Ms ROSOL (Bass) – Deputy Speaker, I rise to speak to the state of the state. Listening to the speeches in this place, you would be hard pressed to know what the state of the state really is, given there are so many different versions being put forward here. It is wonderful and everything is grand, it is terrible and we are in a perilous state, it’s both wonderful and terrible with opportunities and risks before us.
Of course, the situation in Tasmania is complex, with more than one thing true at the same time: Tasmania is in a perilous state and there is a lot of goodness to be found here. What we can’t afford to do right now is engage in reductionism that oversimplifies things or selective thinking that ignores the fuller picture and doesn’t tell the whole story of our state, but that’s exactly what I heard the Premier do in his state of the state address last week: a super selective focus on what he wants us to believe is happening in Tasmania and a failure to come to grips with what is really happening. I mean, he didn’t even mention the word ‘debt’ once, just a euphemistic reference to the ‘Ongoing challenges we face with our budget position’ and a few brief words about how the government will manage this – Phew ee, Treasury is ringing the alarm bell about the state’s current trajectory as we careen towards staggering levels of debt that are likely to take us over a fiscal cliff and the Premier refers to it almost in passing. The version of Tasmania the Premier presented in his state of the state address was what I would describe as thin or lacking in substance, a caricature even. It was light on detail and getting to grips with reality and big on oversimplification and empty slogans.
You could pot it down to this: build, build, build and everything will be solved. Build more buildings, build more roads, build the stadium, build Tasmania and all this will build the economy and will have fixed all our problems, as if building more buildings is going to turn the state’s finances around. As if a stadium or other hugely expensive infrastructure projects are going to save us. As if bricks and mortar somehow have magical benefits that flow down and transform the lives of people who cannot afford food or fuel or feel like their lives are falling apart in the middle of crises on every front. It doesn’t work like that. Even Treasury has stated that we cannot grow our way out of our current pathway to extreme debt, so Tasmanians need a Premier who can grapple with the complex and juggle more than one true thing at a time but what they got in the state of the state was a Premier who went for simplistic and unimaginative and boring same old, same old, because we’ve heard all this before, right?
All this government know is how to spend money that doesn’t achieve much for the state. Of course, they tell us it achieves a lot, but in truth, it’s this reckless spending that has pitched us right into debt. Too many election promises, too much unnecessary infrastructure, too much mismanagement of the state’s finances, all the while pulling the wool over Tasmanian’s eyes and telling them all this spending on building is exactly what they need because it grows the economy and they will all benefit. It’s simply not true, because what the government does is give big money for building to their business mates, the rich people who already have enough money and could build their own buildings. Call it state capture, call it elite cartels, as people in other countries are, or simply call it giving money to rich mates who don’t need it – it’s wrong.
Take my electorate of Bass, for example. Recently, the government announced their plan to just give away $10 million to an independently wealthy developer to help his project along. They call it an investment. I call it an unnecessary gift, because the government’s business mates employ a few people, maybe even a few hundred people, for the length of the project, and meanwhile their business profits are boosted, their portfolios grow, and what was our collective wealth as all Tasmanians concentrates in the hands of a few and the majority miss out.
If the government wants to talk about growth in Tasmania’s economy, if they want to tell the truth about what’s happening here, maybe they should talk about the growth in inequality in our economy, because the cold, hard truth is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer and the gap between them is growing ever wider. Close to 15 per cent of Tasmanians now live in poverty and one in six Tasmanian children lives in poverty. That’s 18,900 children, by the way. These are terrible statistics and staggering figures, because behind each percentage point lies thousands of people who are going hungry and can’t afford a place to live, and their numbers are growing.
According to TasCOSS, the number of people living in poverty grew 13 times faster than our population. That’s economic growth of a terrible kind happening right here in Tasmania. So all the while the Liberal government has been claiming to be growing the economy with all their building and building, what has actually been growing is poverty. The government has frittered away so much money on building unnecessary things, they can’t even find the money to help support Tasmanians who can’t afford food and housing.
The government can say what they like about the importance of building, but unless they’re building social and affordable housing, or new hospitals, or real, tangible things that Tasmanian people need, they’re not really building Tasmania. They’re just building the nest eggs of a few select, wealthy developers who already have plenty of money, while real Tasmanians suffer as a result of the cost of living crisis and shrivelling essential service provision that isn’t keeping up with demand.
