Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Honourable Speaker, I rise this afternoon to speak on the Appropriation (Supplementary Appropriation for 2024‑25) Bill 2025. I will begin by echoing what the member for Clark, Mr Bayley, said earlier about the Greens’ support for this bill. It is important that our public services are funded and that the important work of service provision is able to continue for Tasmanians.
I am new in this place and have experienced only one budget. This is my first supplementary appropriation bill. It is startling to me that we had a budget not that many months ago and here we are being asked to approve another almost half‑a‑billion dollars to fund things for Tasmanians. It would seem to me to be an indication that the government presented a faulty and flaky budget that was insufficient right from the start, one that did not even come close to allowing the necessary spending within our state.
It is clear the government wanted a better looking budget last year, that they pretended things matched up maybe a little bit more than they actually did. Instead of being truthful and realistic, they wound back the figures and underfunded services in the 2024‑25 budget. There was just not enough in the budget. Here we are needing a significant injection of funding to keep things going. The government, in its efforts to give an appearance of responsibility, has failed to do its job to provide for Tasmanians. It is good to be honest now and let us see what is really needed to run services in our state. However, it would be even better to be honest upfront and provide a more accurate financial plan for the state. Let us hope this year’s budget gives us a more accurate plan for Tasmania.
I will turn briefly to some of the aspects of this supplementary appropriation bill and the reasons the government have given us for needing more funding. I will to begin by talking about out‑of‑home care. The government says an amount of $14.1 million is provided for in this bill to support an increase in the number of children accessing special care packages. We obviously need to ensure that children in care have the support and safe place to live they need, but this $14.1 million is an indication of the need for better funding of services to support families and to support carers. Also, to provide therapeutic supports. Children do not suddenly need to be placed on special care packages that cost significant amounts more. They end up needing a special care package because placements have broken down or because difficult behaviours have become overwhelming and too difficult for the carers they are living with. Children need special care packages because we are not meeting their needs earlier in the process. We could be putting $14.1 million into prevention of children needing to go into special care packages.
We talk about wanting to support families more. I can see that there is $2.95 million being provided for resourcing the advice and referral line. That is good, but we also need to be increasing funding for the services providing support to families and to children. We need to be making sure that families have what they need to be able to provide safety and care for their children, so that we do not need to remove their children.
We need to be keeping children out of out-of-home care as much as we possibly can, and the way to do that is to fund family supports, so that we do not end up with a $14.1 million unexpected bill to cover the costs of children who require extra care. Placements for children in care break down when there is a lack of support, increasing pressure and strain on carers. They break down when children’s needs are not being met. If we are going to take seriously caring for our children, we need to turn around the way we are looking at things. Instead of funding services upstream where they are really expensive, we need to be funding families on the ground where they are, meeting their needs so their children can stay with them and so that they have what they need to live and to thrive.
When it comes to youth justice and the Ashley Youth Detention Centre, if the Ashley Youth Detention Centre had been closed as the government committed to doing last year, this bill would not exist. We would be investing in other things, and that is what we need to be doing. Instead of having the number of children and young people in Ashley Youth Detention Centre increasing, which we know it is – the average number of children in Ashley Youth Dissension Centre is increasing and has increased significantly – we need to be investing in prevention.
I note that the Youth Justice Strategic Plan – the blueprint – provides a really great outline of what we can do to help reduce the number of children and young people who are engaging with the youth justice system. It includes things like ensuring that children and young people and their families have the housing that they need. It includes what I was talking about earlier about funding families to have what they need to support their children and provide safety. It includes looking at a child holistically, meeting their needs broadly.
We can prevent the number of children and young people entering into our youth justice system if we just look at it differently. We need to turn things around and invest on the ground, investing where young people are so that they do not need or want to be involved in criminal behavior – because their needs are being met. We also need to be investing more in diversion.
There is $4.14 million for Ashley Youth Detention Centre. It meets the need that is there now, but if we did things differently, that need would not be there at all. It is more financially responsible to fund services that help prevent children entering into Ashley Youth Detention Centre.
Turning to the Health budget, the government say that the amount of $340 million is being provided to address health services demand growth, and similarly mental health services funding is being increased by almost $5 million due to increasing demand and pressure. There is plenty of information available about the growth in need for health services. These demands can be foreseen. They can be planned for. The government need to plan for them in advance instead of coming in a few months into a budget and asking for more money. We need to be stating clearly, upfront and accurately what is needed for our Health services so that those services then have certainty and can budget for the year, ensuring that they are providing the services they need.
When it comes to staffing within the Health service, we know that there are vacancies and difficulties in the Health service. Let us support our health staff in Tasmania. Let us work on creating cultures and environments that people want to work in. Let us work on reducing the stress and pressure in the system. If we are not looking after our staff, we are going to lose them, and then we end up in a situation where we have to fill the gaps with locums and agency staff, which end up costing more money. It goes back to what I was talking about before with children in Youth Services and with youth justice.
We need to be looking at funding things at a more primary level rather than getting to this acute stage where we have to pour millions of extra dollars into funding services. This could have been prevented, and we could have avoided needing to do that.
I would also like to speak to the government’s comments on the Tasmanian Prison Service and the cost pressures there. They refer in their supporting information to other cost pressures, including the growth in the prison population. What a surprise. When we deliberately lock more people up, despite all the available evidence clearly showing it does not make communities safer to lock more people up – it does not make a difference; it might feel better or look good to be locking more people up, but it does not actually achieve what the government say they are wanting to achieve with this – it is no surprise that we now have a cost blowout within the prison services due to increased pressure and growth in the prison population.
Once again, we get back to prevention. There are many things that this government could be doing that would prevent the need for this further injection of funding, like if they were funding services at a primary level, more appropriately in line with evidence and in ways that met the needs of Tasmanians earlier, before it gets to crisis point and costs us so much more money.
I join with the other Greens who have spoken today in calling on the government to be truthful in their budgeting and to also look to the evidence in their budgeting and their planning of services. They should be investing in services that make a difference early so that people do not end up in desperate situations needing more support down the track. It is good for the economy, but ultimately it is good for the people of Tasmania that they are able to live better, healthier and happier lives. We call for the government to get their priorities right in the way they do their budgeting.
