Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing and Mental Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to talk tonight a little bit about how the Turnbull and Abbott governments and the Hodgman government in Tasmania are really letting our state down. One of the first acts of the federal Liberal government was to cut over a billion dollars from health in Tasmania. That has had a disastrous effect on our state—absolutely disastrous. We have ambulance ramping in our hospitals. We have people waiting ages and ages to get to see a specialist. I am hearing stories all the time of people who are getting bowel test kits back who are waiting way beyond the recommended time frame to see a gastroenterologist. We have some really serious issues in our health system in Tasmania.

But Labor has a plan. State and federal Labor have been working together, and state Labor, under our leader Rebecca White, has made a very comprehensive plan for the future of health in Tasmania. What we saw last weekend was Premier Will Hodgman come out and try and say, 'I'm going to spend more and I've got a better figure,' but when one looks at that figure it says an awful lot, because what Labor is going to do is to actually employ people—paramedics; doctors; nurses—in a first Labor state government term; what the Liberal government is going to do is to spend capital. We've already got a lot of capital works happening in the health system in Tasmania. Our Royal Hobart Hospital reconstruction, that was funded by state and federal Labor, is still underway. It has had delays again under the Hodgman and Turnbull governments. But Labor has a substantive plan, and we want to employ the staff needed to deal with what is happening in our health system in Tasmania—very unlike the Liberal plan.

But it's not just in health where they're letting Tasmanians down very badly. We've heard in this place this week that it's also in infrastructure—roads funding. We've heard about how there has not been one major road or bridge project in Tasmania since the election of the Abbott and Turnbull governments—in all of that time, five years, not one new project has been announced. The only projects underway in Tasmania are those that were already committed to and were going to be invested in by Labor state and federal governments. What we did see was $100 million cut from the Midland Highway. But I was astounded this week—as I'm sure many people in here were—to hear the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, when asked about infrastructure in Tasmania, talk about Inland Rail. I was absolutely flabbergasted. I'm not really sure whether he understands the concept of 'inland', but I don't think that means it crosses the water. I'm also interested in whether or not that means we're getting a bridge to the mainland. I'm sure we're not, but we haven't had any bridge funding either, so perhaps—you never know. We do have a bridge that needs some funding; it's called the Bridgewater Bridge. It is on the Midland Highway—the highway they cut $100 million of funding out of. So it would be quite good if we could actually get a bridge funded in Tasmania—but perhaps not one for the inland rail!

We also need some tourism infrastructure in Tasmania. People would be aware that Tasmania has been very, very successful in growing our tourism numbers. That is a credit to all of the governments, on both sides, for their commitment to tourism. But I am really concerned about the growth in the tourism numbers and the fact that there has been no planning for them. We haven't had a government at the state or federal level that has been willing to plan, with the two tiers of government, for how we're going to deal with this growth. We have iconic national parks that many people in this place will have visited—and if they haven't, they should certainly come on down—places like Freycinet and places like Cradle Mountain, that really need some more care. We need to ensure that the very thing that people are going there to see is not destroyed. If you want to go to Freycinet National Park in mid-season in January and February, you have to turn up before eight o'clock in the morning or you won't get a car park. That is really affecting the whole experience for people coming to Tasmania. At the last federal election, federal Labor had a plan to spend $42 million on tourism infrastructure in Tasmania. It would be great to see a similar commitment from the other side.

The other issue, which has also been raised in this House in the last week or so, is biosecurity. We've seen breaches and we've seen fruit fly in Tasmania for the first time. This comes after the state Liberal government, in its first year, cut a million dollars from biosecurity and cut staff for biosecurity. I've just said we had an increase in tourism. We've had more people coming by plane and boat, and the government's response was to cut biosecurity staff. Now we're seeing the very sad consequences of that. (Time expired)