Premier backs overspending strategy

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Tasmania’ Premier has released Treasury documents in a bid to justify more than $1 billion in government overspending over the past six years.

The figures show that since 2005, 70 per cent or more than $700 million went into the health and education departments.

The Health Department was allowed to spend almost half a billion dollars more than budgeted in that six years.

The second largest government department, Education, overspent by $225 million.

But Lara Giddings says it was responsible spending before the global financial crisis, when revenue was on the rise.

“Tell me we should not have employed the 600 extra nurses and 200 extra doctors at the time we had the revenue to do it.”

“Go back and look at what the Opposition were calling on us to do at that time; to spend more on health, to spend more on education. Nobody could predict the GFC.”

The Premier says it debunks the Opposition’s claims that the Government was recklessly overspending and contributing to the current financial mess.

“When we had the revenue growing, and we had the money to spend, we spent it on the priority areas of health and education.”

“Is that a waste? Is that what Peter Gutwein is saying?

“Is that we have wasted that money on health and education because in effect, what he’s saying is that instead of spending that money we shouldn’t have put into the system at all; we should have reduced their budgets.”

The Greens leader, Nick McKim, has defended the Premier despite criticising past governments’ spending on forest subsidies and football sponsorship deals.

Read the rest, ABC Online here

• Earlier on Tasmanian Times, John Lawrence: Cliched, populist drivel