Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, I want to acknowledge upfront what a magnificent address that was from the member for Nelson, and she stole my opening line, which was that the state of the state is an SOS for the State of Tasmania. I concur with all the observations made by the member for Nelson.
I want to acknowledge that we meet on the land of the muwinina people, a people who did not survive colonisation and invasion. I want to, as a Greens, acknowledge elders past, present and emerging, and recommit to truth, treaty, justice and the return of lands. A true leader, a premier of this island Lutruwita/Tasmania, would have made some acknowledgement of Tasmania’s palawa people in his state of the state address, which sets the agenda for the government for the year ahead ‑ but he did not.
I have known Jeremy Rockliff professionally for some 16 years, and the man I saw stand to deliver the state of the state address this year was a stranger to me. He looked like a prisoner; someone who was doing something, in his heart, he knew was wrong and he did not want to do. I am certain that Jeremy Rockliff did not write this garbage, divisive, Trumpian speech. Maybe I am being too kind here, but I believe Jeremy Rockliff is a prisoner of the hard‑right in his Cabinet, and Jeremy Rockliff as Premier is being ‘DOGEd’. For members of this place who do not understand the DOGE reference, it stands for Department of Government Efficiency. It is a creation of the fascist Trump administration and Elon Musk. It is not a real department, but the language that is being used by Trump and Musk to gut the world’s largest democracy and its government, to slash public education, sack climate scientists, gut the EPA, sack tens of thousands of veterans, that is very similar language to what we heard in the Premier’s Address last Tuesday.
We even have, fresh back from a gathering of pretty ‘fashy’ characters in London for a far‑right conference, our Deputy Premier and Treasurer have set up an economic efficiency unit within government ‑ which is a DOGE.
In his state of the state address there are a couple of notable absences. There are a number of notable absences. It was notable that the Premier made no mention at all of his divisive flagship infrastructure project, the proposed billion‑dollar Macquarie Point Stadium. Now, I wonder why? He made no mention at all of our island’s extraordinary natural environment and how that builds and strengthens our brand, and therefore our prosperity. He said nothing about the fires which have ravaged 100,000 hectares or more in the north-west and the west coast of this beautiful island in the past few weeks. Not one word from our Premier. He said nothing about the single biggest concern young people have today, and that is the breakdown of the natural world, our habitat, and global heating which is verging on global boiling. What we have here in this state of the state address is emptiness, hard‑right rhetoric, desperation and dishonesty.
I will go through some of the points that he made. I mean, honestly, I do not know who wrote this speech, but they should be sacked. If they are at Font PR, as I suspect, they should not be rehired again as a consultant.
It is completely untrue, as the member for Mersey observed, to say that this government was elected with a mandate. It was not. This is a government that went to an election a year early on its knees, and came back into parliament on its knees, having to beg for support from the crossbench and the newly elected JLN members in order to form government. It is a minority government. That is a statement of fact. It is a minority government that, within a year of having stitched up a deal with JLN, walked away from a key component of it ‑ the review of the Integrity Commission, and ignored another key component of it, Saul Eslake’s economic review. Now Tasmanians are to believe that this government, having ignored respected economist Saul Eslake five or six months ago, will pay heed to what Mr Eslake says when he hands down his report to government. This is a government that cannot claim a mandate.
We have had to stay in this place and listen, ad nauseam, to the government talk about its 2030 Strong Plan that it took to the last state election. I will tell you what it did not take to the last state election ‑ it did not take the mass privatisation of public assets. It did not take a threat to remove regulations that can protect workers’ health and safety, that can protect food standards, that can protect the environment, for example. It said nothing of those things. It has come back in here, this year, with a Premier who has delivered the shortest state of the state address that I have heard in my 16 years in this place, and pretended it has a mandate to ‘sell the family jewels’. It does not.
As the member for Launceston said yesterday at the closing of her noting of the Premier’s address, this might be one of those situations where it is ‘thank goodness for the upper House’. In saying that, however, I hope Labor – the Labor opposition ‑ holds true here in protecting the public interest. There has been no case made other than economic desperation caused by 11 years of misplaced priorities for selling the family jewels. Other honourable members have gone through many of those government businesses and state‑owned companies and talked about the enormous benefits and dividends they deliver to the people of Tasmania – and the enormous pride that the Tasmanian people have in those government businesses.
Imagine a government talking about selling the MAIB? What was the number the member for Murchison put out the other day? It has delivered $895 million in dividends to government since the Liberals came to office.
