Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I rise to represent the people of our great capital city, Nipaluna/Hobart, very few of whom will have had the will or opportunity to read the 2025-26 Tasmanian Budget. Lucky them, to have been spared the pain it forebodes for now. They’ll feel its effect soon enough. Come next May, the cuts will be deeper, as we know.
As a number of members have mentioned, Treasury’s Pre-Election Financial Outlook was frank and unequivocal: ‘Immediate and sustained action is needed.’ Sadly, we’re not seeing much evidence of a commitment to that in this interim budget. Next May is when the real bite will come. It remains to be seen whether the Treasurer, Mr Abetz, and the Premier have the kind of courage demonstrated by former Labor premiers, Michael Field and Lara Giddings during minority governments, as the member for Huon reminded us in his excellent engaging speech yesterday. It takes great courage to do unpopular things because they’re the right thing to do, and those two premiers in minority governments with the Greens and supported by the Greens had the courage to take the budget challenge and deal with it. I remind members that when the Labor-Greens government ended in 2014, net debt stood at $226 million, a small sum relative to what we’re dealing with today.
While I can’t know the exact mind of Hobart residents on matters of fiscal strategy, having door knocked at two state elections, a Legislative Council election and a federal election in the last two years, as well as many conversations in the community along the way, I can confirm there is a deep level of worry in the community about the shape of the state’s finances. People in Hobart and across the island understand we are in a very serious financial mess. It’s stressing people out. They’re worried about what such burgeoning debt and government profligacy will mean for the future and that of the kids they love. They see service cuts, job losses, and higher state taxes on the horizon.
I am sure, some of us in here can really empathise with being stressed out about the state of the finances, but unlike our constituents who are stuck with the consequences of government mismanagement and drunken sailor spending, soaring debt service cuts, job losses and likely higher state taxes in future, in here we can do something about it, and I will get to the big white elephant in the room shortly.
What a woeful set of numbers and government priorities are before us. The numbers have been laid out with such precision yesterday and today by all my independent colleagues in this place. I want to echo the statement of the member for Nelson, each contribution by an independent member in this place has been informed, precise, deeply thoughtful and an education. It confirms with me that every day is indeed a school day and yet with this interim budget, we have a powerful sense of deja vu. This interim budget is not so different in any substantive way to what we were presented with a few short months ago before Labor sent us to another costly election. Of course, as the budget papers make clear an election that wasn’t quite as costly in terms of its contribution to state debt as the 2018 and 2021 state elections which added around $1.4 billion to net debt as it stands today.
In some ways this Budget is an act of subterfuge. As a number of members have pointed out, the Treasurer, Mr Abetz, had plenty of time and Treasury resources to direct and to prepare a more honest budget.
The Treasurer says this budget provides us with a glide path to surplus, but it seems more likely that it’s designed to provide a glide path for government to get past the stadium vote. It’s hard not to be cynical, but it does feel like this interim Budget aims to provide some small, very small false sense of security. That the government has things in hand, knows what it’s doing, that the pain won’t be too bad, and that, of course, we can afford and build a brand-new stadium at Macquarie Point, so go ahead, support the stadium order. Everything will be fine. Just give us the stadium and all the state’s economic troubles will begin to vanish overnight. Jobs and growth, high-vis vests, that’ll fix it.
Of course, we know that’s a lie, given budgets are a black-and-white expression of political choices, and given the current state of ours, if the stadium is approved and built, it will necessarily drive austerity budgets for a generation or more. The Tasmanian Planning Commission was very clear about that in its final integrated assessment report. We shouldn’t trust this Budget. It’s not honest. It lacks a coherent plan. It’s full of holes through the out years across portfolios.
Intensive Family Engagement Services: $4 million for two years, then cut. Out‑of‑home care increase: a critical $15 million over two years, then cut. Foster and kinship carer uplift: funded for one year, then cut. Transition to independence for children in out‑of‑home care: $3 million for two years, then cut. It treats us like fools. It’s not as if though the needs in those areas of public policy will have abated to any significant extent. The government will have to deal with funding pressures in those areas of critical public policy in the out years of this Budget. It is nothing more than accounting trickery. Services that will actually improve the futures of Tasmanian children will be wound back before we even begin to see their positive effect; or government will decide and recognise that funding is needed.
