Ms BADGER – Chair, I should start with an apology because when we were discussing in the House last time, extending the time for debate on the stadium, and we were talking about the length of time that we have to respond to big items such as the budget and I came in here and said we had 20 minutes for the Budget reply and 20 minutes for the Estimates reply, I was wrong. We have 30 minutes. We have an even longer time.
Reflecting how much of a disappointment that debate was due to the time constraints, when we have a budget situation, a financial situation in this state that is in such a poor situation that both Moody’s and S&P have downgraded the state’s credit rating, and what a time that is with the budget falling as well, but it’s not only the financial mismanagement that we’re going to see long‑term impacts having on the Budget, but on the social fabric of this state as well. When we have organisations and NGOs that are missing out on funding, perhaps not in this interim Budget, but what’s going to come in May, what has to come into the future? It’s also going to impact our environment above all else because the funding into managing invasive species, into extending protected areas, into properly managing our protected areas, and upscaling what we can do, simply isn’t there.
Member for Franklin, Mr O’Byrne, spoke in his address about how the Estimates process is changing and losing a bit of its scrutiny appeal and its ability to extract information. As far as not being able to extract information out of a minister and bad budgeting goes, the Parks minister absolutely took the cake. That was peak poor performance. Parks are going to be getting an extra $800,000 revenue by doubling the cost of parks passes for senior citizens, while they have $61 million in major projects and they could not provide any detail whatsoever on it because they were concepts, just concepts. These have been concepts: the Tyndall Range since 2021 and the Freycinet Gateway since 2019, that was a concept in 2017 when Matthew Groom, the then‑minister, started playing around with the idea of what that might look like. That is not a concept now when we have contractors reaching out to our offices, to the community, and talking about the millions of dollars of concrete that they’re going to be putting into this project, and yet we have Parks saying that they don’t have that information available to us because it’s just a concept. It’s simply not right.
Speaking of budget mismanagement, up at the Tyndalls, there are three mining leases along the proposed walking track. They’re not current, they’re just exploration leases, but we have the exploration grant drilling initiative here in Tasmania, where if you’re a mining company looking to explore possible minerals in the state, you can apply, and the state government will give you that grant to go out and do it. Since 2021, where you have three mining leases along a proposed walking track that the government’s willing to put in $40 million, at least two of those mining leases have received a grant for mining exploration. Why are you paying them more taxpayer money to go out there to explore for minerals? What are you going to do if they actually found anything worth mining? Are you going to dump the Tyndalls walk? It makes absolutely no sense how that budget’s been managed.
On Mount Field, we asked about the $7.8 million that is going to be invested into making Mount Field a year‑round destination. Again, ‘It’s just a concept, we can’t provide anything more than it would possibly be spent on some huts and walking tracks’, which is just standard Parks work. In the story as old as time, two days after Estimates when we couldn’t get told anything, of course, we received an RTI back that very explicitly showed us exactly the options and the details that were going on. That RTI had been fully explored with five different scoping options for how the money could be invested at Mount Field. It recommended option number five and that was dated March 2025. Yet, when we’re asking about it in Estimates, we can’t get that information. I’m not sure if the minister is just simply completely not across his portfolio or if he’s misleading. Unfortunately, I think he’s completely not across his portfolio because when I was asking about the TWWHA, the Tasmania Wilderness World Heritage Area, one of the highest‑ranked Wilderness World Heritage areas on this planet, for which the Parks minister in this state is a custodian of, I asked him about the extensive cultural heritage assessment that has to happen on that property. There are 10 stages in that. It’s been ongoing for years. We simply asked for an update, and he asked me more questions about what that process actually was than what I was able to ask him. Absolutely appalling.
On the reserve activity assessment (RAA) reforms, we asked the minister when the government was walking away from the options paper that they touted was going to go out after the full reforms that had been requested. There was a statement in that where the minister said they would be looking at streamlining coordination between the RAA and the Land Use Planning and Approvals Act (LUPAA) process. We asked what that meant. What does that mean for the future of the RAA process? We couldn’t even get answers on that.
