Health budget allegations have triggered political conflict between the Liberal Government and Labor opposition, with Minister Bridget Archer and Shadow Minister Sarah Lovell MLC exchanging accusations over alleged $26 million cuts whilst the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation warns of deepening crisis.
Media release – Sarah Lovell MLC, Shadow Minister for Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing, 10 November 2025
Bridget Archer needs to tell the truth on health funding
After being called out for attacking health workers last week, it is incredibly disappointing that new Health Minister Bridget Archer is continuing her shocking start to the portfolio by misleading Tasmanians about health spending.
No amount of Liberal spin can change the fact that when you compare this year’s budget with this year’s Health Department annual report, health has been allocated $26 million less than what was actually spent last year.*
If you spend $200 on groceries one week and then budget $180 for your grocery shopping the next week – that’s a budget cut.
That’s exactly what the Liberals have done with health. Either the budget is a complete lie, or they’re planning to cut millions from health.
Tasmanians deserve the truth. Bridget Archer needs to come clean about which one it is.
*2025-26 Budget Paper No. 2, Volume 1 page 93 vs 2024-25 Department of Health Annual Report page 159
Media release – Bridget Archer, Minister for Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing, 10 November 2025
Consultation launched for Tasmania’s next mental health strategy
The Tasmanian Government has launched public consultations for the next overarching Tasmanian mental health strategy, Rethink and Beyond, an important step in strengthening the State’s mental health system.
As part of the 2025-26 interim Budget, the Tasmanian Government is continuing to invest in health and mental health services across Tasmania, with more than $915 million committed to meet rising demand.
Minister for Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing, Bridget Archer, said Rethink and Beyond will build on the progress under Rethink 2020: A state plan for mental health in Tasmania, which has delivered major system improvements.
“Through Rethink 2020, we have been working closely with the Mental Health Council of Tasmania, Primary Health Tasmania, community sector partners, and, importantly, people with lived experience to deliver key initiatives that have strengthened our mental health system,” Archer said.
“These include opening the Peacock Centre in North Hobart, launching the Mental Health Emergency Response Service, and piloting the Youth Mental Health Hospital in the Home service in the North West, which has recently expanded to 12 beds.
“While these are significant achievements, we’re committed to doing even more. That’s why our interim Budget includes record investment of almost $10 million every single day into our health system.”
To mark the conclusion of Rethink 2020, the Government has released a report celebrating a decade of reform and transformation across Tasmania’s mental health system.
“Rethink 2020 has driven real change – strengthening system integration, expanding community-based support, and ensuring people with lived experience are central to reform,” Archer said.
“The next Strategy will align with key state and national priorities and be informed by an independent evaluation of Rethink 2020 and extensive input from the community and sector stakeholders.
“Last month’s Rethink and Beyond Stakeholder Roundtable brought together people with lived experience, peak bodies and sector leaders to explore future reform priorities, including lived experience leadership, system integration, prevention, regional equity, workforce development and tackling stigma.
“Over the coming months, we’ll continue engaging with Tasmanians to ensure the new Strategy reflects local needs and voices,” Archer said.
“Together, we can continue building a strong, responsive mental health system for all Tasmanians.”
Media release – Bridget Archer, Minister for Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing, 9 November 2025
The Tasmanian Government is spending $10 million a day on health in the 2025-26 Budget.
This is a fact. (Budget Paper No. 1, p 235, Table 9.16)
The budget papers show there has been an increase in health from the 2024-25 Budget of 12 per cent, including $400 million extra this financial year.
Every year Labor claims there are cuts in health, and every year they are proven wrong.
It’s little wonder Tasmanians haven’t trusted them with the treasury benches for more than a decade.
You simply can’t trust Labor on the health budget.
Instead of the relentless negativity, the opposition should stand up for Tasmania and tell their federal Labor colleagues it’s time they gave Tasmania its fair share of health funding.
Media release – Sarah Lovell MLC, Shadow Minister for Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing, 9 November 2025
What’s Eric Abetz going to cut in health?
Eric Abetz’ budget cuts should send a shiver down the spine of Tasmanians who rely on the state’s already strained public health system.
According to the State Budget released 3 days ago, Eric Abetz says he’s going to spend $26 million less on health than what was spent in the last financial year.
That’s a cut. It’s right there in black and white.
Our public health system is already at breaking point, with dangerously long emergency department and ambulance wait times, and record surgery and outpatient waiting lists. Cuts will compromise patient safety.
We know that wages grew by $151 million in the last year, so it’s impossible to see how Eric Abetz is going to cut health spending by $26 million without going after jobs.
