Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Honourable Speaker, as one of the newest batch of MPs, this is my first firsthand experience of a state of the state address. What an inauspicious moment it turned out to be. The address stands out as a low point in my time in parliament to date. What a disappointing speech by the Premier. This was an opportunity to talk up the people of Tasmania, to acknowledge and thank the committed staff who work in the public service. To honestly evaluate those things that are going well in our state and take a clear-eyed look at those things that are not going well. To speak of the value of our wild places and commit to protecting them. To share a vision of the future that is kind, inclusive and hopeful.
Instead, we got a speech that was dull, vacuous and totally underwhelming. A speech that was one big love-in on business and high-vis. I do not have a problem with business or high‑vis. I am married to someone who operates their own business and has rocked high-vis every day for the last 25 years, but the unrestrained embrace of business in the Premier’s state of the state address was unsavoury and imbalanced. It misses the mark as the government dumped Tasmanians to fall upon the neck of business interests and big corporates. We know where the government is getting its ideas. It does not take much to connect the dots between the lurch to the far right in the US and the government’s ridiculous brainwaves that cutting public service jobs, giving in to the too-often self‑interested demands of business and selling off precious Tasmanian assets might be a good thing. It is straight out of the Trump‑Musk playbook.
I have to ask who the government is here for. Who is it the Liberal government has in mind when figuring out is policies. It should be the people of Tasmania, but scrape away the veneer of faux care that they weave into their speeches and listen closely to the words the Premier spoke, and it is business, profit. More business and more profit is what the government really cares about. The lived experience of Tasmanians falls far down the list of Government priorities.
There is another giveaway about the government’s priorities, that is a very obvious silence in the Premier’s address. I am not talking about actual silence, I am talking about what the Premier did not say. He may have filled a very short 25 minutes with one buzzword after another, but what the Premier did not say speaks volumes. Looking back over the Hansard, there are three short paragraphs in the Premier’s address that provide the briefest of overviews of a few cherry‑picked improvements the government can lay claim to, as if by sliding quickly across the surface of state happenings, Tasmanians will not notice the government’s glaring failures. Well, I have spent the summer hearing from people in Bass, and Tasmanians most definitely are noticing the government’s glaring failures. My office has received e-mail after message after phone call from people who do not know where else to turn when their needs are not met by services. I have heard story after story about people waiting and waiting for essential healthcare, gastroscopies, knee replacements, cardiac interventions, outpatient appointments.
The Premier boasts that ambulance ramping times have been cut. The quiet bit he does not say is that Tasmanians are still waiting longer for ambulances to arrive, they are sitting in emergency departments for longer, they are waiting longer for essential surgery and every one of those indicators has gone backwards in the last 12 months. Sure, the government can celebrate the success of reduced ramping times but it also needs to be honest about the things that are not going well.
Tasmanians deserve a true and complete evaluation of where we are at, which brings me to the Premier’s claims around employing 2300 new healthcare workers. While it may be true that there are 2300 new workers in our health system, unions continue to highlight the huge numbers of vacancies across health, including 390 unfilled nursing positions at the Royal Hobart Hospital alone. As the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation say in their ongoing campaign, ‘Safe hospitals save lives.’ The government needs to find solutions that ensure every shift has the number of staff required. That is what makes the government’s newly-announced hiring freeze so appalling. The health service is already struggling under the weight of staffing vacancies. So is the child safety service and now this government wants to erase those vacancies by erasing the positions. When staff who are essential to these services leave, the government just wants to stop replacing them. While the government refused to define essential and non-essential staff or ‘frontline’ and ‘backend’ staff, one has to assume that every single role or position is being considered as a potential job that can be cut. This is an outrageous betrayal of public service workers and Tasmanians.
I want to speak here about something we would all rather forget. The government talks about COVID as if it is in the past and we all want to believe that and in some ways it is. We will not go back to lockdowns and the economic support that went along with those lockdowns, but COVID is still here. People are still catching it, developing long-COVID and experiencing debilitating long-term effects including a whole range of chronic diseases. I have been hearing from people going through this right now and the risk of those long-term effects increases with every repeat infection a person experiences. COVID is still having an impact and the government would do well to pay attention to this. There is a need to continue measuring infection rates. There is a need to keep up with the research on COVID sequelae and to monitor how many Tasmanians are experiencing this. The government needs to educate Tasmanians about the ongoing risk of COVID and how the risk of an infection can be reduced, as well as following the lead of other states and working towards clean air standards in Tasmania.