The special treatment of the proponent over at Lake Malbena and the Halls Hut continues stronger than ever. He wasn’t even required to provide the six‑monthly update through the government’s EOI process – the ‘unlocking our parks’ process. Every single other proponent that has a project under that EOI process has to provide six‑monthly updates. That could be local government updates, updates through the Environment Conservation and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) process, or simply the business case that they’re refining to ensure that their product is modern and fit for purpose? Why is it that Daniel Hackett, the proponent for the Lake Malbena proposal, does not have to give six‑monthly updates when everybody else does?
We also spoke about getting the TWWHA back onto the state of conservation reporting cycle for UNESCO. That’s a really important reporting cycle because it means that that we have international oversight coming from bodies like the IUCN and ICOMOS. When we’re seeing increasing dry lightning strikes and fire, really risking the both the natural values of the World Heritage area and the cultural values as well having that oversight and scrutiny and backing and support is incredibly important and yet there’s no real talk and we’ve raised it in this place before and we’ve raised it with the premier and again, I got more questions from the minister about that than he got from me.
On fire, as the climate becomes more unstable and the weather is more predictable and more extreme events are growing in frequency and severity, we need greater investment into emergency services. It is crucial to ensure that they have the equipment, that we have the paid professionals on the ground, greater volunteer resources, they have the resources for planning and the response tools, options and contingency plans. It was heartening to hear from the TFS about the great work that they’ve been doing and off the back of this summer’s fires where 100,000 hectares of wild places burnt, the mission that they took over to LA to learn from the fires over there and that’s particularly important here in southern Tasmania, where we have the Derwent Valley and Hobart that are particularly dense urban areas, by Tasmanian standards, with enormous fire risks, that are almost unlike anything else on the planet. Having the TFS go over to LA to learn those lessons is fantastic and something that we should see continuing into the future.
It’s heartening to hear as a part of their next steps of what we can do in Tasmania to stop the house-to-house ignition that really infiltrated and exacerbated what happened in LA. Looking at furthering the work, that Prof David Bowman at UTAS is already doing and the work that can be happening with RACT on mitigation, and some of the grants that have been looked at for home hardening projects, which is something that’s already happening in the US. It will be very interesting to watch and see how that unfurls on a Tasmanian scale and how that might actually look.
SES volunteers are facing rising rescue demand and we’ve been hearing a lot, as I’m sure other members have, about volunteers who are paying out of their own pockets sometimes for rescue equipment. The uniform that they have on, has to be specialty, particularly if they’re going into wilderness areas, dense areas of vegetation. It’s concerning that, when we know that we’re going to see an increase in rescues happening that there appears to be no plan to increase or provide sustained funding for the SES. Particularly, in the new TFES draft bill where it seems that the money will be drawn from the fire department. We look forward to learning more about that, hopefully before the May budget, so we can have proper scrutiny on what the future’s going to look like because we know what’s coming. We have to make sure that we have the resources and the supported personnel to deal with it and keep Tasmanians safe.
In the police hearing we had some serious concerns over the online crime reporting, the kind of amalgamation of the normal crime stoppers reporting into a Tasmanian police reporting that was due to be online in November last year. That’s currently only delayed due to some technical issues that are ongoing, but it is promising to hear that that is still coming down the pipeline and to come after that initial crime reporting, will be the ability for victim/survivors to report sexual assaults online and we know that this is a really important part of the commission of inquiry and Weiss review recommendations. It is promising to hear that that is still happening.
In the prevention of domestic family and sexual violence space, the minister, Ms Howlett’s work on the liquor licensing rebate reduction policy that the government has and ensuring that, as a part of that, family, domestic and sexual violence is very much prevalent – it’s in the terms of reference for the review that’s happening and it has to continue to be part of that conversation because we know the effects that it has and we’ve all seen the statistics of family, domestic and sexual violence in Tasmania at the moment. We cannot be doing enough in this space and I commend the minister for getting out the Family Violence Act review discussion paper, albeit pretty much bang on the day of the Estimates hearing and we only had an hour for what is an incredibly important topic that touches the lives of so many Tasmanians. We need to ensure that there is more time for this in the future and the critical documents, such as an act review, that there’s more time for members to digest it and have a look at it. In saying that, I do appreciate that there is a long timeframe for feedback into that review. It is very much appreciated that it’s not going to be a quick process and it’s going to receive the respect that it deserves.
