Ms BADGER (Lyons) – Honourable Speaker, this is my first state of the state speech that I have been here for and my first time replying. I am underwhelmed. Certainly, is not strong enough for what we have seen. It is 2025. We have just five years left to do all that is in our power to mitigate the worst of climate change. That is five years to reduce our carbon emissions to 43 per cent below 2005 levels as required under the Paris Agreement by 2030. Only five years left in UN’s decade on ecosystem restoration. We had 10 years. It is 10 years to protect and restore nature and what flagship projects have we nominated? Absolutely none.
It is 2025 and after 11 years of the Liberals in government, we are not where we need to be to protect Tasmania’s people and our wild places to secure a comfortable survival for future generations on a warming planet. Our magnificent island is literally burning as we speak. Ancient Gondwana relic Huon pines that were here in Lutruwita before colonisation, before the birth and trial of Socrates have been put at risk. Climate induced extreme weather events will increase exponentially in frequency and severity. On the present budget trajectory, future Tasmanians are already inheriting enormous intergenerational debt. Not taking climate action will increase the costs for generations to come, and the state of the planet will only become harder to restore and to reverse the damage that has been done.
To burden future generations of Tasmanians with that inheritance is a political choice. It is appalling that in his state of the state speech, the Premier did not mention the state of our island’s natural environment. This place that we all call home is under threat. Yet the Premier was silent. Where is the plan for emission reduction at the scale required? Where is the protection for our remaining sways of carbon sequestering forests for the peat soils in under protected areas like the Spero-Wanderer Wilderness in the south-west. Where is the plan for renewable energy zones that are both appropriately scaled projects and in locations that can coexist with biodiversity, which, to be clear, is also in crisis? Yesterday was an opportunity for a visionary plan for economic and environmental transformation to a restorative and regenerative future for Tasmania to secure a comfortable inhabitable island for generations to come and that opportunity was missed.
Also missing from the Premier’s speech was justice for the Tasmanian Aboriginal community. After11 years of the Liberal in government, where are the land returns, the truth telling, the treaty and the justice for the Palawa people? What we have seen delivered is a huge blow of uncertainty. Undefined essential and non-essential workers wondering what their future will be amid the cost of living crisis. We have Tasmanians in the state service deeply invested in various programs wondering whether the Tasmanian Government’s knock off replica of DOGE, the EPU will close down their hard work. In police and fire and emergency services, the e-mail that was sent this morning subject recruitment freeze update said, ‘While the government policy has been identified by the government, working through the detail to ensure that we have a process around its implementation will take some time.’ How much time do emergency services workers and all State Service workers have to be left in this liberal limbo?
SES crews on the Tasman Peninsula have recently highlighted the impact that hindrance on reliable digital connectivity has had on their emergency responses. Indeed, it was just a fortnight ago that over 100 people on the peninsula showed up to a public meeting to discuss how the excess loads on their digital services, particularly over tourism season, means that they are disconnected. It is 2025 and digital services are an essential service. We have to sufficiently invest in it to begin with.
Bridging the digital divide in Tasmania must be a priority. I note in the Treasurer’s media release from 5 March, he said about the EPU: ‘We must ensure that every dollar spent is value for taxpayer money and we are not wasting resources on things that are not a priority.’ How can building a billion dollar stadium, which is not essential, trump basic connectivity for our state to remain relevant in the modern world? Explain that prioritisation, that choice, to the business owners on the Tasman Peninsula, in St Helens, in Swansea, who lose critical connectivity, who lose money when the EFTPOS machines go down each summer when the transient tourism population goes in and they simply do not have the digital connectivity to deal with the extra people.
