Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. That is why Mr Andrew Nikolic also got a 10-plus per cent swing to defeat the previous member in Bass, Geoff Lyons. The Tasmanian people spoke very loudly. Mr Hutchinson got a 27 per cent swing in Triabunna. Triabunna is a very strong timber community that has been devastated by the Tasmanian forests agreement, an agreement that the coalition did not support from day 1 and one that the Tasmanian Liberals do not support. There is an opportunity to have an industry based on a sustainable resource that can go for 100 years and beyond. That is what I call a sustainable industry, not one that will fail and die by 2030 because of the lack of resource, which is what the Labor Party and the Greens are proposing for Tasmania.

Tasmanian people have an opportunity to send a very clear message. The job is only half done. We need to turn around these terrible statistics. We need to turn around the lowest wages in the country, the highest unemployment in the country. We need to have an economy that is growing, rather than having a 0.7 per cent reduction, as it did in 2012-13, so that it can create revenue and so that we do not end up with a $376 million deficit that blows out by $100 million in a little over six months. We need to turn around the Tasmanian economy. The Labor Party in conjunction with the Greens have proven that they cannot do that. They are prepared to spend taxpayers' money to close business and industry down. They are turning what is a natural asset, not only for Tasmania but for the community and for industry, into a liability. I saw an example of that yesterday. In New South Wales a Labor government locked up some forest and then spent $3,750 for environmental thinning—effectively the same practices that were occurring before. Had they allowed the similar management process to exist, that forest, with exactly the same impact and effect, could have provided $5,000 per hectare, a dividend of $1,250 to the community that could have been used, perhaps, to look after other areas that need it. This is the way that the Labor Party work. They turn an asset into a liability. Of course, having to spend money to look after that particular piece of forest means that other services are not provided. That is the sort of thing that is going on in Tasmania, where communities have been devastated by Tasmanian forests agreement and by the general management of the Labor Party and the Greens.

I look forward to Saturday week, when the Tasmanian people will have the opportunity to have their say and to turf the Labor Party and the Greens out and put Will Hodgman and his team in. We know that the coalition, the Liberals, are strong economic managers and we will not have a situation where the Tasmanian economy will go backwards as it is now under Labor-Greens stewardship.