In skills and training, I, like everybody there, was devastated to hear about the 18 staff ‑17 teachers and an education manager – who are going to be made redundant two days before Christmas. Now, it wasn’t that long ago under the 2021 act review or reform that it was clearly stated that no teachers would be worse off under the changes, that there wouldn’t be any redundancies. Yet, we’ve seen automotive training in the south gutted, now we have arts, fashion, design and lab tech going, so what’s next? Campus sales? That’s what was touted in the 30‑month act review. We asked about that review, it cited that the KPMG assessments, which were commissioned by TasTAFE, found that TasTAFE’s ‘footprint was too large’ and that there were ‘efficiencies to be found in the divestment of campuses.’
We asked for that KPMG assessment review, report, whatever it was, to be tabled and Mr Gardner from TAFE replied that the KPMG report, it is unfortunate that the 30‑month review picked up on one line. We unfortunately had to break at that point, but it is unfortunate if it picked up on just one line that is otherwise a good piece of work or a terrible piece of work, but then after the break I wasn’t in the room, member for Clark Ms Burnet was taking my place there. The response that we got was that the KPMG work was not available as it was not submitted as a report. It is an internal piece of advice that informed further internal work. That, of course, is despite the fact that it was referred to as a report twice previously in the hearing.
We also questioned about the Southern Automotive Centre and the new automotive centre out at Cambridge done in conjunction with the Tasmanian Automotive Chamber of Commerce and what the process was for getting that infrastructure up and running because, of course, there were other buildings, other locations that were touted previously, but this is the one that eventually a decision was made. So, what was that decision, how was it made and what process was gone through, for TAFE to be providing money for this new facility? We didn’t really get an answer on what that process was, we were just told that there was nothing wrong with the process. I didn’t ask if there was anything wrong with the process, I asked what the process was and, of course, now that we don’t have an answer, we are more inclined to think, why was that conclusion immediately jumped to? Now, it does leave the question wide open about why you would assume that we thought the process was inept. Was it swayed to a particular developer to get this up and running?
On Primary Industries, we know that invasive species’ populations are going up and the funding is not. On deer management, as a part of the response to what the government was doing, there was talk of the Australian Heritage Grant that the government’s just received. Now, that’s the second time that the government’s received the Australian Heritage Grant. The first time, the grant was for $440,000 for deer management in the World Heritage area. The last time the Australian Heritage grant came through though, it was only $400,000 and it’s not only for deer, it’s for cats, it’s for foxglove. Now, we are having less money that we have to do more for to spread seriously thinly. It’s simply not good enough when we know the scale of the problem. The minister ‑ the department also tabled the 15 conservation areas, reserves, FPPF land that is currently going through a level two RAA process to be opened up for recreational hunters. These are areas that are particularly high volume for tourists. There’s Hardings Falls, of course, the Eastern Tiers is a spot that a lot of people go to, to look for swift parrots. I note a Level 2 RAA process does not include community input ‑ that is despite there being tourism operators that go into some of these reserves to show Tasmania’s natural environment.
We asked in the Police Estimates hearing about whether or not police were consulted on opening up these new conservation areas and reserves, and the answer was no. In fact, minister Felix Ellis said it was probably too early, at this stage, to be consulting on those lands. Well, we already have the 15 parcels of land; we know which ones they are. They’re going under review through the RAA, so it should have already been consulted on well and truly, particularly when it’s only a Level 2 RAA, so there won’t be public consultation under that threshold. We echo our calls for Parks to reconsider that, or make an exception under the Level 2 RAA so that there is public consultation. That way, people who do use those areas for bushwalking or other recreation, or any tourism operators that have tours out there, can have their say, raise their concerns, and find out how they coexist in that space into the future.
In the Budget there is no extra funding for professional shooting of deer, concentrated shooting programs, or for the removal of the partial protections which still remain. We know that’s what works, and we know that’s what has to be done. How many reports and reviews are going to come out and continually reflect that that’s what has to be done? Meanwhile in New South Wales, the legislation to repeal the ‘Brumby Bill’ that protected the heritage values of the horses in Kosciuszko has gone through. Tasmania needs to hurry up, catch up and protect our special wild areas.