As part of his verbal armoury of political blackmail tropes like ‘No Stadium, No Team’, the Premier constantly claims the Macquarie Point stadium is all about giving young people hope for the future. How about the Tasmanian children and young people who need that extra support now and over the forward estimates? How about prioritising homes for them? As Adrienne Piccone of TasCOSS reminded attendees at the post‑Budget forum, with the amount of money that the government wants to invest in a new stadium at Macquarie Point, it could provide a home for every one of the more than 5000 applicants who are on the housing waitlist. That waitlist obscenely grows and grows.
I know we have a relatively new Minister for Housing and Planning in this portfolio, but, minister Vincent, you have inherited a portfolio which for 11 years was underfunded, neglected, dismissed. There wasn’t even any new money going into housing for the first term of the Hodgman government until the last year before that state election in 2018. It’s shameful. As the honourable member for Nelson pointed out, there’s also no action on rents, on short‑stay accommodation, or on basic minimum standards for residential tenants. It is an area of public policy that this government for 11 years has disregarded and has not thought through the social consequences of not providing homes for people. The government has forgotten that housing itself, if you want to talk about job generation, is significant social infrastructure.
How about young Tasmanians who want to see government take accelerating global heating seriously and set priorities and allocate resources towards emissions reduction and adaptation planning? Young Tasmanians are staring down the barrel of climate catastrophe. The Greens have been accused in the other place, when we do ask about climate, of Armageddon‑style politics, of catastrophising. The scientists are telling us we are staring down the barrel of climate catastrophe. It is possible that within 25 years civilization will be on its knees across the globe.
Yet, in this Budget, it’s like climate change has been fixed. There’s nothing in here for young people who are looking to the government for leadership on climate, but cuts of more than $7 million a year to the climate office; a delayed climate action plan, underfunded fire services across agencies ‑ whether it’s the TFS, the SES, Parks or Forestry firefighters ‑ we are seeing a clear indication of government not taking the threat seriously enough, and that means deprioritising community safety, and playing pretty carelessly and recklessly with our small island economy in the future.
In the budget papers across the forward Estimates, money is drained out of the natural disaster relief fund, as if those out years of the Budget – and wouldn’t it be great if we could be sure they were – will be years where accelerating climate impacts don’t hit this island and small communities like Dunalley, for example, in 2013. At a time when national and state climate risk assessments are almost shrill, desperately so, in their calls for urgent actions and investment from governments, we have a government in this Budget that utterly deprioritises climate action, all the while, of course, continuing to log and burn our beautiful, carbon‑banking native forests.
It is utterly dispiriting. It’s also alarming, in the context of fire risk to the most catastrophic bushfire‑prone capital city in the country, our capital of Nipaluna‑Hobart, there’s still no evacuation plan for Hobart, but we’re being offered a stadium which will take more money away from necessary climate adaptation and mitigation measures. The pettiness and inexplicable priorities manifest in this Budget are glaring. We can have a stadium which by the time it’s built will definitely cost at least $2 billion, but half‑price bus fares to assist Tasmanians struggling with the rising cost of living: discontinued. The Libraries Tasmania 26Ten community program to help adults improve their literacy and numeracy: written off. Shame on this government for that. Extra support for family violence intervention programs: gone.
There are other services that are experiencing increased demand which the Budget doesn’t accommodate for: Shekinah House[checked] homelessness assistance; pain and rheumatology services for outpatients; and Legal Aid, savagely underfunded, just to name a few, and the little bit of extra money that they do have in the Budget, in six months’ time this extra funding will be taken away. That pathetic little projected surplus the Treasurer made sure was cooked up to suggest we’re on that right glide path, all it will take is for a few of those glaring gaps in the out years to be filled, or one or three severe climate‑related weather events, for example, and poof, that tiny surplus is gone. No-one in this place should be fooled by it.
In this place we have the power to help deliver not only transparency and accountability for this interim Budget; we have the power and the responsibility to improve the bottom line by rejecting the Macquarie Point stadium. If you go to the risks section of Budget Paper 1, page 81, the pretty poorly named Macquarie Point Stadium Urban Renewal Project is identified as a specific expenditure risk and sensitivity. The budget paper says:
The 2025-26 Budget and forward Estimates includes funding of $609 million to deliver a new multipurpose stadium, arts, entertainment and sporting precinct as part of the Macquarie Point Urban Renewal Project. This project includes the Macquarie Point multipurpose stadium. This funding includes: $354 million of the state’s total commitment of $375 million, the Australian Government’s total commitment of $240 million and the $15 million commitment from the AFL, expected to be received in 2027-28.
