Ms BADGER (Lyons) – Honourable Speaker, it really is quite puzzling. I echo the comments from the member for Bass, Ms Rosol. Similarly, this has been my first budget and it is absolutely astonishing that that was a late budget. It was not that long ago, really. We have only just had the Revised Budget Papers released for February 2025, and yet, here we are debating this bill. A lot of these expenses are actually not entirely unpredictable. The writing was on the wall for quite a few of them, such as the Parks operational support, the $8 million here for an increase in costs to the management of Tasmania’s parks and reserves as a direct result of increased visitation, new infrastructure such as the Cradle Mountain Visitor Centre and the new facilities including the fly-out waste from the remote toilets. That is all pretty obvious.
We know the visitor statistics. We know that investment is also going to continually and exponentially increase that visitation, so maintenance and expenditure costs are going to go up. This $8 million top up was described to rectify an ongoing deficiency where the Parks budget is consistently not met and that has been happening over recent years. There is a pattern here. We are told there will be matters put forward to address this more permanently in the next budget. We will believe that when we see it in a few weeks’ time.
I want to touch on the firefighting part for Parks, because Parks hold up an enormous responsibility in that section. They are one of the three agencies responsible in contributing. I also want to give an enormous thanks for the ongoing work that they have been doing at the moment with the present fires. A lot of that is off their back and then they can go to the Commonwealth reserves, particularly for firefighting in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA), but a lot of the actions actually have to meet a specific criteria for them to then be reimbursed adequately from it. Alternatively, their funding is coming from the Treasurer’s reserve.
The statewide expenditure on the suppression of major bushfires – and this is mainly within the TWWHA again – has been of a similar magnitude to the total reported annual expenditure on all parks land managed activities. For example, approximately $60 million was spent on fire suppression in 2015‑16. The same as that reported annual expenditure for Parks Land Management. These sums are not being met out of all the departmental budgets. They are paid for either by those appropriation funds such as what we are doing now or through the Australian government.
That risk for the initial outlie, it does lay on Parks. The question has to be asked: where is that climate emergency fund holistically to look at these emergency situations, be it fire or flooding, Parks or another agency? Where is the climate adaptation fund? A tourism climate adaptation fund. There are plenty of non-essential projects that could have their budget reinvested so that such prevention and adaptation funds could instead be put forward.
Back to Parks’ core business, because this is an ongoing deficiency – it is not a new issue. There are losses being made on the Three Capes Track; the cost of maintenance is exceeding the fees paid by visitors to walk on the track. This has been the case for the past three financial years. Let us also not forget the $600,000 that was put towards marketing for Tasmanian Walking Company, a private company. This walk, the Three Capes walk, was supposed to pay for itself. The question has to be asked that given that the next iconic walk, the proposed $40 million Tyndall Range idea, has also been promoted as a walk that will pay for itself based on the same economics as the Three Capes walk. Is this actually realistic?
Absolutely nobody is being fooled into thinking that somehow the Tyndall Range proposed walk is magically immune to inflation. It has been costed at $40 million since 2021 ‑ the project design has been changed since then. There are now additional pods. There have been track realignments. This all alters that cost. Whether it makes it cheaper or not, it has to be put forward. We have to see that revised business case. It is completely negligent that we have not. It is just another example of this government’s poor fiscal management.
How is it that one of Tasmania’s 60 Great Short Walks, the Evercreech Forest Reserve, the ‘White Knights’ walk, has been closed since September 2024? These are the prime, easily accessible walks that we are trying to promote, yet it has been closed. Is it because of a lack of funding for basic track maintenance?
The Tasmanian National Parks Association (TNPA), recently undertook an analysis of the investment into Tasmania that the Tasmanian government quite specifically, has made into the management of public reserve land, and that is over the 21 financial years since the Nature Conservation Act 2002 and the National Parks and Reserves Management Act 2002 commenced. From 2002 to the 2023 financial year, expenditure on the departmental output of parks management was gradually increasing. Despite some general fluctuations from year to year, on average it was increasing. There was a reduction in expenditure after 2018 to 2019, then there was a peak for COVID, for that financial year around 2020. Since then, funding has dropped and has not returned to the numbers in the intervening period. Parks is having less invested from this Liberal government with more infrastructure to take care of and more visitors. This $8 million we are talking about is predictable.