Imagine selling Metro. Who would buy Metro, Mr President?
Ms Rattray– It would have to go with the subsidy, so what is the difference?
Ms O’CONNOR – Well, it would have to potentially go with a very significant subsidy but business is business, member, and in all likelihood, and in fact almost certainly, the people of Tasmania who rely on public transport will be paying more to travel if Metro is privatised. More, almost unarguably for worse services. If you want a good example of how that has happened in other parts of the world, look at what happened to England’s rivers and waterways after they privatised public water and sewerage service companies. That island’s waterways are an ecological disaster zone for which people are paying higher water and sewerage bills, and because those companies are not viable, they are constantly receiving government bailouts to keep breaking the law.
The argument that privatising public assets leads to better services is neoliberal nonsense, because business is business and business needs to make money, and sometimes making profits off the back of essential public services inevitably does more harm than it does good.
We also have a government that has ruled out the sale of nothing but Hydro. The only reason they have ruled out the sale of Hydro is they are scared by the political experience of 1998 when their policy position was to sell Hydro and as Mr Edmunds pointed out, that is before TasNetworks was formed. Their policy position which was to sell Hydro and its poles and wires led to in significant part the election of the Bacon Labor majority government.
We asked the question in the other place the other day about whether the government would rule out the sale of the Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority. No, apparently, this government is prepared to sell PAHSMA which manages not only the Port Arthur Historic Site, it manages the Coal Mines Historic Site and Maria Island, and it does an outstanding job protecting our remarkable World Heritage convict assets. The government would sell PAHSMA.
There is no doubt that the government is looking to sell the Public Trustee because it is a headache for them and the notion that you would have a trustee service that provided low‑cost estate management and the like is obviously not a notion this Liberal government supports.
We asked about something that the Premier mentioned specifically in his state of the state speech. It was almost like a shopping catalogue for any corporation that was interested. We asked specifically about why he was so keen to single out the Land Titles Office for potential sale.
I tell you what, it is interesting that at a time when we have the Integrity Commission crying out for funds to do its statutory function and the National Preventive Mechanism not funded to perform its statutory function, we have a government that apparently spent a $2 million tarting up The Land Information System Tasmania. The List, the most significant land tenure and title assets systems is being polished up with public money for private. We asked the government, have you been approached by anyone to buy the Land Titles Office?
We did not get a straight answer for that, but I was informed quite recently, apparently there is no actual title for the Treasury Building, which the government wants to flog. There is another Tasmanian treasure they trade for trinkets, but apparently there is no title for the Treasury Building. That raises some interesting questions. If the government is going to privatise the Land Titles Office and a private corporation owns and controls all our titles, it raises some questions about properties without titles and what kind of oversight and protection of the public interest there might be there. And while other states have charged towards selling off their land titles office, there is no evidence it is a good idea and the commonsense test tells you it is not something that will work in the public interest.
Ms Webb – It would not have to be legislated either apparently, so we will not have a say.
Ms O’CONNOR – This is the thing. It would not have to be legislated. I am not sure the sale of the Treasury Building would have to be legislated. There is a big question mark over the massive deregulation agenda that this government has announced it is having in place. If we were dealing with the government that had a track record of openness and transparency with the Tasmanian people, this would be a different conversation maybe. But part of the reason we are where we are with this government and part of the reason the people of Tasmania gave them such a kick in the bum last March, is because ever since they were elected in 2014, what we have had out of this government is arrogance and secrecy.
Now for any member in this place who was here in 2014, you may or may not have marked it, but the Greens in the other place certainly did. My God, when they came back in 2014 they were so smug. By the way, the economic record is factual: the numbers, the economy was turning around in 2013 because the Labor-Greens government, despite the propaganda you will hear from government, made some really hard decisions and we did turn around the budget. You could see all the economic indicators heading in the right direction in 2013. But I digress with some facts.
What happened is that in 2014 we had the strong stable Hodgman majority Liberal government, because they love a slogan, these people. They believed they were elected with a mandate to smash up the disastrous Labor-Greens destroying forest deal, which by the way, now they crow about when we are talking about our climate accounts, because also in 2013 what you saw happen as a result of the Tasmanian Forest Agreement is that our emissions went right down. You want to decarbonise. Protect your forests. Again, I digress with facts.