The cheek of this government to stand in here and repeatedly tell Tasmanians everything is fine because they have it all in hand, when they have singlehandedly dragged our economy into more and more debt while more and more Tasmanians struggle to get by, is shameful. They’ve dragged our economy into wrack and ruin but repeated their misleading narrative of what a good job they’re doing so many times, shouted it into the social media echo chambers where it’s bounced around and magnified itself so often that it’s taken on a life of its own. They’ve used taxpayer money to get the media to repeat their story. They’ve done all of that so often that people have ended up believing them. This government has done a terrible job and yet they have the gall to tell us that everything is fine.
All this, of course, is straight out of the neoliberal playbook. Unhindered profit and economic growth are everything in neoliberalism. Individualism trumps the collective. It was right there in the Premier’s speech last week when he said:
We will not be punishing people for working hard and seeking a better life. We are a government that seeks to incentivise, not inhibit or demotivate.
It’s all about the individual and what they can achieve for themselves for this government.
I’m not decrying hard work. I’ve worked hard all my life and working hard is good and right. Being productive is healthy and satisfying, and that’s a good thing, but when we measure a person’s value and worth by how much money they can earn, that’s not healthy. The Premier’s words are a judgement – if you can work, you have value and worth and we will reward you, but too bad if you can’t work hard, folks. Too bad if you’re too young, too sick, too depressed, too anxious, too traumatised, or too disadvantaged. You’re on your own because you don’t really deserve help if you can’t work hard. If, in your poverty and despair, you turn to crime out of desperation, too bad for you too, we’ll just lock you up.
Neoliberalism is no friend of Tasmanians. It’s cold, hard, callous and cruel. It idolises money and steals our souls. In giving in to the idea that life is about nothing more than making money, we are a dried-up, shrivelled version of what we could be, because true value and worth is not measured in dollars. Neoliberalism, and this government, view money as a tool to get more money, and we all become cogs in the machine that makes this happen, but really, money is just a tool that helps us get what we need. That’s all. We all need enough to be able to eat and afford a place to live, enough to get around and enjoy good times, and look after our health. But we don’t need to keep accumulating it, like the Liberal government is helping some people in Tasmania do. That’s the rich getting richer off the government’s largesse to developers, with more money concentrating in their hands while everyone else misses out.
What really is of value and worth in Tasmania? Where do our riches really lie? I would say they lie in our people and in our beautiful, precious, threatened environment. That’s where the true value of Tasmania is found, and that’s where we should be building this state – our people and our environment. Tasmania is full of living, breathing, wonderful people – full colour, rich with diversity, each person with their own story and experiences, difficulties and delights, passions and hopes, and each one doing their best, often in really tough circumstances.
While this government focuses on building, and effectively pouring cement, I’m going to focus now on some of the people and places that matter in our state, and more particularly in my electorate of Bass.
One of the joys of my role is getting out and meeting people all over the place. I’m often quite deeply moved by the stories I hear, and the often beautiful and always meaningful work that people are doing in their corner of our little island. I want to share some of these people and groups, who are the real heartbeat, the real powerhouse, of our state.
Take for example, Grow Waverley, a community initiative that grew out of one person’s care for her community. She set up a stall outside her house and placed excess produce from her garden out for neighbours. This grew into an exchange that was so well received and utilised that even after she moved out of Waverley, the community kept it going. It’s at a new location now, and Grow Waverley continues to provide food for many.
I acknowledge the work of Relationships Australia in this space as well. Last year they finalised a project that was about a connected and respectful Tasmania. They visited dozens of communities across the state and listened to what they want and need, and they heard that people want a connected and respectful Tasmania where everyone is valued, heard and safe, and has a community around them. That was what was important to people.
There are so many organisations doing beautiful community work. Recently I visited the Northern Suburbs Community Centre and caught up with people there. I’ve also been out to Tresca Community Centre in Exeter and met the people working there. These organisations and many others sit within their community providing care and support in response to the very real needs of their communities. They are attuned and responsive to their communities and through focused, appropriate support, they strengthen the people they work with. They provide a space for people to meet and connect with each other. Last week when I was at lunch at the Northern Suburbs Community Centre, it was nice to sit with people, and it wasn’t just about the food and the meal, it was also about the friendship and relationships that people had together.
