The Liberals are offering Tasmanians hope and giving them reason to be optimistic about the future by addressing cost of living pressures.

Our Roadmap to Recovery and Growth demonstrates the Liberals commitment to keeping costs down for Tasmanians across the spectrum, including on electricity, water and sewerage, car registration and owning a home.

The Liberals will hand back the unfair carbon tax – making Tasmania the only place in Australia where consumers do not have to pay carbon tax on their electricity.

Combined with the Energy Reform proposals we support, which provide a further 12 per cent reduction in power price increases, under a majority Liberal Government electricity price increases will be the lowest in the country, saving households and small businesses more than $300 a year.

The Liberals will also do away with the current moves to impose additional costs for motor registration.

We will make it cheaper to buy or build a first home through a stamp duty concession of $1,000 for purchase and $2,000 for building a first home.

For first home builders, we will also provide a grant of $7000 to assist people to build and own a home.

We will also merge the water and sewerage corporations, thereby putting downward pressure on prices.

Our Roadmap to Recovery and Growth offers Tasmanians hope – hope that the cost of living do not need to keep spiralling as it has been. The Liberals offer Tasmanians an opportunity to keep the lid on cost of living pressures and balance the household budget.

*Source – RACT MR 17 May 2012.

Will Hodgman is Leader of the Opposition

The Liberals’ Roadmap to Recovery and Growth is all about providing Tasmanians with hope and optimism for the future.  It identifies nearly half a billion in savings and revenue measures which will be used to grow the economy and create jobs, deliver essential services and ease the cost of living.

These savings have been identified by reprioritising non-essential spending, getting rid of luxuries we can no longer afford, and maintaining our focus on a smaller and more efficient public service.

An efficient public service

The Liberals remain committed to the overall reduction in public sector positions of 1700 FTEs.

Health, education and police and public safety will be quarantined from further frontline cuts.

Department of State Growth

A majority Hodgman Liberal Government will create more efficient service delivery structures.

Tasmania can no longer afford to sustain nine stand-alone Departments.

We will merge the Department of Economic Development with the Department of Infrastructure, Energy and Resources.

To be known as the Department of State Growth, this new department will have oversight of the key economic drivers of our state like infrastructure, energy, resources – including forestry and mining, economic development and tourism.

With Tasmania in recession and unemployment at a decade high it is clear a new approach is needed to ensure these main economic drivers are refocused onto the task at hand of rebuilding our economy, in the most efficient and effective way possible.

Savings through prioritizing spending

The Liberals will cut spending in less essential areas in order to properly fund essential services like health, education and public safety.

Spending reductions will occur in the following areas:

• 10 Days on the Island

• Ministerial Limousines

• The Government car fleet

• Boards and Committees

• Tasmania Together Board and process

• Passenger Transport Innovation

• Metro Park and Ride

• The Social Inclusion Unit

• Sirolli Enterprises Facilitation

• Climate Council

• Integrity Commission efficiency

The Liberals’ Roadmap to Recovery and Growth is not only fiscally responsible, it provides Tasmanians with hope for a better future. With initiatives to stimulating economic growth and jobs, we will create the wealth to better fund essential services and ease the cost of living.

Will Hodgman is Leader of the Opposition

The Liberals’ Roadmap to Recovery and Growth offers Tasmanians hope for the future – under a majority Liberal Government, essential services in health, education and public safety will be the highest priority.

By reprioritising nearly half a billion dollars in non-essential spending, stimulating the economy and putting vital services first, the Liberals will ensure that Tasmanians have access to the services they deserve, when they need them.

Elective surgery is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. The Liberals will invest an additional $76 million over four years to ensure Tasmanians have the surgery they need. This will enable up to 15,000 extra elective operations in our hospitals.

Restoring elective surgery funding is an investment in the health and wellbeing of Tasmanians, many of whom are suffering as a result of the current cuts.

As well as investing in health, the Liberals will continue to protect other vital services including in education and public safety.

We will quarantine frontline health, education and police from cuts and we will prioritise the services they provide to Tasmanians.

Only the Liberal party can deliver the vital services that Tasmanians need – our Roadmap to Recovery and Growth offers the hope and opportunity Tasmanians need to turn the state around.

Will Hodgman is Leader of the Opposition

Mr FERGUSON (Bass) – I am glad to rise in support of the matter of public importance debate that has been raised by my colleague in Denison, Ms Archer. It is a very important and it is interesting to observe the responses from both Greens and Labor members. The minister tried to give a spirited defence for his own shortcomings, letting down the force and the Tasmanian community.

It was interesting that the Greens spokesman, Mr O’Halloran, and the speaker who has just resumed her seat were offering very nicely worded platitudes on individual issues and initiatives of serving police men and women. It is all very well and good but distracts from the real issue, which is what you are doing to the force. The minister should reflect on the fact that he was elected on a platform of seeing the number of police in our state increase by 30.

It is interesting that Mr O’Halloran, who is presumably the police spokesman for the Greens, was elected on a platform of employing not an extra 30 police but 100. He comes the day before the budget is due to be handed down and says he hopes funding will be able to be maintained.

I wonder if he has attempted to get that into the budget or if he has just left it to the day before to offer that verbal platitude. What a waste of time. This is a man, along with his other four colleagues, are apologists for the Labor Party. That is what is going on here. You promised this knowing that you would not deliver it and there was no intention to deliver it. There was a naked promise of 100 extra police and we are seeing 100 less. The irony is breathtaking. It is a real tragedy of what you are doing to the police service in our state and diminishing its capacity.

In media releases and today in the minster’s speech he ironically talks about Labor having steadily built police force numbers up over its now 14 years in office. That is interesting. Is the minister now saying today that they employed too many police while he is now cutting them down, that they did not really need them, that they were not needed? Is that what he is saying?

Is the minister saying that they should not have been employed? Or is it really the case that the Labor-Greens government has been trashing this budget, over spending funding that was permitted for it to spend by the parliament over the last five and six years to the tune of about $1 billion, spending the barn. David Bartlett famously said that we needed to “get the hay out of the barn” and that is just code for overspending. Then they burnt the barn. You burnt the barn; you have ruined it. You have diminished what the Tasmanian community can expect from its government. In this context you are reducing the service down by 100.

One of the elements of policing that has been a success has been raised by one of my constituents – a college student involved in the junior constable program. While time does not permit me to go into detail he says that while the Minister for Police is cancelling the junior constable program as it will not be resuming until police recruitment reopens, which will take a few more years, he is off to Victoria. That is the minister’s legacy.

David O’Byrne may wish the caravan has moved on, but it hasn’t – and he has serious questions to answer about his failures to properly administer the NBN4Business funding.

Today, David O’Byrne was unable to deny he and his department failed to conduct any risk assessment prior to splurging money on the Government’s NBN4Business program.

In his special report into the Tasmanian Education Foundation debacle in 2009, the Auditor General recommended a risk assessment should be carried out by the government prior to finalising any funding deed with the TCCI to promote education.*

Despite this recommendation, the government has again found itself in the same boat, with funding anomalies occurring – this time over $250,000 provided to promote the NBN and to support Tasmanian businesses getting access to the global digital economy.

It is time David O’Byrne started taking his responsibilities seriously to properly administer and monitor taxpayer funds to projects within his portfolio. Using melodramatic language won’t deflect attention from his own failure to protect taxpayers’ precious funds during a 13-month period of being warned by the Opposition.

* http://www.audit.tas.gov.au/publications/reports/specialreport/pdfs/specialreport84.pdf