We have had 11 years of smugness, 11 years of being much, much more open to hearing the interests of big business than they have to hearing the aspirations, the fears, the dreams, the frustrations of the Tasmanian people. If they had been listening, we would not be here having the conversations we are now where we have homelessness skyrocketing, we still have a housing crisis, incredibly high, unaffordable rents.
We have the Liberals in government who for 11 years have done nothing to rein in short‑stay accommodation, and now, devastatingly for any kind of reform in this area, we have Labor making all the wrong sounds about short‑stay accommodation also. The Greens will stick to making sure that we are trying to rein in short‑stay accommodation and we will not give up.
If this Liberal government since they were elected in 2014 had really been listening to what Tasmanians want, had really been putting the Tasmanian people first, we would have a world class public hospital here. We would not have ambulance ramping to the extent that we have had it. We would not have people waiting two to three years for important elective surgery that becomes more pressing with each month. If they were really listening to the concerns of the Tasmanian people in the past few years, we would be here talking about what a great thing it is that we struck a terrific deal with the AFL for our AFL and AFLW teams and, because we have invested $130 million in public funds into upgrading that fantastic facility at York Park, we are really proud that York Park is going to be the home of those teams, our Devils. We would not have spent the last 18 months to two years, having a divisive community fight about a stadium that Tasmanians do not want, do not need, and cannot afford.
We need to understand why this government is hard of hearing to the community. You only need to look at the Australian Electoral Commission data. We broke it down and I raised this in our debate on the Greens’ donation disclosure bill the other night. Over the past five years, according to Australian Electoral Commission data, the Tasmanian Liberals have concealed the source of around $15 million in private donations – $15 million, on average that is $3 million a year, the source of which is hidden. That money has helped the Liberals hear big business first. That money made sure that, within a metaphorical five minutes after the last state election, the Liberals rolled cravenly over to the pokies lobby against the public interest. They went to the election with one policy and one minister who had the honour and grace to put harm minimisation first, in Mr Ferguson. We do not agree on some things, but I tell you what, we agree on that.
Ms Webb – Courageous.
Ms O’CONNOR – Absolutely courageous. What did Mr Ferguson get for his courage? Anyway, that is a story for another day. They went to the state election with a strong harm minimisation policy, mandatory precommitment; best practice. We have the Right‑to‑Information material that tells us that after the state election the Liberals rolled over almost within the blink of a political eye and gave the gambling industry exactly what it wanted, which is no mandatory precommitment and some tinkering around facial‑recognition technology that we know does not work. There is one example. Of course – sorry, I should have added them in – we saw Labor roll over too.
Another example of how that cosy corporate relationship works on this island and has for decades is being experienced by people who live in coastal communities all over the south of this island. We have a salmon industry, multinational salmon corporations, which pay peppercorn leases; pay no corporate tax and are massively under‑regulated here. Who are allowed to operate in secrecy. Who are covered up for by ministers who will not be open with the people of Tasmania, for example, about the true causes of this mass‑mortality event. Whether there have been any breaches, for example, of depositing or dumping of salmon offal in marine reserves. We cannot see the data. We cannot see any information about any testing that the Environment – alleged – Protection Authority is undertaking.
There is secrecy. There is this unhealthy nexus between this government and multinational corporations that are not here for the people or the state of Tasmania, they are here to make profit from public natural resources. If you are one of the Batista brothers who spent a bit of time down here trying to get the new business off the ground, then it got a bit hot – I mean literally a persistent marine heatwave – and 5500 tonnes or so of salmon, a million or more fish, start dying and a Batista disappears. Well, good riddance. There is another example.
We also know, because the Greens asked questions in parliament about this a couple of years ago, that the heads of those multinational salmon corporations paid $4000 a ticket to have dinner with the Premier where they were made the promise, ‘I know it will not be popular, but we are going to let you expand around the island.’ For heaven’s sake. That is a perfect example of how corporate influence works against the interest of the people of Tasmania.
It is worth mentioning that the former chief of staff to the former premier now runs the company Font PR, which not only owns nearly every regional and rural paper in Tasmania, it also has a client list that gets the red‑carpet treatment into ministers’ offices. It is all connected, corrupted governance, cosy corporate relationships, a PR company here that will shill for you and provide you with corporate clients or the state of Tasmania becomes the client at some level.
