Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After a decade and more of Liberal leadership, we are rapidly approaching a staggering $13 billion in state debt in my home state of Tasmania. This isn't just a number on a government balance sheet. It's a burden, heavy and real, that every Tasmanian will bear for generations to come. It will shape our future, define the choices we can make and limit the dreams we can pursue. When we talk about the state debt, we're talking about the money borrowed to pay for government spending, whether it's hospitals, schools, roads or public services, and what we can tell is that they have the same issues the opposition had when they were in government: no investment in health, no investment in schools and not the investment that we need in housing, including affordable housing for those who need it.

What we've got now are some of the worst figures for chronic illnesses in the country. We have our schoolchildren who are not getting the education that they need, because that investment has not been made in teachers. In fact, you've got the teachers out on strike, as you have with other public servants. What we are seeing now is that that excessive borrowing has put us into such a state that future governments will have to pay the price. It is going to be ordinary Australians. It's our children, our grandchildren and every hardworking family struggling to get ahead. Debt at this level means more of our taxes will go towards interest payments, not to improving our schools, our hospitals and our kids' future. It means less flexibility to respond to emerging challenges, whether they are natural disasters, health crises or economic downturns. It means we are mortgaging our future and, more importantly, mortgaging our kids' and our grandkids' futures. It's narrowing their options.

The Tasmanian Liberals are responsible for this mess, just like those on that side, having spent almost 10 years on government benches, left us mess after mess after mess to clean up, whether it was around not building enough houses, cutting funding to hospitals, cutting TAFE and training or not doing anything to keep manufacturing on our shores. That's the methodology that has been followed by the state government. They are very poor financial managers.

You could not write a movie or a series about the disaster of the Tasmanian Liberal government ordering two new Spirits, which are the lifeblood of getting people on and off the island—our trade, our tourists coming in, our caravanners. They ordered the two ships but—oops!—forgot to build berthing facilities for them. So they spent tens of millions of dollars having them anchored up in Scotland. We now finally have one back in Tasmania, which when you go to Hobart is a constant reminder of the disaster, the financial mismanagement and the arrogance of this government that they have spent tens of millions of dollars—in fact, hundreds of millions of dollars—and we've got nothing to show for it except being the laughing-stock of the nation.

That doesn't go anywhere near talking about the icebreaker that was built under their watch—the icebreaker, our connection to the Antarctic. What did they do? They didn't check to see if the ship was going to be able to go under the bridge in Hobart so it could refuel. So what has to happen? It costs more money to go all the way to Burnie to refuel. That is the incompetence of this government. They have taken what they thought was the short-term fix for political expediency at the cost of the Tasmanian taxpayer. Renowned economist Saul Eslake has been vocal on this issue. He has pointed out that the Tasmanian budgetary position is now worse than at any time since the early 1990s. Eslake notes that the size of the debt is not just a reflection of COVID-era spending or one-off infrastructure investments; it's the result of persistent deficits year after year under Liberal mismanagement. That's what Tasmania has from that government in my home state, a reflection of what you guys did with the mess you left— (Time expired)