Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) | Link to this | Hansard source

Tasmanians have every right to feel disappointed by the budget that was delivered on Tuesday night. Indeed, nothing in the budget makes up for Scott Morrison's decade of attacks on wages, the lack of job security Tasmanians are experiencing and the attacks on Medicare. Nothing really makes up for this decade of hard times that Tasmanians and Australians have had. There are some small cost-of-living measures, but they're all designed just to get through the next six weeks and they're all about Scott Morrison's job. They're not about the people of Tasmania. Indeed, there's nothing in the budget to fix Tasmania's health crisis.

There's nothing in the budget that will deal with the long-term housing issue that we have. We have a really serious housing issue in Tasmania; we need supply of housing and we need it now. The state government has finally come on board and adopted some of federal Labor's policies in relation to the housing fund, but they too still have issues in trying to get the houses built. We have a really serious issue here. Today, again, the front page of our local paper is about the cost of rent in greater Hobart. It has been a really serious issue for months and months now. People may not believe it, but Hobart has the second-highest housing unaffordability in the country. It is really difficult in Tasmania, if you're renting or if you're trying to buy a house, to get a roof over your head. My office is contacted every week by people who can't get a home.

Labor's Housing Australia Future Fund is a good idea. The other side have stolen some of our good ideas, but on Tuesday night they didn't steal our idea for 30,000 social and affordable homes in the first five years. If you look at it on a population basis, that would be over 1,000 social and affordable homes in my home state of Tasmania—and it is badly needed. We had the member for Bass talking about the budget on radio today, and even she knows. She said, 'You also have to do other things over the longer term. There's an investment needed in social and affordable housing.' Yes, there is. It's a shame that the government she is part of is not delivering on this. That is the problem with the government. It's always about announcements. They're always pretending they're doing something. They're doing a little bit, but they're not actually solving the problem. The member for Bass goes on the radio and says this is a very serious issue, but the government she is part of is doing nothing about it.

We've got the new $7.1 billion regional fund for regional economies, but, again, Tasmania misses out completely. What a sad indictment it is of the current member for Braddon and the current member for Bass that Tasmania can't get a single cent of that $7 billion. It's really disappointing. Tasmanians are going, 'Okay, the budget's been and gone; let's move on,' because there's nothing to excite them. There's no proper plan for how Tasmania will prosper.