Looking beyond the health system, the state of children and youth services within Tasmania is also notable. Here we have another service we know is under immense pressure. While some progress has been made on recruitment, there are significant staff vacancies across the state. In addition, there are many staff on long-term personal leave or workers compensation, further exacerbating the situation and leaving unsafe gaps in the service. Too many children do not have an allocated case manager and significant numbers of children are not seeing their case manager within recommended timeframes. The impact of this is not theoretical. It is having very real effects and vulnerable children are being impacted in negative ways as they languish without direction or support and these effects will linger, potentially shaping the lives of these children into adulthood. Leading a government with heart means ensuring children’s services have the workers they need to do the best by our children, meeting their needs and setting them up for a positive future.
What about the state of Ashley Youth Detention Centre? It is still open, despite all recommendations that it be closed as soon as possible, despite the Government’s commitments to close it by late last year. Ashley Youth Detention Centre has been found to be unsafe and yet here we are, still without alternatives, still locking up children in there and not just locking them up, but locking up more of them, with documented increases in the number of young people detained over recent years. It is beyond time for Ashley to be closed and until that happens, we cannot be proud of the state of our state.
We are not just locking up more children. We are also locking up more adults in Tasmania. We are locking them up and we are locking them down. The average number of people in Tasmanian prisons increased by 13 per cent in the last year, the rate of incarceration for Aboriginal Tasmanians is increasing under the Liberal government, and Tasmania has the lowest average out-of-cell hours per day in the country. From January through to mid‑December last year, there was a lockdown in one or more units at the Risdon complex every single day.
Meanwhile, the Liberal government has stated repeatedly that people detained in Tasmanian prisons do not need whistleblower protections. I have a constant stream of people contacting my office with reports of mistreatment in our prisons. I have raised these concerns with the Minister for Corrections and Rehabilitation and been told, ‘Nothing to see here. People can already safely raise their complaints.’ I then point people towards the Custodial Inspector, but the Custodial Inspector himself made it clear last year that protections for people who report mistreatment in our prisons are insufficient. Given more people are being detained in our prisons and enduring higher levels of lockdowns, it is reasonable to assume that there will be mistreatment that needs reporting to the Custodial Inspector. Even if the numbers of reports are small, there must be a safe way for people to raise concerns and make complaints. Whistleblower protections for people who are detained in our prisons or work in our prisons need to be legislated to ensure Tasmania is doing all we can to protect the human rights of every person in our state.
That is also why we need to ensure sufficient funding of the Tasmanian National Preventive Mechanism (NPM). Australia is party to the international Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. That means we have an obligation to ensure no one in Tasmania is deprived of their personal liberty. The NPM is responsible for visiting all locations where liberty may be taken from people and for monitoring the treatment of people. However, the Tasmanian NPM is not funded to fulfil its inspection role, despite the increased inspection obligations that have now come into effect across the state. The government must fund the NPM to fulfil its obligations so we can be confident the rights of all Tasmanians are being respected.
I have outlined a range of issues currently playing out across Tasmania. For many of these issues, we already know the solution. We know that when we offer timely, appropriate support that meets the needs of Tasmanian families, we can prevent many of the problems we see occurring across our state. Children who live in safe families are less likely to come into contact with youth justice. Families with secure housing, sufficient food and support when they need it are more likely to be safe for children. The level of investment in our communities feeds indirectly to outcomes such as the number of children in out-of-home care, the number of children in contact with youth justice and the number of people in our prisons.
The community services sector does a power of work supporting people in need across Tasmania. However, from speaking with organisations, it is clear that they are not receiving the necessary funding to meet all the need. This is creating a cascade of greater need and costing people the opportunity to live happy, healthy lives.
Instead of going on and on about investing in business, which has the freedom and resources to stand on its own two feet, the government should be investing in people. People are the heart of our state, not the economy. We would do well to care for them, support them, smooth the roughness of their lives and lift them up. That is what governments can and should do.
Turning to the electorate of Bass, I will start by talking about York Park Stadium. What a beautiful ground we have in the north of the state at York Park. By all accounts, it is one of the AFL’s best playing surfaces in the country. Add to that its long association and history with football in this state, and it makes sense that York Park Stadium is where we base our Tasmanian AFL team. The development application for the $130 million upgrades has just been released and the planned transformation of the grounds will create an incredible venue for AFL in this state. I have spoken to a lot of people in Bass and overwhelmingly they tell me they do not want the Macquarie Point Stadium. A majority of people do not want it, we do not need it and we certainly cannot afford it. If the government was serious about addressing the financial situation we find ourselves in as a state, they would ditch the stadium and focus on an AFL base in the north of the state, saving a whole lot of money along the way.