As we know, the government has since provided a revised cost estimate for the Macquarie Point stadium of $1.13 billion. The updated figure reflects enhancements to the stadium’s design and functionality, together with an escalation in costs since the original project estimate was developed. This figure also includes $4.5 million to support infrastructure works associated with the redevelopment of the Federation Concert Hall, which will be provided as a grant to the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra through the Department of State Growth.
I want to pause to express my empathy for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, which continues to have very legitimate and deep concerns about the impact of construction noise and the operation of the stadium on one of the world’s smallest ‑ if not the smallest ‑ fine orchestras. Yet, this government has sought to buy off the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra with a $4.5 million upgrade. When we get into Estimates, we will be asking ministers whether any threats were made to the TSO about its funding based on its expressed public concern about the impact of the stadium on its operation. It will be good to have ministers asked that at the Table and have to, theoretically, provide an honest answer.
The ‘risks and sensitivity’ statement on the Macquarie Point stadium dismisses the Tasmanian Planning Commission’s concerns and final recommendation and talks up these elusive and vague far wider benefits associated with the project that aren’t part of the TPCs assessment. It’s pretty clear the Macquarie Point Development Corporation will use borrowings to fund the difference between the total equity contributions and the final cost to deliver the Macquarie Point multipurpose stadium.
Let’s not be deluded about this; the Macquarie Point Development Corporation is the government. The money that’s borrowed by MPDC is being borrowed by the state of Tasmania and it would be paid back by the people of Tasmania. There’s a whole lot of risks that are identified in the budget papers, but we should in here know that one of the primary risks to the state’s finances now and in the future is that Macquarie Point stadium.
We’ve also seen really clear evidence of poor priorities in relation to Homes Tasmania. In the Homes Tasmania section of the Budget, it says no specific equity contributions have been allocated to Homes Tasmania in this Budget, but what we see is a housing state‑owned company that by the end of the out years in this budget will have $1.1 billion in debt strapped to its back. Its interest costs will double over the next two years. Some of us in here remember a time when Commonwealth and state governments invested equity themselves in the construction of new social housing. That’s how we had and have a social housing stock on this island of more than 13,000 homes. That was paid for by taxpayers, by governments. Now we’ve got this neo-conservative model which hobbles Homes Tasmania, saddles it with debt, which the government can push off the books a bit because it’s not general government sector debt, but it is debt that will hobble Homes Tasmania.
I remember how much we celebrated and, as Housing minister, how hard we fought to have the Commonwealth state housing debt forgiven, and it was forgiven, when, by my recall, the Commonwealth state housing debt was less than $400 million. And here we are, and I do look forward to the Minister for Housing and Planning coming back to the Council, as he promised he would yesterday in Question Time, with some details about exactly how many new social homes particularly, but new social and affordable homes, Homes Tasmania has built.
So there is no equity contribution to Homes Tasmania, but laced through this Budget is money going into Macquarie Point Development Corporation and Stadiums Tasmania. That tells us everything we need to know about this government’s priorities. There is $609 million in this interim Budget for the stadium and if we vote against the stadium, there’s $609 million that’s not being strapped onto our debt burden. There’s $50 million, $30 million, $50 million, $60 million or $70 million, depending on who you listen to, whether it’s Treasury you’re listening to or the Coordinator-General, in interest costs for the stadium each year, which the state won’t have to beg or borrow to meet interest payments on stadium borrowings. There’s $2 billion that won’t be added to the state’s heavy and growing debt burden within a decade.
The alternative is stadium austerity for generations to pay for a piece of infrastructure that is wildly unpopular in the community and I’m absolutely certain that all members in this place are noting the volume, the quality and the passion of the correspondence that we are receiving from people who are strongly opposed to this stadium and urging us in very heartfelt ways, to vote against the order.
There’s a whole lot of extra cost to the stadium which we need to explore as well. We have additional site works for $32 million, the northern access road and event plaza, around $76 million in extra costs. The carpark into the acid sulphate sludge of the harbour there near Macquarie Point, which went from a three-storey carpark to a two-storey carpark, is now costed at about $97 million. The event buses that will be required to get people to and from, again costed in today’s dollars at about $49 million. Compensation and upgrades for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, as we’ve already discussed, $4.5 million dollars. Davey, Collins and Hunter street path widenings, $17.6 million. All of these costs ultimately will be borne by the people of Tasmania, just as any cost overrun on the Macquarie Point stadium will be borne by us as well.