Many Tasmanians had high hopes when Bridget Archer took over the portfolio, but she’s already proving to be a massive disappointment – resorting to attacking health workers on social media.
Tasmanians can’t trust her to stand up to Eric Abetz, as the Treasurer known for sacking thousands of public servants sharpens his knife for more cuts to health.
Tasmania’s budget hasn’t arrived in this position overnight. It’s taken 11 years of Liberal mismanagement to get here, and now Eric Abetz is going to make Tasmanians pay.
Media release – Emily Shepherd, ANMF Branch Secretary, 7 November 2025
Health Budget Cuts Deepen Health Crisis
The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation Tasmanian Branch (ANMF) is dismayed by the lack of investment in the crippled Tasmanian Health Service in the Interim Tasmanian State Budget which was handed down by Treasurer Eric Abetx yesterday.
ANMF Branch Secretary Emily Shepherd said the ANMF has been calling for a sensible budget that would match funding to current service delivery and service demand.
“But the opposite came true yesterday with a State Budget claiming record investment in Health with one hand, yet stripping it back out with an increased efficiency dividend, hiring freeze and expected budget savings through the newly formed efficiency and productivity unit,” Ms Shepherd said.
“While at face value the claims that there is record investment in health may resonate with commitments to robot technology and increased breast screening for women, the reality is that those same people may be waiting for years to be seen in clinics to make it onto a surgical list and they may have their surgeries repeatedly delayed due to insufficient staffing and also lack of post operative beds due to ongoing access and flow block.”
Ms Shepherd said the additional commitment yesterday outlined an increased LGH Emergency Department as part of the previously committed LGH Master Plan process.
“While this will accommodate additional patients who present to the emergency department and allow greater space for people to wait for care, some of the longest wait times in the country’ but the same can’t be said for patients accessing the health system getting care in a timely manner due to no initiatives to improve impatient capacity and flow.
“Expansion of the LGH without any other measure to increase inpatient capacity and flow will just mean longer wait times and an even larger kink in the patient flow pipe.
“The irony of a budget designed to improve productivity and efficiency while cutting corners at every turn is enormous, when economists highlight that the return on health investment is 9:1 and every year of increase life expectancy has shown to raise gross domestic product by around 4%, the Tasmanian Government should be investing in health to ensure efficiency and improved productivity.”
Shepherd said the expectation of a crippled health system to find more budget savings whilst also being more efficient quite simply will not work.
“Already the insufficient budget is leading to outrageously long and delayed recruitment times, which results in the use of agency staff and overtime which costs much more than appointment, just one example of inefficiency and the poor insight that the Government has in how to run a health system’
“On the day that the interim budget was handed down, the North West Regional Hospital’s ED was over capacity and struggling to meet demand with over 40 patients in the ED with patients ramped in corridors, admitted patients waiting for inpatient beds and nursing staff grappling to find a place to treat the ever-increasing demand for patients.
“Our members are at breaking point now due to insufficient capacity, rising demand and no attention by this Government to address access and flow issues, our health system won’t wait till Treasure Abetz has returned his budget to surplus in 2029 to fix these concerns and Tasmanians will pay with their lives.”
Shepherd said despite all of this, the State Service Management Office has released a survey to all public sector servants asking them to identify more savings on the same day the budget was handed down providing no relief to an exhausted and stressed nursing and midwifery workforce.
“ANMF members have been providing solutions to improve efficiency to the Tasmanian Government for well over a decade.
“These solutions include:
· Funding hospitals to operate 24/7 with nursing, medical and allied health staff available at all hours to treat diagnose and treat patients efficiently when they present and then move these patients to their following destination either home when they are ready even if it is during the evening or to an inpatient bed without delays due to not being able to see a physio or get bloods or radiology.
· Ensure that there is sufficient nursing staff to provide quality care. Continually understaffing the nursing workforce leads to inefficient care, delays to transfers and at worst closure of beds, you cannot run an efficient heath system without health care staff to provide treatment and care.
· Increase community services to allow patients to be treated in their own homes. Increase community nursing services statewide, roll the community dementia services statewide and increase the staffing profile for the community rapid response service.
“These three initiatives alone would have an enormous positive impact on efficiency across our health care system.
“Despite the ANMF calling for these for decade and no doubt our members contributing these yet again to the Public Sector Cost Cutting Survey, they are unlikely to be supported.
“The reality is they all need investment, as sometimes you have to spend money to make money.