We have what is happening with the salmon industry as an example of a government that has lost touch. I am not going to reflect on the vote, but I have never seen a piece of legislation go through parliament like that Stony Rise development bill last year. We had a confession, in fact. He was quite proud, the developer, he said, ‘Yes, I made a donation to a Liberal candidate.’ For that donation, or maybe just because it was politically expedient, that developer had bespoke legislation pass through the Tasmanian parliament that overrode all the planning instruments that the Tasmanian parliament had previously agreed were necessary.
Pokies, salmon, developers – I mean whoever else rolls in the door with a pocketful of cash. That is why we got the state of the state address that we did, because it was not about the people of Tasmania. It was not. It is not a re-elected government with a fresh mandate. Anything that is refreshed about this team is only embodied, as I understand it, in the newly elected member for Bass, Rob Fairs. That is it. That is the extent of the refreshment of the team. Meanwhile, the only new ideas in the state of the state address were privatisation, massive cuts to public services, and a bizarre, Trumpian agenda of deregulation, which is childish. As we ask downstairs, does this mean we are going to have to babysit you for the next three years as you try to replace one – if you introduce one regulation, you are going to take out two more. It is ridiculous. There are no new ideas coming out of this government and we get rubbish in this speech.
I mean the first page of this state of the state speech, the first two minutes, were laced with misinformation at best, lies at worst. This number, 4000 social and affordable homes – show us the proof, minister, because we think you have been counting, for example, vacant land and refurbishments among those 4000 social and affordable homes. It certainly does not say new social and affordable homes, but given how few new social homes had been built prior to the last state election just defies mathematical logic. The idea that the government has built 3000 more since then, you would have to be very generous of spirit to accept that.
Yes, it is true, the government has rolled out a plan to deliver healthy lunches to even more schools and well done to this minister. I note that this minister not only has a very good heart, but is very much focused on the people of Tasmania. I might just take this opportunity, to apologise for my intemperate interjection yesterday about the Liberal Party in relation to women’s issues. I recognise that within the Liberal Party of Tasmania there are some terrific and strong-minded and big-hearted women. I wish there were more, but I am sorry for my interjection yesterday. We do have healthier lunches in school but how come we still have not cracked year 12 attainment? How come our National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy results are still lagging and in some cases declining.
It is not this minister’s fault. It is not even necessarily a government’s fault, but it is a sign of a government that was not paying attention to the basics. Too busy sucking up to the gambling lobby or big salmon to have a look at what is happening in public education and go, let us make this a focus and a singular focus of our government.
Remember, we were going to be the healthiest state in the nation in 2025?
Here we are, so that was an ambition that went nowhere, a slogan that was just hot air in the end. But we are such a small island and an island community and we have so much capacity and talent in our people and promise in our kids.
Educational attainment is a wicked problem we could tackle within a generation and make a substantive and meaningful difference and be the most creative, the brightest, the most resilient and connected and highly educated across whatever form that education takes. It does not have to be university, TAFE, Adult Ed – learning, lifelong learning We could be that because of the kind of community we are. Because we are an island, because we have a population where you can introduce policy that makes a tangible and measurable difference if you stay the course. After 11 years of the Liberals, it is good that there are more healthy school lunches, but that focus that should have been there from the beginning has not been there, and the Report on Government Services data confirms that.
We are told by the Premier that every 100 days the Liberals hold themselves accountable to their plan. Well, that is bloody terrific. That is really great. They are not accountable to themselves in the parliamentary Liberal Party meeting room; they are accountable to the people of Tasmania. They are accountable in the other place and they are accountable here. What we are seeing and what will be the effect of the measures outlined, should they come to bear fruit, in the state of the state address is mass deregulation, is that this government will become less accountable. Our community is likely to become less healthy and safe. Our environment is likely to have less protections and there is likely to be even less transparency.
It is very nice that they hold themselves accountable every hundred days. Now, as pointed out by the member for Nelson, there was not a lot of leadership in the Premier’s state of the state address. He belled the cat early on in: today, I will focus on one thing and one thing only, a strong economy.
We are not an economy, we are a community. We are an island community sustained by an extraordinary natural environment. We are a community which has very significant social problems. That if we do work together – and we can – in a balance of power parliament, as we have shown this week, we can tackle those problems. We have the best social infrastructure in the country, which is our Neighbourhood Houses and Child and Family Learning Centres. That is the seedbed for massive social and economic change. We could do this, but these are community issues. We live in a community and it is insulting and Trumpian and alarming to hear from the Premier of this state that he thinks we live in an economy.