What will cuts and privatisation mean for primary industries, biosecurity and the Department of Natural Resources Tasmania (NRE)? For example, taking action on invasive species. The Commonwealth Government’s round seven of the Australian Heritage Grant results are just online. NRE has been granted $400,000 for 2024-25 and that money will go towards the management of invasive species in the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area (TWWHA). It will be for monitoring of deer presence, identification of feral cat distribution, and weed control – perhaps for foxglove – in areas of high conservation value and visitor use. Unlike the round of funding that came in 2021-22, it is not for the eradication of deer in the TWWHA or the Walls of Jerusalem National Park. That is a lost opportunity, considering that first program saw over 1000 deer removed from the TWWHA, which is a significant figure given that the original figures thought that the population in that area was between 100 and 300 , nowhere near 1000.
Now, there is $400,000 to share between deer monitoring and those other programs. Perhaps there will be another program to come to deal with the deer and all the other invasive species, but that seems highly unlikely with the cuts coming.
The management of cats: in the Liberals response to the 2024 State of the Environment report, they stated that their action on invasive species was having the 2024-29 cat management plan underway. 2024 is now behind us, we’re a year into that plan and yet if you have a quick check on the NRE website, it reveals that no such plan exists. Where is it?
What will the state of our parks be if there are cuts to or privatisation of any part of NRE? Parks are already under resourced, with a tonne of critical work to be done. We still have not seen the REA reforms which were first proposed in 2021. Nothing. No draft legislation, not even the proposed options paper has come forward. The review of the Maria Island Management Plan. Why has the draft plan been sitting on the minister’s desk for more than six months? We have been talking about the review that commenced almost 4 years ago.
What have the Liberals been doing as our parks decline? They have been attempting to privatise them as they continue on the political trail of Trump and Musk. Further privatisation and disregard of protections will come if we continue down the same way as the US now.
The EOI process is a great example of a failed non-essential program, and it must go. In fact, the OCG’s EOI website has not been updated September 2024, almost six months ago. Is that an indication that no projects are progressing? Or just a further lack of transparency about this secretive process. The privatisation agenda has completely failed and that EOI process has resulted in just nine projects in 10 years.
Why on earth are we destroying the very intrinsic values of wilderness that people travel here from around the world to see to allegedly make a profit off tourism if the exclusive operators leasing our public land are not even paying the bills? The lease on public World Heritage listed land, Lake Malbena and Halls Island was renewed to Wild Drake, who is in a court ordered liquidation process and last year found to be over $10,000 in arrears for unpaid invoices to Parks. When the Halls Island lease comes up on 31 March 2025, there is an enormous chance to finally pull the pin on this saga which has put our parks management on the global stage for all the wrong reasons.
I have already spoken on today’s MPIs about the need to reinvest the non‑essential budget from the illogical $40 million‑plus Tyndall Range Walk and the fanciful now $200 million‑plus Cradle Cableway. This funding should go directly to NRE. It should be used to develop the world class Walking Track Management Framework first proposed in 2011 to provide more remote firefighting capabilities and tools, to undertake greater on-ground truthing for cultural sites and vegetation mapping and monitoring. This data is essential for firefighting. It was a recommendation back in 2006 from a senate inquiry reviewing the bushfires that summer. Again, almost a decade on, it is recommendation 8 in the State of the Environment Report.
It is essential that we look at the lessons to be learned from the fires this summer and, indeed, the fires in our TWWHA and ancient landscapes back in 2016, 2018 and 2019 too. This government must go back and review the recommendations that were made from the various federal inquiries following those fires and ensure that all of those recommendations have been implemented.
One huge failure has been letting the TWWHA drop off the World Heritage Committee State of Conservation reporting cycle. It was the top of the list recommendation of the 2016 senate inquiry report, to ensure that the TWWHA remains on the annual reporting cycle, and yet it was removed a few years ago. Tasmania must immediately rectify this situation with the Australian Government.
We need to get serious about future‑proofing our parks, as is our obligation under the World Heritage Convention under section II article 4:
Each State Party to this Convention recognizes that the duty of ensuring the identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission to future generations of the cultural and natural heritage … It will do all it can to this end, to the utmost of its own resources and, where appropriate, with any international assistance and co-operation.
