordinary plants and animals that are unique on planet Earth. They’re so important for human health and wellbeing and spiritual sustenance, and they are critical stores of carbon. People don’t want their taxes to be used to pay for a destructive Forestry Tasmania industry. Those millions, every year, should go into homes, health, education, and to keeping a healthy environment.
State budgets are a reflection of a government’s priorities, and it has never been clearer that this government doesn’t give a damn about the environment. The State of the Environment Report last year painted a very serious picture about the environmental damage of a decade of Liberal policies. The government’s own words from the Planning Commission’s report were:
… investment in the management of Tasmania’s environment and the implementation of these recommendations must be considered on a scale that is equal to the scale of the current and emerging environmental challenges.
Climate change and the loss of our natural world and its biodiversity are the greatest existential threats ever faced by humans. This government is prioritising money not on restoring and protecting nature and stopping the damage and destruction, but to spending on a football stadium ‑ a third football stadium that we can’t afford and don’t need. Not a single recommendation from the State of the Environment report has been funded in this Budget ‑ not one.
These essential services that I’ve talked about are critical for securing the fortunes of all of us now and in the future. What are we, who are we, as a community if we can’t keep our children safe from abuse? If we can’t give them a home? If we can’t give them an education to give them the skills and the creativity and the adaptability and resilience they will need to live in this rapidly changing world? To pass on the beauties of nature that we are lucky enough to enjoy, and are surely custodians of, for the future generations?
Doing that costs money, and the Greens have done the work to identify where the government should cut unnecessary spending and raise the dollars to pay for it. Stopping the stadium is obviously a huge saving, and while the Liberals, with the unconditional support of Labor, are pushing ahead with the stadium, we’ve always been clear that this project is the wrong priority for Tasmania. By stopping the stadium, we will save the state from $2 billion in debt. That’s a huge hit to a budget that’s already breaking under the weight of its own borrowings. It’s not just the debt itself, it’s the interest repayments ‑ up to $70 million, the Coordinator‑General flagged.
Going ahead with the stadium could be ‑ it is, obviously, in terms of the Budget ‑ the worst possible thing that the government could do in this debt crisis. However, we acknowledge that stopping the stadium doesn’t fix all the problems that the Liberals have brought on us. The Treasury’s pre‑election financial outlook from June this year said that Tasmania has a structural budget problem. We’re spending more than we earn and the gap is growing. We all need to advocate to increase revenue and find savings, and we can’t rely on economic growth to get us out of the problem that the Liberals have created. Treasury was clear about that. The Liberals have consistently failed to bring in enough money to the budget every year and that’s why in the recent election, the Greens announced a range of important measures to bring in more revenue and to reduce spending in unnecessary areas.
We made three major budget repair announcements that showed where the government could and should be finding those funds. These were detailed policies fully costed by Treasury and included royalties for salmon farming and mining, a fair tax rate for poker machines, and levies on property developers. Each of those were recommended by economists, already happening in other states, or both. These three policies achieve just under $950 million in extra money that could be coming into the budget every year. That is a huge figure. Again, I will point out that we submitted all our announcements for costing usually on the same day we made them, but by a couple of days from publications. Of the 49 we submitted, Treasury was able to release a costing for 40 before the end of the election period. That was a stark contrast to the Labor opposition. The net variation from their costings to our overall budget result with all the policies we submitted was only about $2 million a year. You might call our policies kooky, as the Liberals have done, but Treasury called them facts.
In terms of other savings, we propose significant measures across a range of areas. For example, every year the government funnels nearly $40 million of taxpayer money into propping up the racing industry. By ending that practice, we could save the budget $155 million. That sure is a lot of community and essential service jobs. We would save another $48 million over the forward Estimates by ending subsidies to the destructive native forest logging industry. In all, we recorded savings of $1.6 billion without making any of the sweeping cuts to public and community services that the Liberals are doing.
The Liberals have delivered a budget that makes cuts to services, but they still won’t fix the state’s financial woes. In fact, they will make them far worse from the harm they will cause. Labor have complained and talked about what they want to happen, but they haven’t presented any solutions.
The Greens have shown in our budget election pack that it is possible to do things differently and better. Essential services can get more of the support they need, not less. We can be heading, as a state, to a sustainable footing environment, socially and economically. These are some of the fantastic and funded policies that we took to the election: building 200 more public homes every year; hiring 80 more community nurses and allied health staff and expanding mental health services; developing a 10‑point plan to clean‑up fish farming; making public transport free, frequent and reliable; making public school free by abolishing school levies; expanding the Wilderness World Heritage Area and employing the rangers, field officers and fire crews necessary to protect it; establishing a taskforce to crack down on real estate industry malpractices; investing more in TAFE facilities and staffing, not cutting courses or selling facilities; supporting farmers to reduce their carbon emissions; and building a new training centre for nurses.
By not funding the stadium and the Liberals’ other misguided priorities, and by making big corporations pay their fair share, it is possible to fund all these policies and many others, and to improve the budget bottom line by $1.4 billion and that’s the Greens’ vision for Tasmania and it is one we will fight for every day.
We are very conscious of the debt the Liberals are walking us into. This will be a drain on the government’s ability to respond to community needs for a generation or more and that concern has always been the principal reason we will not support building a new stadium, along with the destruction it would obviously cause to the centre of Hobart.
Our policy commitments at the election, costed by Treasury, show that we have a commitment to generating revenue and to finding serious savings. We do the work and it is the Greens and the crossbench who are functioning as the opposition, standing up to this government in parliament and showing there is an alternative path that is fiscally responsible, that’s caring, and that puts the future interests of Tasmanians first.
Honourable Speaker, ours is a real and positive alternative vision for this island, Lutruwita/Tasmania. I am proud to announce it today and also to table the savings that we announced at the election, as circulated to all members previously.
