Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Honourable Speaker, in responding to the government’s Budget, allow me to paint a picture of what could be. It is a vision of what could be if we approached our budget with deep empathy, recognising the innate, inalienable value of every person who lives in Tasmania, placing them at the heart of our decision-making and prioritising their wellbeing before all the other competing interests vying for budget attention. It is a vision that looks at what we collectively need to be safe, healthy, connected, productive and happy.
It will not surprise you that much of what the Greens believe is needed to achieve this vision is contained in our alternative budget. We have looked at the government’s budget choices, sifting through them one by one to identify the things that are missing from the Budget and the things that are in it that Tasmania can do without. We have developed alternatives that will help Tasmania become an island alive with healthy people living life to their fullest potential within thriving communities that provide warmth, care and joy.
How might we shift people from the difficult situation they find themselves in right now? We know Tasmanians are struggling to cope with the stress of just getting by each day. Power bills are unaffordable for many. Food is so expensive some parents are skipping meals to ensure their children have enough to eat. Rents are enormous and placing huge strain on people’s budgets. People are avoiding the GP and dentist because they cannot afford it. Tasmanians are doing it tough, stuck making impossible choices about what to buy because they cannot afford all they need.
What can we invest our resources in, as a state, to best help us achieve the transformation we need? What will enable people to flourish and thrive across their lives? Here are some cameos that highlight the budget choices the Greens would make for a better vision of the future. They are examples of what could be. They imagine a different state:
Meet Rachel. Rachel is very stressed. She is a single mother to two young children, Sam and Emma. Yesterday she received notice that her rent will rise by $30 a week, an increase she can barely afford as she already struggles to buy food and she avoids switching on the heating so she can save on power. Rachel has no idea how she is going to survive, but she does know where she can find a friendly face and a listening ear. Sam is at school, so Rachel pushes Emma in her pram to the local Neighbourhood House to speak with staff there. They welcome her with warm smiles and, more than that, they are able to offer her financial help as they have just received funding from the Greens to provide cost‑of-living support in the community. They have also been funded to provide food relief, so Rachel stocks up on supplies from their community pantry. She heads home feeling relieved. She and the kids will eat tonight. She still has to figure out how to pay the rent, but she knows she is not alone and can get help when she needs it.
Rachel experienced trauma as a girl and has also experienced violence from intimate partners, all of which has impacted on her deeply. Sometimes she is triggered and says and does things she regrets, especially with her kids. It is just that Sam and Emma are really tricky and she does not know how to manage their behaviour. One time she really lost it, yelling and screaming so much she lost her voice and scared Emma. Rachel is worried that she might lose her kids because she gets so angry, but she feels comfortable with Sam’s teacher, Dan, so she tells him about the incident and shares her worries. Dan is very kind and makes a referral for support. Not long after that, Rachel is allocated an intensive family engagement service (IFES) worker called Nick.
Nick visits parents at home and works with them on parenting, as well as providing mental health support and teaching them how to be more organised. He works with Rachel for several months and, over that time, Rachel learns a lot about herself, and Emma and Sam. She practises the parenting skills she has learnt and gets better at staying calm and giving her children the care they need. It takes time, but she goes from being at risk of losing her children to knowing how to manage them and support them to grow. That is because the Greens funded more intensive family engagement workers.
Nick, the IFES worker, loves his job. He is part of an organisation the Greens better funded to provide early intervention support to families. Before, they could not provide the support they wanted to. They could only work with families in crisis and sometimes it was too late to make a real difference for children. Now, they are well staffed and Nick has a small enough caseload that he can work with families early and help them change the way they do things so they are safe and can stay together.
Nick’s manager is Sophie. She has been the CEO of the organisation for years and has seen many changes in the community services sector. In the past, there was never enough money to provide all the services she wanted to. All that changed when the Greens increased community service organisation funding by providing indexation to a level that covered rising staff wages and inflation. The organisation was transformed. They did not have to choose which services to cut, or which referrals they could not afford to accept. They were well resourced and able to provide a full range of services to families in need. What a weight off Sophie’s shoulders, and the whole team felt better. They could do their jobs properly and enjoy the satisfaction of supporting families and seeing things change for the better.
