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

I rise this evening to express my grave concerns about plans to move weather forecasting from Tasmania to Melbourne and Brisbane. Under this dysfunctional Liberal government, critical jobs at the Bureau of Meteorology are in danger of being cut in my home state—if not now, then in the future. In this country currently, the chaos is so rife within the government that you cannot trust anything that the Prime Minister says. Leaking is now the norm on that side. First, we had the $7.6 billion so-called plan for infrastructure leak, then we had the $4.4 billion pathetic bribe to the Catholic education sector leak, and now we have the GST slanging match between Mr Morrison and the Tasmanian Treasurer, Peter Gutwein. I wonder what will be next. It is a guarantee that there will be more.

I cannot make sense of any decision to move the expertise of local Tasmanian forecasters to Melbourne or Brisbane. These are short-sighted plans that are absolutely not in the best interests of Tasmania. It is also terrible news for the 15 to 20 highly skilled and respected employees who will be impacted by the changes. Mainland forecasters will have absolutely no Tasmanian local knowledge and will not be able to accurately provide decent weather forecasts. We know from experience that, once these resources are taken away, they are unlikely to come back. The loss of local knowledge is extremely concerning for the Tasmanian industries that rely on timely and accurate access to weather information, including fisheries and aquaculture, agriculture, renewable energy generation, recreational fishers and bushwalkers. They will all be impacted.

Our weather forecasts have been crucial in extreme weather events, without which many lives would have been lost at sea, in the air and in the Central Highlands. Concerns have also been raised about the risk to the public during natural disasters such as bushfires and floods. The Police Association of Tasmania said:

The closing of Bureau of Meteorology local forecasting will put Tasmanian lives at risk.

The United Firefighters Union of Australia said it was 'absolutely crucial to have local knowledge' during reduction burns and high fire danger periods. There have also been many occurrences of extreme fire weather, often in different parts of the state at the same time, and that demands a local forecaster to provide detailed data for specific regions. To remove access to local knowledge is reckless and dangerous. It will put Tasmanian lives at risk on the water and on the land. This government does not care about Tasmania. All Tasmania has received from this Liberal government is downgrading and insults.

Under this government's watch, Australia Post has been downgraded and now Tasmania has to wait up to five days for mail to arrive in their mailbox. Under this government, Centrelink services have been downgraded, costing the economy and jobs. Under this government, Australian taxation jobs have been downgraded. The federal Labor team are pushing really hard to stop this from happening, and I urge the Tasmanian Liberal Senate team to join with federal Labor and save these Tasmanian jobs, or is this just another case of the Liberal Senate team having no influence in Canberra?

The Liberals talk up keeping and creating jobs in regional Australia. This decision flies in the face of that. The Liberals have repeatedly said that they want more federal jobs in Tasmania, but all they've done since they've been in government is take away jobs from our state. Whether they're jobs at the Bureau, whether they're jobs at Centrelink and Human Services, whether they're jobs at the Australian Antarctic Division or whether they're jobs at the Australian Taxation Office, all the federal Liberals have done is cut jobs from our state. It's time Tasmanians had a government that cares about them and that reflects in its policy direction the issues and the concerns of the Tasmanian people. I'd have to agree with the Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, because in his own words, he referred to his team, his government, as the muppet show.