Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader (Tasmania)) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. I will continue. The procurement guidelines were breached, and private companies were engaged on contracts worth $184 million before paperwork was signed and without appropriate value-for-money assessments. This now disgraced ex-ad man used to be in charge of Treasury, and he is now the Prime Minister. No wonder he has been so inconsistent on the GST. This is a Prime Minister who is anti accountability and anti transparency. Clearly, he makes decisions on the run. He has thought bubbles without consultation. He actually became Prime Minister this way.

Tasmania relies heavily on the GST, and I will always stand up for my home state. The GST goes to the heart of how you can actually provide, through your governments, to the people of Tasmania. That includes the funding of our hospitals. As my good colleague Senator Urquhart outlined, we have people sleeping on the floor in our accident and emergency departments, in hospital after hospital, because of this government's cuts to hospitals. Our schools have been cut. All of this relates back to the GST. We have the most ageing population. We have a population with, unfortunately, some of the worst chronic diseases in this country. We rely on our portion of the GST. It is irrelevant whether it is a Liberal or Labor state government. We need that money for our residents, for all Tasmanians. So I will of course stand up and call out this Prime Minister for his backflips, his thought bubbles, his lack of consultation, his lack of empathy for those people who can least afford it. I will never apologise for standing up for my home state. That's what I was elected to do. If the Prime Minister and those opposite don't like to have his behaviour called out—it goes to good judgement, because leopards never change their spots—then I will do that. I will take a reprimand any day of the week when it comes to standing up for what I believe all Australians should know and understand about this Prime Minister and this government.

He had another backdown only yesterday, where he cut the funding to Foodbank Australia. Why did he back down? Because he was getting political heat—even from the National Farmers' Federation. That's the calibre of this Prime Minister. He was trying to outscrooge Mr Scrooge on the eve of Christmas. I will never apologise for saying that. Any cuts to the GST revenue will have a devastating impact on service delivery in regional areas of my home state. They have already been struggling under the Abbot/Turnbull/Morrison government and their cuts to education and health, as I outlined earlier. There has been so much division from those opposite. Clearly, we know that they have tried to instil the infighting among themselves into the rest of the nation by pitting one state and territory against another. That's not the Australian way. A Prime Minister should be bringing the country together.

Our hospitals are in crisis. Our schools are already under-resourced after years of Liberal cuts. Today we hear from the Institute of Health and Welfare that Tasmania has a higher prevalence of mental health risk, more than any other state in this country, and needs funding. We had an inquiry that outlined that—that 14-year-old Tasmanian having to wait 18 months to get psychological assistance and counselling. That's not good enough. That comes back to the lack of GST and the cuts made to health by this government. The funding for mental health in Tasmania is the worst of any state. Currently, Tasmania can't provide the national standard of care needed for people suffering a mental illness.

I know that senators in this place have been working very hard through shadow responsibilities to make sure that Australians are aware of the need for more money to go into mental health. I was participating in the community affairs committee hearing in Tasmania. We know only too well that Tasmania needs another 50 psychiatric beds just to meet the national average. Tasmania just can't afford to lose even one dollar of GST.

On this side, Labor is proud of its record on the GST. Tasmania's federal parliamentary Labor Party lobbied all four Liberal senators, calling on them to support this amendment which protected the legislation and our state's GST share, which they ultimately did. But during the whole lead-up to that the Liberal Senate team in Tasmania was silent. It seems that Mr Morrison and the Liberals have finally woken up to these concerns, despite repeatedly saying that they would not support a legislative guarantee.

Labor still has reservations about what may occur post 2026-27 if a coalition government is on the Treasury benches after the next election. Can I say once again, Tasmania cannot afford a deal on GST that would impact on our state's ability to deliver the best possible essential services now and into the future. The community knows that Labor will always stand up and fight for our fair share of GST. We know and the community knows—Tasmanians know—that the Liberals won't, because, as shown by their hatred for Medicare, their DNA is not one that actually cares about everyday Tasmanians or Australians. They can't be trusted with the GST and we know they can't be trusted with the economy.