We do not have to privatise our parks for a strong nature‑based tourism industry. Regenerative tourism has been cited as a future industry. The numbers of tourism investment from low and no‑impact niche market segments is being capitalised on elsewhere around Australia. Tasmania needs to get on board or we will be completely left behind.
Data from Tourism Research Australia was showing that during the 2023 to 2024 financial year, international visitors spent $2.6 billion on travel that involves bird watching. Let us get on with perpetual protection of the Orford Bird Sanctuary, for example, on the east coast or, up at the Derwent River, let us Ramsar List and promote the wonderful Murphys Flat Wetlands.
As light pollution steals the shine of our stars right around the world, in Tasmania we could safeguard one of the highest quality dark skies, south‑west sky country, but we have not. We could have had that dark sky sanctuary. While we have not acted on it, New Zealand now has five dark sky sanctuaries. Unlike the state government, the under-resourced local governments and passionate hard‑working Tasmanian communities have realised the opportunity of dark sky tourism and the urgency to protect sky country. They have been willing to do the work and they will reap the rewards and share the state’s wonder with the world. The Tasman Council are undergoing light monitoring to become a dark sky community, the Wellington Trust have an application for Wellington Park to be a dark sky park, and the Ross District community are working up to become a dark sky community.
Just last week, The Examiner ran the story headline, ‘State’s family violence rate a secret shame’. An analysis from the Tasmanian Family and Sexual Violence Alliance of data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that Tasmania had the highest rate of intimate partner violence, cohabiting partner violence, stalking and emotional abuse from a cohabiting partner in the country. In the 2024-25 Tasmanian Budget, they contributed $14.8 million in specific funding for family and sexual violence. That works out to be about $25.96 per Tasmanian, the least per capita of any state or territory in the country.
We, the Greens, stand with the extraordinary organisations in the sector, calling for investigation into an alternative funding model, such as a needs‑based model, which was highly successful for the Northern Territory, who share similar family, domestic and sexual violence rates to Tasmania. Laurel House and Engender Equality recently highlighted the need for the state government to develop a 10‑year family and sexual violence workforce strategy. Presently, the state looks heavily to mainland states and overseas to fill these specialty positions.
The latest announcement from July 2025 of the $15.7 million investment with the federal government into Tasmania’s various programs is welcome, but it is a drop of water in the ocean of what is truly needed. It will not go far enough to meet the needs of all victim/survivors or to fill all the worker positions that are currently required to get the best of the best in this space, to come here and work in Tasmania. How does this much needed recruitment upscale sit in the government cuts? What will be of the government’s long‑touted review of the Family Violence Act?
Where is the 30‑month statutory review into the implementation of TasTAFE (Skills and Training Business) Act 2021? What will be the future of TAFE? It is not a GBE, but it is a not‑for‑profit government business. What cuts and uncertainties will TAFE face in a time when we need many new facilities and training opportunities? For example, an automotive Centre of Excellence is urgently needed. Mechanics and workshop owners need accessible upskilling opportunities to meet the rapid growth of EV use, and to ensure that all internal combustion vehicles still on our roads are maintained to the appropriate emission standard. Given that flooding has forced the closure of the aged Campbell Street training facility, now is the perfect time to progress a state‑of‑the‑art automotive Centre of Excellence.
Tasmania can dodge the DOGE if we assess the integrity and the necessity of all projects currently on the table and only take forward those that will provide the fundamentals to future generations of Tasmania. To fully fund programs that will ensure a safe, kind, healed and empathetic community in our future, we must immediately turn our heads to tackling the climate crisis. This is not just a political greed issue. This is a planetary survival issue. There is no greater threat to Tasmania’s future, so we must get on with it. We must absolutely invest all that we can. It is essential that we do that now while we still have time to mitigate the worst.