There was no funding for cat management. We know that is a huge issue, particularly for local governments that are not resourced to deal with this growing issue. In the 2024‑2029 cat management plan that doesn’t exist, we still don’t have an estimated time of when that draft is actually going to be complete, when it’s going to be out for public comment. This is an issue, as with all invasive species ‑ the sooner you get onto it, the sooner it can be fixed. We’ve knowingly had to do this work and just kicked the can down the road. Thank goodness the minister hasn’t done that on deer, and has opened up public feedback for the 2027 plan slightly earlier.
With rabbits, it was fantastic to hear that the government has secured the calicivirus after the shortage issues and the reliance on the single lab that we have not only in Tasmania, but right across the nation. However, we have to ensure that the release happens under the right conditions at the right time of year, so that we don’t see a repeat of what happened this time that we had the virus and into the future, so that it’s actually effective and we can deal with those populations.
On rivers, it is incredibly disappointing and one of those things where you just bounce around from department to department, minister to minister, trying to get a result. It seems that no‑one has bothered to do the environmental flows for Tasmania’s rivers under the projected Marinus Link. Before Basslink came online in 2001, there was a fantastic series of studies and an incredibly dense amount of work done by Helen Lockyer on what the impacts of changed hydro flows could be to our river system. It was those reports that gave us a baseline for a lot of our river systems. It hadn’t been properly investigated the whole way down. It’s that report that showed us the health of the meromictic lakes at Lake Fidler, on the Gordon River, so that some attempt could be made to save them ‑ although unfortunately, it was too late.
We have people on the Derwent River increasingly concerned – a river that has most of its water allocation already attributed to various landowners ‑ wondering what it’s going to mean for them under Marinus Link. You have berry farms and the like ‑ this is not an area that’s connected to Tasmanian Irrigation ‑ wondering when they can take water from that riverway into the future, what are the flows actually going to mean?
The minister was talking about the Rural Water Use Strategy, which in past budgets has had around $200,000 over each of the forward Estimates each year, for various things, but in this interim Budget, it has $440,000 and that’s it. What happens after that? Clearly, we are completely off track for what’s recommended in the State of the Environment Report for actually looking after our waterways, for the monitoring that needs to occur. For all the reports we need to have staff on the ground, we need to have scientists out there actually looking at what’s happening and projecting. We’ve made a decision, the government has pushed through a decision on Marinus, without proper consultation with members of this place or the community, and they haven’t done any of the basic environmental assessments for it.
On that note, we’re also getting bounced around on AI data centres. We’ve got one of the biggest AI factories in this nation, if not the world, coming to Launceston. What is planned by stage 2 of that proposal? Yet nobody ‑ not the Planning minister, not the Primary Industries minister, not through anyone, really, certainly not the Innovation and Science minister ‑ had any idea about the future planning of what that’s actually going to mean for our state.
You have the Office of the Coordinator‑General spruiking our state as a key place for data centres for AI factories, yet no‑one’s looked at the planning of exactly where they should go. Where is the best place for them? Therefore, what’s the best size of them? How much power are they going to consume? How much water are they going to use? Yes, the current Firmus proposal is spruiking a non‑flammable, liquid cooling system. That’s an incredibly novel technology that’s only just come on board. If it doesn’t work, where’s the contingency plan for the water take? There certainly isn’t any by the river at their proposed site.
If we’re going to have these major consumers ‑ and it is a major power consumer with absolutely minimal employment opportunities for local Tasmanians ‑ coming into this state, sucking the energy dry, using our water systems, where’s the actual planning for it prior to seeking major investment?
I echo the comments from other members in this place and to thank all the parliamentary staff, both in the parties, in the departments, the secretaries for the committees and in Hansard as well. It’s an enormous amount of work that goes into Estimates at the best of times, let alone when it’s in the middle of sitting weeks after a snap election and we’re having not only budget Estimates but GBE scrutiny at the same time. They did a fantastic job and, really, we can’t really express enough gratitude to them for the work that they’ve done.
As May approaches and we have the proper budget upon us, we’re seeing an increase in community concerns grow, particularly those in the NGO sector ‑ people from neighbourhood houses, for example, not knowing what’s going to happen next. There’s not a lot of confidence in what Tasmania’s social economy is going to look like into the future. How can people be confident when their current services, be it health, education or housing, are already under pressure now? That will only grow under a budget that just delivers compounding debt above all else.