The government has stated repeatedly this week that they support high-vis, yet when it comes to workers in a major industrial employer in Bass, the government has been strangely silent. I am talking about Liberty Bell Bay, an industrial plant in Bass that employs hundreds of people. Liberty Bell Bay is owned by GFG Alliance, a company who also own Whyalla steelworks in South Australia. Two weeks ago, in the face of the enormous debts owed by Whyalla Steelworks owners GFG Alliance, the South Australian government took the extraordinary step of placing the steelworks into administration and securing jobs for workers at the plant. On Monday of this week, KordaMentha revealed GFG Alliance owes $1.34 billion, including $567 million in debts being claimed by other GFG Alliance Group entities.
Whyalla Steelworks going into administration raises serious questions about the future of Tasmania’s Liberty Bell Bay facility. Is Liberty Bell Bay owed significant amounts of money as part of the terrible financial situation at Whyalla Steelworks? What is the government doing to ensure the future of Liberty Bell Bay is secure? The Premier and Treasurer are keen to tell us all week that private business does things well and they love private business. What have they done about Bell Bay? Have they had any conversations with the Premier of South Australia or the Prime Minister about the financial situation of GFG Alliance? What do they know about the financial status of Liberty Bell Bay? Is Liberty Bell Bay at risk? If it is, will the government step in like the South Australian government in an act of reverse privatisation, if you will, and secure the jobs of hard‑working Tasmanians?
Forests are not something one traditionally associates with Bass, but there are areas of remnant old growth that are unique and need protection. The dry forests of the north-east are every bit as significant as the wet eucalypt forests of the south-west, and are home to incredible flora and fauna not found anywhere else in the state or indeed the world. Creatures like the Mt Arthur burrowing crayfish, a threatened species found only in the north‑east forests around Lilydale. These forests are home to towering Eucalyptus delegatensis trees, masked owls, Tasmanian devils and rare flora like the Mt Arthur boronia. These forests form the backdrop of one of Tasmania’s most popular cultural events, Panama Festival.
Locals have grown up walking the hiking tracks that run through these forests and know them as well as they know their own backyard. However, where the community sees wonder, the Liberal government sees woodchips. The Liberals’ relentless assault on the environment continues with their announcement that they intend to open up 39,000 hectares of future reserve land for logging. Many of these parcels on the chopping block are in my electorate of Bass. These beloved forests are known by Forestry Tasmania as Lots 43, 44 and 45. They are on the list to be converted to permanent timber production zone land. Giant swamp gums and stringybarks will be converted from threatened species habitat to pulpwood.
A grassroots community-driven campaign forced Forestry Tasmania out of these forests in the early 2000s. Some members of this Chamber will remember this campaign well. I have met with these community members and they are ready and willing to fight to save their forests again, as are community members across Bass who do not want to see their beloved forests raised to the ground.
The problems with the salmon fish-farming industry in the south of the state have been on full display on our beaches over the last few weeks. However, fish farms are not confined to the south of the state. There are salmon pens located on Kanamaluka/Tamar River. This summer, severe heatwaves covered the state. While we have sweltered in our houses, introduced Atlantic salmon sweltered in pens in the warming waters of Kanamaluka/Tamar River. The difference is people can turn on air conditioning if we need to, but not the salmon. They remain stuck in their pens with no escape.
Marine heatwaves are going to continue to worsen as a result of climate change. From 2040, waters across north-eastern Tasmania will exceed 19°Celcius for nearly 100 days a year. Atlantic salmon cannot survive in these temperatures. Despite this, the government and industry are in lockstep, wanting to expand salmon farming leases across the Tamar, condemning millions of fish to boil to death in heating waters for the pursuit of short‑term profit. These fish farms pollute the waters of the Tamar, adding excess nutrients in the water, which has flow‑on effects for native marine species. Neighbours to the Rowella fish farm have reported slime and fish guts washing up on the shore of their properties. What a beautiful vision for the future of Kanamaluka: rotting fish guts and corpses lining the shore.
Warming waters, heat waves and floods are all predicted to increase in the north‑east due to climate change. I talk regularly with people in Bass who are desperate for their leadership to take meaningful action on climate change. The Rockliff government has been missing in action. We have not seen any transformational action from this government on climate. We have seen tinkering around the edges for a handful of industry sectors while the big emitters like forestry get handed a licence to keep polluting.
The Premier was silent on so many of these important issues currently affecting our state, providing a notably lopsided, light‑on assessment in his address. It would have been good for the Premier to give us a fuller, more accurate picture of how things currently are in Tasmania. We have much to cherish here, but there is also much work to do. The Greens call on the government to place Tasmanians at the heart of their policies and actions and truly work for the best interests of the people and the wild places of our state.