What is that old saying? There are no jobs on a dead planet. No mention of the environment in this state of the state address. No attention paid. No mention of our waste issues, of the need to protect our forests. No mention of the threat of climate change to our parks and reserves. No future plan for keeping Tasmanians safe from the increasing risk of highly intense bushfires, floods, sea level rise, storm surge. We had none of that and that is where the absence of leadership is so frustrating and so frightening.
We will all acknowledge and give government a big tick for its commitment to the commission of inquiry and to funding its recommendations and to making sure that those recommendations are implemented. Former premier, Peter Gutwein – under enormous pressure at the time – but it did take guts to say – pretty early on in your government too – even though he left shortly after – yes, we will undertake a commission of inquiry, because we regard the historical and – as we understand it contemporary – harm being done to children in institutional settings as completely unacceptable. That commission of inquiry process has been traumatic for people who have been through it, for victim-survivors, for people who have given evidence, for people who have watched it. It is been very traumatic to the broader Tasmanian community to understand what historically and potentially to this day, we do not stop from happening to children.
I want to commend the government for their dedicated work on the commission of inquiry and implementing its recommendations, but it does bring me back, briefly, to the Integrity Commission. The Integrity Commission’s workload has increased substantially, as a result of the commission of inquiry. It will increase more as a result of the implementation of the Weiss review recommendations. It is a part of the transparency and accountability architecture of this state that requires fortifying and consistent government support. You cannot separate the lack of funding and empowerment of the Integrity Commission and the National Preventive Mechanism from the evidence, findings and recommendations of the commission of inquiry.
I know the state’s finances are not just straitened, they are desperate. We get that. However, the kind of money, the kind of funding that our statutory bodies ‑ and I will include the ombudsman as well ‑ are asking for, simply to be able to properly fulfil their statutory functions, is relatively small change for government. I do hope that in this upcoming state Budget we see some of the repair from government for those statutory organisations ‑ a recognition that they have been unduly deprived of the funding that they need and allocations made in the state Budget.
In the Premier’s state of the state address, he said, as if it was a good thing:
Over recent weeks we have released a number of initiatives to drive change around planning regulations in our state.
Well, DAPs (development assessment panels) went down very well in here last year. You will recall that debate. The government’s attempt to cut out the middleman/woman or non-binary person from the planning process was dealt with and dispatched by this place as it should have been. Now they are coming back for more attempts to stop hearing the Tasmanian people, to play deaf to their local concerns, for example, that they have a right to bring through planning processes. They are going to have another crack at it ‑ such is their arrogance. What are they thinking? Is it all and only about sending a message to business? Is that what this is? I certainly hope that this house of review treats the next attempt that the government has to cut the Tasmanian people and local government out of the planning process just as effectively and efficiently as it did last time.
One of the hallmarks of far‑right politics ‑ and we are creeping in that direction, there is no doubt about it ‑ is misogyny, and there is a line in here. It came straight from Scott Morrison: ‘If you wear a high vis, you have no greater supporter than this Liberal Government.’ I know there are plenty of women in trades.
Mrs Hiscutt – I am a tradesperson too.
Ms O’CONNOR – What is your trade, Leader of Government Business?
Mrs Hiscutt – Agriculture. Four years. You can call me a tradesman. I am not sexist. I don’t care.
Ms O’CONNOR – Do you wear a high vis vest?
Mrs Hiscutt – I do at times.
Ms O’CONNOR – In acknowledging that there are a growing number of female tradespeople, still overwhelmingly, those professions are filled by men. That is a blokey, Trumpian, Morrisonesque signal about what this government is all about. Then he goes on to say, ‘entrepreneurs are the engine of our economy’. No, they are not. The Tasmanian people are the engine of our economy. Workers of all skills and abilities and ages, including volunteers, they are the engine of our economy, in the same way that Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and Bezos, those parasitic billionaire entrepreneurs in the United States, are not the engine of that huge economy. Entrepreneurs are an important part of our society and our economy, but they are not the engine of it. The Tasmanian people are. There would be no economy without the hard work of the people we represent, wherever they live on this beautiful island.
The Premier wants to be number-one, the best place to do business. How about being number‑one in health ‑ healthiest state in the nation. How about an aspiration like that again and sticking to it? How about being the most creative and skilled state in the nation? No, we just want to be number-one at doing business. Boring. Boring, but also a recipe for dodgy deals, more of the same stuff, that work against the public interest.
