Rosalie Woodruff MP | Greens Climate spokesperson, 1 September 2021
Greens’ Climate Action-focussed Alternative Budget
The Greens were proud to release a comprehensive pathway for a safe climate future in today’s Alternative Budget.
There is no greater threat to Tasmania, or the planet, than global heating. The need to act is urgent, and that’s why our Alternative Budget applies a climate lens to all portfolios.
We recognise that tackling climate change is not just a challenge – it’s also an opportunity. Tasmania has a unique chance to be a global leader on climate action.
Our plan for Tasmania will reduce emissions across all sectors and keep communities safe. We’ll invest in renewable solutions for transport and industry, support farmers to reduce their emissions, stop the logging and burning of our native forests, restore degraded landscapes, and a circular economy.
In making this transition we can set an example for the rest of Australia and the world to follow.
We’ll ensure communities stay safe as the climate crisis poses new and accelerating risks. We’ll invest in more firefighters, community resilience hubs, climate adaptation planning for all municipalities, coastal risk management, and more support for the State Emergency Service.
While the Liberals are now pretending to care about climate change, we’ve not seen any real plan for how they’d bring down emissions in Tasmania. Our Alternative Budget fixes that, and lays out an achievable, safer path forward.
Full Alternative Budget available here: https://tasmps.greens.org.au/policy/alternative-budget-2021-22
Selected tables
Please see earlier link for full budget tables and explanatory notes.
Media release – Michael Ferguson, Minister for Finance, 1 September 2021
Greens shame Labor With Alternative Budget
Unlike the Labor Party, the Greens deserve some credit for doing some actual work to formulate an Alternative Budget.
However, as usual what they have produced has nothing to offer Tasmanians except job losses, tax hikes, and pain for thousands of families.
The Greens would take a wrecking ball to some of our most important industries by taxing them out of existence, including a 150 per cent tax slug on mining, and 10 per cent on fish farming, while gutting important industries like racing and forestry.
It’s the usual suite of kooky Green policies that would cost thousands of jobs, many in regional areas, and send our unemployment rate skyrocketing.
As a result Tasmanian families would be moved into poverty.
The Greens also want to stifle development by defunding our highly successful Office of the Coordinator-General, and cutting State funding for roads and bridges by $320 million.
This represents a 16 per cent cut to total State road funding over the period and would result in a much larger reduction in federal funding for major road projects which are often funded at a ratio of 1:4.
These cuts would be more than enough to defund the $576 million Bridgewater Bridge replacement, the $349 million South-East Traffic Solution projects and the $280 million Bass Highway Action Plan.
They would also slash vital infrastructure projects such as the Northern Regional Prison, defund important environmental initiatives such as the Tamar dredging program, and refuse to invest in our sporting future by defunding our Stadium Authority Trust.
They would also destroy the Tasmanian way of life by once again resurrecting Labor’s failed shack tax with a vacant residence tax proposal, and reversing our land tax policies that will provide hip-pocket relief for thousands of Tasmanian families.
And despite all this, they still have no pathway back to surplus – only offering four years of increased debt and deficit, like Labor’s promised election spending.
The Greens would clearly send Tasmania backwards on every measure, but at least they’ve had the courage of their convictions to disclose their policies and explain how they would pay for them.
This stands in stark contrast to Labor, which has proven yet again this week they have absolutely no Alternative Budget or plan for our State.