Looking into the future, the Tasmanian government’s 2024‑2025 budget announced in September forecasts less expenditure on the departmental output of parks management in each of the three financial years than it plans to spend on that output this financial year, 2024‑25. In other words, this government has been choosing to underfund Parks, and certainly investment in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, which is not exclusively a Tasmanian government responsibility. There is input from the federal government as well. However, this past year it has been the lowest it has been in a decade. It is simply not good enough when that is our greatest safeguard in the climate and biodiversity crisis.
Capital expenditure in Parks has been skewed towards a small number of projects, most notably the Three Capes Track, which I have already touched on, and the Cradle Mountain visitor experience. Costs for the Cradle Mountain cableway have now skyrocketed to $225 million from the $60 million starting point just a few years ago. That is based on the government’s 80 per cent of the total project asked from the federal government of $180 million. Maybe it is time the government stopped focusing on vanity projects and remembered the basic roles Parks has to undertake, like flying in and out the remote toilets, servicing the facilities and looking after vital visitor centres such as those at Cradle Mountain and Freycinet.
We could give Parks the $40 million intended for the Tyndall Range walk that is non‑essential. Parks could also have the $40 million of Tasmania’s latest contribution to the cableway, if we are to put in that 20 per cent of the $225 million. There has to be a long-term plan because NRE Tas is an essential service in the climate emergency. Or maybe, the long‑term idea on the privatisation agenda is to sell Wineglass Bay.
I also hope the Treasurer can explain how the $32 million for NRE Tas and Parks operational support in the revised Estimates for 2024‑25, the February document on page 5, does or does not sit with the $8 million in this bill.
I echo other members’ sincere thanks for the work our police force does. The work they do is tough and complex. The workers compensation premium is up as a result of the additional demands, and police workers on compensation do not have step-down provisions. For example, they are not on 100 per cent of their salary for a period of the time and then it drops down to 80 per cent for another period, and so on. They are on 100 per cent until resolved. The increase we are currently seeing is driven by an increase in complexity of cases and various legislative changes as well. Also, the costs associated with psychological workers compensation is up five to six times. That is more expensive than physical injury so, of course, these costs are up.
Where is the future contingency funding for police and, indeed, all emergency service workers in need of assistance for trauma, mental health support, injuries, and so on after they leave the workforce? We also have to question what the duty of care is for State Service employees into their retirement, after they have finished serving our communities, keeping them safe, happy and healthy.
There is also more in this bill in regard to extra funding on various mental health support services. What has been done to properly address mental health issues in our state? We are increasing stress on our community by not taking adequate action on the housing crisis, on the cost‑of-living crisis, on the climate crisis. This is all increasing stress.
I am hoping the Treasurer can also articulate the additional $5 million for the Aviation Attraction Fund, which is not in any way essential funding. This is Liberal policy, as I recall, that definitely could have been included in the budget initially.
Onto tourism and hospitality, what is this government’s long‑term plan for tourism in the state? For the past decade we have stayed on a very similar path and plan, with a lot of gentrified products that we are trying to continually push, while other nature‑based destinations around the world, at least post‑COVID, have been investing into niche market segments and they are growing regenerative tourism. For example, in New Zealand, they have actively been investing and planning into de‑growing some tourism‑heavy nature destinations where mechanised overdevelopments have become counterproductive to those nature‑based values that people were going there to see and experience. That is certainly what they have been doing at Milford Sound, and that is what Tasmania should be doing.
If we are going to maintain a competitive position in this global market, we have to be investing properly. We have to be investing in the niche markets such as dark sky tourism that have low impact but are high-yielding. We should have a dark sky sanctuary in the south-west, and we also need to be investing in more regenerative tourism opportunities.
It also means looking at proper long‑term funding and considerations for industry and climate adaptation. A few weeks ago, UTAS academics highlighted the need for a tourism adaptation fund to help businesses in hardship in abnormal events, such as the mass penguin evacuation in Bicheno over summer, which coincided with a localised ocean temperature warming by 4 degrees Celsius.
The $11 million that went into severe weather events for community food grants and the like made an extraordinary difference to the people affected by that flooding, and that is absolutely fantastic. It is the core role of the government to be looking after the people so, of course, that should be in there. However, long‑term, to help fix this absolute budget mess, where are we investing in proper climate mitigation strategies? Where is the ecosystem restoration fund? Again, where is that adaptation fund for tourism businesses?
Basically, what we have before us are skewed priorities. These are the wrong long‑term priorities and they are creating a huge debt that will be serviced by future generations of Tasmanians. These are Tasmanians who are not only going to inherit this debt that has been chosen by this Liberal government, but they will also inherit the climate crisis, which is inevitably going to increase debt unless we can properly fix our investment in some mitigation.