I cannot let the opportunity go past without – well, I’ll just be frank about it – telling some truths about the Labor opposition on this Budget. Having sent us off to a state election in July this year on the basis of a Budget that looked almost exactly the same, we have a highly conflicted Labor opposition and we had the statement in here from the member for Pembroke yesterday where he said in his contribution:
This is just the interim Budget that sets the scene for the cuts that will come. Next year’s Budget will be the Budget where Tasmanians really feel the pain and there’ll be no more excuse-making of letters that can refer us forward to next May. Ultimately it’s Tasmanians who are going to pay the price for these past 11 years and if you can’t manage the budget properly, you can’t deliver the services Tasmanians rely on.
He said:
We now have a treasurer who called massive debt ‘intergenerational theft’.
Well, I believe he’s been caught red handed. What we have here, and I listened carefully to the honourable member for Rumney’s contribution as well, and I’m not surprised that she found it difficult to know what to say. We have an opposition here which is complicit in this Budget mess, and the core complicity right now is the fact that the Labor opposition has given its unconditional support to the Macquarie Point stadium and so we have honourable members of the Labor Party and shadow treasurers make statements about the need for fiscal restraint but at the same time giving unconditional support to the Macquarie Point stadium. It is shameful. The opposition doesn’t have a crooked leg to stand on regarding the subject of fiscal responsibility.
It’s always true to say that budgets are about political choices: we see that with the choice not to properly fund Homes Tasmania; the choices to cut essential community support in the out years; the choice to allocate more than $600 million into the stadium alone in these four years in the Budget, which interestingly is not that far off the shortfall that the Budget identifies in the Health sector of about $673 million over the next five years.
Mr President, did you know in our hospitals for example, where our hardworking healthcare workers are doing double shifts, instead of prioritising investment into the health of Tasmanians through preventative health, instead of really working with people who work in our public health system on ways where there could be efficiencies, this government is taking the Milo out of kitchens at the hospital. You have doctors, nurses, therapists and pharmacists who are working long hours and days – sometimes doing double shifts – who are now being told by their employer that they can’t drink Milo, even though very few of them in that situation are actually able to take a lunch break. It is stupid and it’s petty. It sends a message to the people who work everyday to keep Tasmanians alive and well that this government isn’t interested in their workplace wellbeing.
The State of the Environment Report, after two statutory deadlines passed without the government delivering a State of the Environment Report, made a suite of recommendations designed to strengthen environmental resilience, protect biodiversity and to protect all those ecosystem services the environment provides us. Again, another report calling for urgent action and investment; with no funding, not one cent allocated towards implementing any of the recommendations in the State of the Environment Report. Throughout the Budget you see cuts across the forward Estimates to environmental services and cuts to the threatened species unit. Again, it’s a word that is used too often in here, but it is shameful. From a treasurer, who in his opening line of his budget speech talked about, which I was quite struck to hear him say these words, but of course we know the lens through which he says them, it’s one of exploitation said: (tbc 5.08)
Tasmania’s resources of people and nature’s bounty ensures no challenges to great and no challenge can erode the positive future that is ours.
Well, nature’s bounty won’t be there to sustain us, or our children and grandchildren if we don’t start investing in it. Perhaps the Treasurer, as he develops the May Budget, could come to terms with the fact that if you invest in environmental repair and protection and you involve communities in that and scientists you’re investing in our future.
The education section of the Budget also dispiriting and something that I very much look forward to having an ongoing conversation with the minister about. There’s uncertainty in this Budget and expressed in the notes about the fairer funding allocation and the state’s contribution. At this point in the budget cycle, the department and the minister can’t take an educated guess in the budget about how much in state funds under the Better and Fairer Schools Funding Agreement will be rolled out.
There are also cuts in the Budget for children, families and services for Youth Justice and those little dotted lines and gaps in the out years, as the member for Nelson highlighted in her contribution, the Integrity Commission.
