GOVERNMENT SILENCE DEAFENING ON BASS STRAIT COST EQUALISATION

The Independent Member for Denison, Andrew Wilkie, will join Peter Brohier, Convenor of the National Sea Highway Groups, has called on the Government to respond to the Productivity Commission’s report into Tasmanian shipping and freight, which it received twelve months ago this week.

On 7 March 2014 the Productivity Commission completed its report into the effectiveness of the Bass Strait freight and passenger subsidy schemes. The Government has sat on the report for twelve months leaving the Tasmanian public and business community high and dry.

“The Commission’s findings are contentious, and I don’t agree with many of them, but the Tasmanian community is understandably nervous about the future cost of moving people, vehicles and freight to and from Tasmania by sea,” Mr Wilkie said.

“Why is the Government stone-walling? Why won’t it respond in detail? Is it because it simply doesn’t understand that the cost of Bass Strait remains the biggest brake on Tasmania’s economic development and the easiest to fix?

“Although the current cost equalisation arrangements help, and at the very least must be retained in full, they are insufficient and full of gaps.

“I call on the Government to commit to effective subsidies applying to all people, vehicles and freight going both north and south, including all Tasmanian exports bound for international markets.”
Andrew Wilkie, Independent Member for Denison