Sophie’s organisation used to support Tom’s family. Things were going well for them until Tom started having a bit of trouble. He fell in with the wrong group of friends and they had been up to mischief around town. Actually, mischief is not the right word. They had been vandalising property, stealing things and even assaulted someone. Tom is 14, the new age of criminal responsibility under the Greens, but he has not been remanded to Ashley Youth Detention Centre because the detention centre is now closed, fast‑tracked by the Greens, who worked alongside community organisations and funded them to set up alternative accommodation and supports. Tom has been remanded to a small community facility that is safer and more suited to his needs. He has access to social workers and support staff and they are teaching him social and emotional skills that are slowly helping him change his behaviour.
Ellen is one of the support staff working with Tom. She lives at home with her mum and dad still. She has been trying to get out into her own place, but at 22, it has been impossible to find somewhere she can afford. Ellen is feeling hopeful now, though. She saw that the Greens funded a Child and Youth Homelessness Plan to set out a pathway to support all children and young people struggling with housing. It will definitely help the young people Ellen works with at the therapeutic justice facility, but it will also help people like her who have no way into secure housing.
One of Ellen’s friends, Josh, was in out-of-home care throughout his life. He lived with his carer for many years and now he is of an age where he is ageing out of care. This has been really stressful for him. The Greens recognise that Josh is at high risk of becoming homeless when he transitions out of care, so they have invested funding in programs that support young people in his situation to move into living independently.
Niall and Alice are other carers in the area. They have been providing care for a six‑year‑old boy for three years now and it is hard. They know that every child in care is trauma‑impacted and comes with difficult behaviours, but living with it every day has been more exhausting than they expected and they were beginning to think they might need to quit as carers. That was until recently when the Greens funded a boost to respite care. When they could not get a break for months at a time, the new funding has meant more respite is available. They had their second week off in two months last week and the relief was enormous. Just to get a regular break, care for themselves and build up their energy ready to keep being there for the boy in their care.
Another positive change Alice and Niall have seen is their boy now has a child safety officer allocated to him. Previously, they had been managing their boy’s care, organising appointments, chasing up on supports that he needed and basically doing the work of a child safety officer themselves.
Now, with the funding of 40 additional Child Safety Officers this year, with more funded for the next few years, Niall and Alice have been able to access support for their boy. He has had access to more supports that his Child Safety Officer arranged, and Niall and Alice are relieved someone in Child Safety now knows as much about the child in their care as they do. It was not always like that.
As well as being a carer, Alice is a nurse. She has been working in the Launceston General Hospital Emergency Department for years. So stressful. She was constantly exhausted, working extra shifts, always dealing with management, looking for ways to save money for efficiency dividends when all she wanted to do was give people the treatment they needed as soon as possible. Things have been better lately, though. The Greens funded a range of new staff in the Emergency Department and across the hospital. They put in clinical coaches, backfilled Assistant Nurse Unit Managers, employed discharged nurses and added a new role of nurse navigator to help create better pathways for people through the Emergency Department. It has all made a huge difference to the care Alice can give. She particularly loves that there is a psychiatric evaluation nurse on duty all the time. They have helped so much with those patients who come in distressed during a mental health crisis.
Things are much smoother for Alice and her colleagues now, and Alice is hopeful of things improving even more once the Greens funding of the Health Education and Research Centre kicks in. There will be more nurses being trained and she will be able to keep up her skills and learning too. Alice is impressed by the whole package of jobs the Greens put in place in the hospital. As well as the extra nurses, there has been great investment in allied health. It is brilliant having more physios, OTs and social workers available with the extra funding so more can train. And that salary increase for allied health has drawn more people to Tasmania as well. Patients are getting the wraparound support they need from the whole healthcare team and it is a beautiful thing.
Then there are the changes in radiology and pathology. The Greens funded 24/7 services in both areas and it has been great. The other day a patient called Deb came in very unwell at 1.00 a.m. She obviously needed tests done as soon as possible. In the past, she would have had to wait for staff to come in for the test, slowing down her care. It could have made the difference between her getting through or not.