Where we’ve had successive chief commissioners speak publicly in public hearings to the media and to the Integrity Committee about the pressing need for extra funding to enable the Integrity Commission to do its vital work ‑ improving standards of ethics and governance in the public service and among public officers ‑ what do we get? Starvation funding for the Integrity Commission. It feels deliberate, and same too for the National Preventive Mechanism, which has had some scraps offered to it but nothing substantive to enable it to undertake its statutory function to prevent cruel treatment in places of detention in Tasmania.
We’re also seeing cuts to our European Heritage and Heritage Tasmania.
There are cuts to the justice portfolio across the forward estimates. We know from people who wait four and five years for their day in court in the Supreme or Magistrates Court, that our court system is under enormous strain. It is very clear more resourcing is needed to invest into the Supreme Court and the Magistrates Court. But no extra money for justice in this budget. There’s also a line item in the budget which cuts funding to Victim Support Services. Another one of those dotted lines in the out year’s scenario.
In the other place today, our leader, Dr Rosalie Woodruff, presented to the parliament and had tabled what we would do differently. Now under a a normal scenario, as we have for many, many years, the Greens would present an alternative budget. We took a suite of fully costed policies to the last state election which showed that if you prioritise the wellbeing of your people and if you look after the environment, it’s good for the economy, especially a little island and connected economy like ours.
We had all our policies; bar a very small handful at the end that Treasury didn’t have time to cost. We submitted them for costings and our costings were pretty bang on. We have presented and we continue to present an alternative to this neo-liberal, high-vis vest unempathetic approach to government spending.
I will hand around a copy of our Tasmanian Greens budget repair plan. But we’ve had a look at reckless spending and there are things that clearly can be done here to generate revenue. We could, for example, de-fund that loss-making, destructive government business, Forestry Tasmania, saving a total of $48 million over 4 years.
We could reduce the money in the Treasurer’s Reserve, which is splashed around fairly carelessly as we’ve seen following, particularly, the 2018 state election. We could de-fund Tasracing and save $154 million over the forwards.
We could do what the Victorian government has done in and around Melbourne and introduce a 1 per cent vacant property levy. We could increase the tax rate for electronic gaming machines by 45 per cent, bringing it into line with similar jurisdictions rather than the small casino in Townsville, which the tax rate here was pegged at, and raise an extra $173 million.
We could increase mineral royalties, so they were just at the national average. I note in the budget papers it is projected the state of Tasmania will earn less from mineral royalties over the forward estimates because of the vagaries of the commodities market.
Well, what we should do, Mr President, is raise mineral royalties just to the national average. It’s not like these mining companies are going to go anywhere else if they have identified a prospective resource here.
Salmon royalties, again, we give away free real estate for the big salmon companies to pollute. Increase salmon royalties and you can raise close to $440 million over the forward years. Defund the stadium and over the forward Estimates save $360 million. Abolish the land tax reduction: $30 million saved. The ridiculous expenditure on new, damaging tracks in the Arthur Pieman: saving $7 million. We could make some cuts to the Office of the Coordinator‑General.
Mr Duigan – No new tracks in the Arthur-Pieman.
Ms O’CONNOR – What about that iconic walk that you want to spend millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money on, when we already have so many iconic walks, while you’re not properly funding Legal Aid and children’s services, minister? We could divest from the current Marinus equity share, saving $27 million, scrap the planned Marinus equity top‑up, saving nearly $100 million.
This Budget is one of the more depressing and cynical budgets that I’ve seen in my many years in state parliament. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It is designed to give us a slightly false sense of security about the state of the finances. But no, there are no fools in here, and I’m sure that next week at Estimates, just as independent members of this place have done this week, the Legislative Council will do the work examining this cynical interim Budget.
In some ways it’s good timing, because not long after we get back from scrutinising this cynical interim Budget that prioritises a roofed stadium over homes and roofs over the heads of Tasmanians, we will have that critical vote, which will have such a profound influence, whichever way it goes, on the state’s fiscal fortunes, not just for the next four years, but for the life of that stadium, whether it be 30 years or 50 years. That’s a debate we will get to in early December.
I am not necessarily optimistic by nature, but I’m heartened in some ways by the depths of the contributions that have been made by my colleagues in this place on the Budget. There were some magnificent contributions and, here’s hoping that when the moment comes, just as we hope that the Treasurer and this government will have the courage to do the right thing in developing the Budget for May, here’s hoping that we do the right thing in here on the stadium order, because you cannot look at this interim Budget without considering the choice that will come before us in early December. I note the Budget.