We had the extraordinary claim in the state of the state speech that regulators can both protect and build. That is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of a regulator which is to regulate construction and building so that there are standards in place that do not put people’s lives at risk, do not put workers at risk. It is a recipe for dodgy deals and shoddy construction.
This statement: ‘In coming months we will be stripping back licensing requirements’. I bet you I know who is first in line for that. It will be the salmon industry or the gambling industry. They will come up and have a bleat about some licence condition that they have to follow that has been put in there at some level to protect the public interest or protect the environment.
It will be the Liberal donors who are lining up with the regulations in their hands that they want to have removed. It raises a very significant question about the process here and the role of parliament.
The Subordinate Legislation Committee is about to become one of the most important entities in this place. We have a government that is threatening to set aside whole days of parliament’s work to repeal and remove legislation. It wants to repeal regulations, which you can just do quietly, as I understand it, off the side of a minister’s desk, and you do not find out until sometime afterwards. It is parliament’s role to review, where necessary, repair, and to strengthen our regulatory and legislative framework, which is put in place in the interests of the people of Tasmania.
We are not here to ‑ what is the word that he used? ‘We are going to smash things.’ That is what the Premier says. He is going to ‘smash’ regulations,’slash’ red tape. That is not our job. We are here to review, repair and, where necessary, strengthen legislation. If there need to be new laws, we are here to make them. We are not here to break and smash up laws.
Oh, yes, here it is: ‘Too much red tape’, he says. ‘Business hate it and I agree, so we are taking a slasher to it.’ Donald, so Donald. I would love to know who wrote this Trumpian vomit. ‘We are going to hunt down red tape.’ What has been happening for the past 11 years? We had a red tape commissioner. I believe we still do.
Madam Acting President, is there an Office of the Coordinator‑General?
Ms Webb – Yes, he has been doing the whole audit.
Ms O’CONNOR – Oh, so we have had a red tape commissioner in the Office of the Coordinator‑General who has been working on this project for 11 years, and only now we have just discovered maybe there might be a bit too much regulation, so we are going to take a slasher to it.
What Premier thinks that is appropriate language for dealing with regulatory instruments? It is a Premier who is taking his marching orders from the likes of the Minister for Transport, Mr Abetz; the Minister for Skills and Training, Mr Ellis and, of course, the Deputy Premier, Treasurer, Attorney‑General and Minister for Justice, who thought it would be a nice idea to spend his summer holiday attending a fashy little conference in London with some of the world’s worst climate‑deniers, racists and misogynists, and then comes back here and sets up our own DOGE.
I want to challenge strongly a statement that the Premier made ‑ another untrue statement. He said people want government out of their lives. See, someone made a mistake when they wrote this. What they meant to write for him was that big business and corporations want government out of their lives because people very much want government in their lives. They want to know government is there to provide the health services that they pay for and deserve. They want to know that government is there investing in public education so that their children and grandchildren can have the education and opportunities that they deserve. They want to know that government is there when they are in crisis, if they need crisis accommodation. They want to know the government is investing in social and affordable housing. They want to feel safe in their communities. They want a sense of peace and security and those things they come from good governance.
Tasmanians, most certainly want a good government in their lives and they decided at the last state election that the government they had at the time was not quite good enough and so they did not give them a mandate. They decided not to because they wanted a good government in their lives and what we have now is a very interesting and potentially very productive political situation that has been almost gifted to us by the people of Tasmania. That is a power sharing parliament and we are seeing come through this place transformative reform, not from government but from the crossbench, from the Labor opposition, from the Greens.
We have repealed the crime of begging because this is a balance of power parliament. We have cleaned up donations because this is a balance of power parliament. I will make a short pitch and for why, you might think about, why would you vote Greens? You vote Greens because we always put the interests of this island, this beautiful island and its people first. We will always act with honour and honesty and integrity and we will use every opportunity we have in both houses of this parliament to get good results for the Tasmanian people and make sure this beautiful island is looked after. If the government of the day cannot be delivering good legislation and good regulation and will not act to deliver a safe climate to look after our forests, make sure we have clean, fresh drinking water, the Greens will be in here fighting for those things as we always have.
I know this frustrates you, Leader of Government business, when I talk about the Greens stuff, but that is why the people of Hobart elected me. I am very happy for you to provoke a quarrel, anytime. More language in here about we are going to keep looking, keep ripping it down. We are going to have a look at the laws and regulations on the statute books and the ones that we can ditch. Well, I have news for the Premier. It is not him who ditches legislation. If there is any legislation to be changed or repealed or preferably improved, it is our job to do that. It is the privilege that we were given and the responsibility that we were given by the people of Tasmania.
