Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Hansard source

The electorate of Braddon—the north-west, west coast and King Island in Tasmania—is a hardworking, no-nonsense electorate. We're the engine room of the Tasmanian economy. In fact, 52½ per cent of Tasmania's GDP comes out of our resource sector down the west coast. Our thriving agriculture sector, our forestry sector and our fishing and tourism sectors all contribute equally to Tasmania's GDP, but they've been through the works. They've been through quite a bit of trauma in recent times. They've been through COVID, like the rest of the country. They've been through a wet winter, and, finally, in the last couple of weeks, they've endured a devastating flood in my region. I want to acknowledge all the SES, emergency services and volunteers that have helped out during that localised campaign. They've done it tough and they've had a kick in the guts.

That community has bound together, worked together, helped each other out, lifted each other up and worked in conjunction with regional SES and other organisations to ensure that people are looked after. But they received another a kick in the guts last night, when they read the budget. They felt they had been disenfranchised and left out. We're a regional electorate. We're a rural electorate. We come from the bush. My electorate, along with me and many others on this side, feel that the bush was abandoned last night.

As well as being abandoned, they were also insulted, because this is where the food comes from for our region; this is where our income comes from. And it's impacted in many different ways. If you want to know how it's impacted them and what this budget means for them, we can put it very simply: first of all, your cost of living is going up. That is undeniable. That is a fact. Your power prices are going to go up. Just on that, I received an email from a constituent. He's a farmer and a mate of mine. He grows seed potatoes and has a coolstore in the Latrobe area. His name's Andrew. His last bill from his energy supplier was $26,000 for the month of June, and his power bill for the month of July has increased from $26,000 to $63,000. It's a significant increase that will probably put him out of business, considering the damage that's occurred during the floods. From $26,000 to $63,000 in a month—and that's going to get worse.

When we talk about business, particularly agribusiness, advanced manufacturing, forestry and those hardworking jobs where people take risks and put their livelihoods on the line, we know business confidence is king. As soon as that confidence is knocked, then it's infectious, and other businesses are also infected by that lack of confidence. Sooner or later that builds into the stage where people give up. They sell their business and walk off. And I don't want to see that in my great electorate of Braddon.

They're hurting right now, and they need instant relief. The local government organisations and local councils need money to drive their bottom line, when they're putting out excavators and crews to fix the local bridges, culverts and infrastructure that they so desperately need to get the vehicles and the public through. They need assistance now. It's an insult, really, to offer them $1,000 or $400 for every child. We need those roads and that critical infrastructure fixed up, and the government needs to act now.

If you want to know what else is impacting my producers in Tasmania, it's diesel prices and energy prices, as I alluded to earlier. The disparity between diesel fuel and ULP derivatives is up to 50c per litre. Diesel, which was traditionally cheaper than ULP, now costs 50c more. Tasmania runs on diesel. Our trucks, our mineral industry, our resources sector, our logistics—everything comes by boat, and they've got diesel engines. The gas price is affecting the removal of sulphur out of that diesel, and that's what's causing the disparity. And they're going to see more of this, because no parameters have been taken. Instead of fixing the problem and finding a way out, all we're doing is the blame game, and it's got to stop. Look after the bush.

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