I’ve also been touched by the Beauty Point Tourist Park Residents Association. They have worked tirelessly for legislation to protect long-term residents of parks in difficult and awful circumstances. They’ve joined together, supported one another and found a way through. All around Bass, and indeed all around Tasmania, this story is multiplied. There are groups of people who know where our real strength lies as a state, and they are doing all they can to hold onto that and to care for each other. They deserve support and investment in that work.
Recently I attended a house concert hosted by local music duo Blushmoor. We gathered for food and conversation and sat entranced by the beautiful music, which was capped off with a reading by an interstate author. It was a heartwarming evening that left us all feeling lifted and hopeful. There is the strength and the value in our community. As well as this concert, I’ve been to the 2026 season launch of IO Performance, and I’m looking forward to attending one of their plays this week. Party in the Paddock was a highlight of February that provided a good time and lifted the spirits of everyone there. Just this Saturday, I attended Spud Fest in Scottsdale. It was a beautiful, relaxed, friendly event in the sun that celebrated potatoes and community in the north east of the state.
The arts and community events are important to our communities and they’re important to personal health. They provide succour; they feed our soul and they often feed our stomachs with deliciousness too. They are what grow us as people and strengthen and sustain us in this chaotic, uncertain world we live in. In Tasmania, in the arts and in events that gather us together, lie strength and something worth growing and investing in.
The Relationships Australia connected and respectful Tasmania project that I referred to earlier found that people across the state have an incredible sense of pride in place and connection to place. Tasmanians love our state; they love our forests; they love our environment; they love our beaches; and I see that as I move around Bass.
The Lilydale and Patersonia communities love their homes and they love the forests that surround them and they care for them. They’re like unofficial custodians of these places, watching over them and defending them, and I’ve seen them rally together in beautiful ways to protect their local forests. It’s not just the forests that people care for. I’ve met with people who know more about native reeds and weeds in coastal lands than I will ever know, and they quietly work in their community to protect and restore the coastline near their home.
Then there are groups spread all over the state who gather together to protect the environment that’s around them: groups like those in the north east who love where they live and are currently working hard to have a say on huge projects proposed near them, working to ensure proper process is followed, and that wildlife and habitat is cared for and protected.
Taken together, each of these cameos create the collective story of our state, the narrative of how wonderful we are together. Together, they provide a rich, colourful reflection of who we are and how we are, where we are and what we are, and this is where we should be investing. The true wealth of this state, as I said earlier, is its people and its places. Somewhere along the way, we’ve lost sight of their importance. We’ve taken that beautiful heart of our state out, and put a bag of money in its place. That’s not healthy. That’s not growth as a state. That’s a shrivelling of who we are.
Our people and beautiful places, not money, are of the highest value and importance in Tasmania. They are the state of the state stories that really need to be told in this place: the story of the people, the everyday, salt of the earth Tasmanians who are all doing their best. Their hopes, their fears, their achievements, their needs. They make us who we are, and they are what we should be focusing on building here.
Our people and our beautiful places are where the government should be investing, and that means investing and growing what they each need: a healthy environment that we all rely on to live well, by putting in place protections like ending native forest logging and cleaning up salmon farming; investing in health services that actually meet the level of need so people aren’t left waiting for ambulances or surgery; investing in community services and support, so people have what they need, particularly in these times of increasing fuel prices that are placing a great deal of pressure on people; investing in our children so they grow up safe and well; closing Ashley Youth Detention Centre so that children are safe; and funding alternatives to youth detention.
This isn’t rocket science. It makes sense that if we want people to flourish and grow, if we want a healthy state, we have to make sure they have a healthy environment to live in and all they need to function. That’s the kind of investment that grows our state, and ultimately, it sets us on a path to a healthier, happier state where we eventually need less services. If we want to grow our state and grow our economy, start there: with the environment and the people. They are where we must invest and build and grow, because they are the true value and worth. Let’s never lose sight of that and never stop working for them and never stop ensuring our environment is protected and cared for, and people have what they need to live well.