“However, as the Government only want to cut corners and the health budget, the idea of increasing health system efficiency and productivity seems more akin to utopia than reality.”
Media release – Sarah Lovell MLC, Shadow Minister for Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing, 2 November 2025
Health Crisis Puts Spotlight On Budget
Alarming new health data has put a spotlight on next week’s state budget as Treasurer Eric Abetz weighs up which critical public services to cut to start repairing 11 years of Liberal financial mismanagement.
According to the latest Health Department data, Tasmania’s elective surgery waitlist has blown out to 9,275 – 14 per cent up from 12 months ago.
There are now 67,967 Tasmanians on the outpatient waiting list – which is a near 10,000 increase since the same time last year. On average each patient is forced to wait over a year for their appointment.
Median emergency ambulance wait times also sit at a 12 month high of 15.5 minutes.
This new data follows Tasmania being named the unhealthiest state in Australia in a recent national study, with high rates of obesity, blood pressure and chronic disease.
10 years ago the Liberals said they would make Tasmania the healthiest state in Australia.
Yet again, they have failed miserably – and it shows exactly why Tasmanians can’t trust a word they say.
Tasmania’s health system is sick enough. It needs to get better, but it’s difficult to see how it will under the Liberal-Green Government’s watch.
Ahead of next week’s Budget, Tasmanians who rely upon the state’s struggling health system will be watching on nervously to see how 11 years of compounding financial mismanagement affect its future.
Media release – Bridget Archer, Minister for Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing, 2 November 2025
Federal Labor wants Tasmania to slash health spending
Tasmanian Labor Senator, Richard Dowling, has proposed Tasmania reverts back to Labor’s horror budget of 2011-12.
As the architect of those budget cuts, where Labor slashed $500 million from health, slashed the elective surgery budget, and sacked a nurse a day for nine months, Senator Dowling has attacked what he calls ‘reckless spending’.
According to the latest AIHW report, this ‘reckless spending’ has resulted in:
• Tasmania having more health workers than any other State and increasing the number of health workers at a rate twice the national average.
• Tasmania having more healthcare beds than any other State and increasing the number of beds by more than twice the national average.
• Tasmania increasing spending on health at more than three times the national average.
• Tasmania having the highest per capita admission rate for elective surgery of any State or Territory.
Senator Dowling would be better off tackling issues in his own patch, such as the 100 patients who, through no fault of their own, are taking up a hospital bed when they are medically ready to be discharged because the federal government has failed to adequately fund residential aged care places or NIDS access and supports.
He may also want to advocate for Tasmania’s fair share in the National Health Reform Agreement funding, where the Australian Government is short-changing not only Tasmania, but all States every year to the tune of millions of dollars.
Does State Labor support their colleagues’ calls for drastic cuts to health?
Demand for health is increasing in Tasmania, as it is around the country, despite the Tasmanian Liberal Government pushing record funding into health and elective surgery.
For three years in a row, under a Tasmanian Liberal Government, we delivered record numbers of elective surgery in a financial year. And in the last 12 months to August, a record number of outpatient attendances – that’s 1569 specialist appointments every single day.
Senator Dowling needs to remember that he is in Canberra to represent Tasmanians, not the other way around.
Media release – Sarah Lovell MLC, Shadow Minister for Health, Mental Health and Wellbeing, 29 October 2025
Tasmanian children missing are missing out on vital dental care
New information released under Right to Information shows that after 11 years of the Liberals, too many Tasmanian children aren’t getting the dental care they need – and it raises serious questions about what more budget cuts will mean for the health services Tasmanians rely on.
The documents reveal that fewer than 16 per cent of high-risk children – those most likely to suffer serious dental disease and pain – are being seen within the recommended six-month recall timeframe.
Even when that timeframe is stretched to 12 months, more than half of high-risk children still aren’t being seen, too many Tasmanian kids are missing out on essential dental care every year.
Every Tasmanian child deserves access to basic dental care, but under this Liberal Government, now propped up by the Greens, too many are falling through the cracks.
The RTI also reveals that an ‘extreme risk’ category has emerged for children who need urgent and frequent care, but the system can’t even record or report on these children because of outdated technology and a lack of resources.
We know that Eric Abetz and the Liberal Government, now propped up by the Greens, have a plan to cut 2,500 jobs in health and education – and we know they’re looking to make as many cuts as they can to try and fix the budget mess they’ve created over the last 11 years.
How will more cuts impact the services Tasmanians rely on? If this is the state of children’s dental care now, what will it look like next year after Eric Abetz has taken a knife to the budget twice in six months?
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