More dishonesty laced through here. ‘Our debt level is manageable’, he said. My God, that is a complete and utter fabrication. Then there are all the threats to sell our government businesses through his speech and he talks about them paying down debt, which as we know would be a very short-term sugar hit for which the people of Tasmania would suffer a profound and generational loss. A loss of the revenue, the dividends, for example, that comes from the MAIB, a loss of the affordable services that comes from the Public Trustee that they want to gut, the loss of an affordable bus trip.
I want to close with the concerns of my community and the City of Hobart. To thank the Hobart City Council for their excellent 2040 Climate-Ready Hobart Strategy. This is a strategy that was developed, very closely, with the local community and council and local businesses. It talks about how we can become the most climate-ready and resilient city in the country. This is what the people in my electorate of Hobart, most beautiful Nipaluna/Hobart say about – this is what the children of Hobart say about the future: [tbc 5.06]
I want to be able to hear lots of birds all day and see many animals in the ocean. I want everyone to be happy and everyone to be safe. A lot more electric vehicles and ways to get around.
In brackets there, let us hope they are not Telsas, the swasti-cars. The kids, of course, want to see wildlife protected and abundant and where renewable energy is plentiful. If a government is listening to the children – and I implore the Premier to do this – do not view this island through the dark and singular lens of money. This island is not about money. Obviously, we need to find ways to generate more revenue and to drive down debt. I refer members to the Greens policy to make corporations pay. To make sure that what we charge for mining leases at least meets the national average. There is plenty of ways to generate revenue if you are prepared to take on the big end of town in the way other states and territories have, mind you, and businesses keep coming.
If you are going to be a true leader, for all Tasmanian people, not just for people in high vests; not just for the Farrell family, but if you are going to be a true leader for all Tasmanian people, the first thing you could do is listen to the kids. That would be the first thing that you could do. Children’s hopes and dreams for the future, they were not reflected. They were not in the State of the State address. They were forgotten and they were ignored. A real leader would have come in and delivered a triple bottom line state of the state address. They would have been honest about our economic circumstances and taken responsibility to the greatest extent possible, notwithstanding, the shocks that this government has had to experience through the pandemic and the commission of inquiry.
You would be honest about the financial circumstances of the state. You would say we are going to have to generate revenue. We may need to do that through adjusting some levies. We are going to have a look at, for example, mineral licences, royalty fees and the licence fees that the salmon industry pays. There may be some tight-beltening necessary, there will be, but we will do this with you. We are not going to sell off the family silver having not told you that that was our plan when we asked you to vote for us last time.
It would have talked about protecting the human rights – real leadership – protecting the human rights of the Tasmanian people. A real progressive leader, like Jeremy Rockcliff could have been, given his nature, might have said we are committed to protecting the human rights of the Tasmanian people through a Human Rights Act for Tasmania like other evolved democracies.
A real leader would have come in here in his State of the State address, having looked at what happened on the north-west coast and the west coast with those terrifying fires over the summer, having understood that we are in extreme marine heat wave conditions. That our communities are vulnerable and people are frightened. They are frightened. He would have said, we have a plan. We are going to adapt to the effects of global heating, but we are also going to work that much harder. We are going to redouble our efforts to lower emissions so we can be a beacon to the world. In order to do that as Premier, I am saying to you, to the people of Tasmania, the science says we need to end native forest logging and protect our forests. The great news about that is, people of Tasmania, that when we do that, we can protect all the life that those forests support.
I feel for Jeremy Rockliff, I really do. He has a good heart. He has always had a good heart. He is a nice guy. He is a bit weak, but this state of the state address was a disgrace. It was Trumpian, it was DOGE, it had the fingerprints of Guy Barnett and Eric Abetz all over it. I do not think it is Jeremy Rockcliff’s vision for Tasmania. If it is, how far he has fallen.
The good news is we have members in this place and members in the other place who are dedicated and clearly so, who will hold government to account on the statements made and the threats made in this state of the state address. When the budget time comes down, the Greens will be looking at that very closely and, as always, we will put forward a fully costed triple bottom line budgetary vision for Tasmania, that puts this beautiful island – the most beautiful place in the world – and its people fully front and centre of everything that we do from there on, as we always have, put this island and its people first.