The new extended service meant Alex, a pathologist, was on site that night and Deb’s bloods were tested quickly. Alice was relieved. She had watched too many patients deteriorate quickly while waiting for tests to be completed, but this situation was different.
In this cameo, staff across the Health department are generally feeling better. Vacancy controls and efficiency dividends have been ditched by the Greens, and staff feel seen and valued. For example, Steve works in the emergency department at Royal Hobart Hospital. There was a lot of muck‑around with the redevelopment of the Emergency Department, plans to expand the department for the future, then plans ditched to save money. The Greens, though, saw the need to future‑proof, and they reinstated the funding that had been cut. The Royal Hobart Hospital emergency department is now expanded. There is space to work more easily and, more importantly, space to provide care safely to all the patients who present. Steve and the whole team are thrilled with the improvements. It is a huge relief to be able to give all the care they want to in a fit‑for‑purpose space.
Valuing Health staff gives them a huge boost, but in this peek into what could be, Tasmanians across the state have also benefited from the Greens’ expanded funding to the Mental Health Council of Tasmania. For example, Jack is a young person who has struggled with mental health concerns for a while now. At first, he kept his troubles to himself, but after seeing awareness‑raising information about mental health online, he realised what he was feeling was not normal and that help was available. As a result, he got in touch with a mental health provider and has started working on strategies that are making a positive difference for his mental health.
One of the things Jack has been struggling with is the impending loss of his grandmother. Her health has been declining and she knows she does not have much longer to live. Her family has come around her to support and care for her. At first, this was scary and foreign to them, but they found out about Palliative Care Tasmania and were able to find information about what to expect and where to get care. The Greens provided long‑term funding for Palliative Care Tasmania, meaning they could continue to raise awareness about palliative care, and their organisation has been able to keep on helping Tasmanians to die well.
There is another group in the community who are benefiting from budget funding by the Greens and that is people with disability. The new disability inclusion legislation provides welcomed extra protections for people living with disability, but even with that in place there are times when things do not go right. Suze was someone in this situation. She was not happy with some of the decisions that were made about her care and needed to take legal action. At first, Suze could not afford legal support and she had to just put up with things, but when the Greens funded disability services’ legal aid, she was able to take action, challenge the situation and receive a change to her care.
For now, these cameos are a dream and a vision. Some people might call them utopian or naive, maybe even simplistic and unachievable, but we do not think so. Each of these cameos find inspiration in line items funded in the Greens’ alternative budget. They are all costed and they are all possible. We just have to choose to do them. With the political will to action them, these measures could jump off the page of our alternative budget and become real, resulting in significant change.
The Greens are not here to offer more of the same. We have a vision that offers not just an alternative to the government’s budget, it also offers an alternative to the dominant economic narrative of our time and places a holistic view of people’s health and happiness before the economic values of consumption and endless unsustainable growth. Our capitalist system is damaging people, hurting our community and our environment, on which my Green colleagues have shared our alternative vision. The vision here offers an alternative that places Tasmanian people at the centre, taking a broad view of their lives and their needs, recognising their value and worth and investing in them. This is not just investing in services – it is investing in people, because they are worth it.
Ultimately it comes down to choices. What will we choose, as a state? Will we centre people in our decision making? Will we respect them, lift them up and honour them by doing all we can to provide services and supports that help them live well? Sadly, the answer to these questions in this Budget from the Liberal Government is a no. While the government is busy talking up all they are funding, they are concurrently making all sorts of harsh, heartless decisions that will significantly impact on service provision in the state. Efficiency dividends, vacancy control measures, and the ultimate in wasting money, a billion‑dollar stadium that Tasmania does not need and does not want. Each of these things will have a detrimental impact on services around the state. Tasmanians will miss out because of the choices this government has made. It does not have to be this way. There are different ways of doing things and different choices we can make.
The Greens will continue to provide an alternative perspective and an alternative budget. We will continue to highlight other choices and advocate for all Tasmanians to have access to the support, healthcare, mental healthcare and services they need. Tasmanians deserve a government in their corner, putting them first and making choices that enable an environment and circumstances in which everyone can be safe, healthy, connected, productive and happy. The Greens will keep fighting for that.
