With Parliament finally resuming the Labor-Green government will be expected to reveal whether it has any plans to drive our economy forward, fix the mess in education, or improve important health and human services.
Already it is hard to see just what this Labor-Green government stands for.
Not only do we have a continuation of the weekly Bartlett backflips, there are now two Greens ministers who have become apologists for government failure, and no longer stand by their convictions.
The instability and inertia that David Bartlett predicted would come with this sort of unstable governance arrangement are already becoming a frightening reality.
With the budget approaching, the Labor-Green Government will also need to begin explaining how their combined pre-election promises, which totaled nearly $1 billion, will be delivered.
Amongst the numerous issues we will be pursuing:
Education mess
The mess in education created by the government only worsens.
Data reveals that Tasmania has gone from being amongst the best in Australia in aspects of our vocational education and training, to the bottom of the class since David Bartlett’s experiments began.
And the government still cannot show if attendance and active enrolment rates have improved, which just adds to growing evidence that Tasmania Tomorrow, like Essential Learnings before it, is a failure.
We have a Bill before the Parliament to undo the mess created by Labor and the true test will be whether the Greens show conviction and support our bill in line with the policy they took to the election.
Plans for the economy and industry?
With job losses across the state and with major challenges facing a number of industries, the business community will be looking to the state budget for security and a clear forward plan.
For years Labor has been incapable of setting down any clear plan for economic and industry development.
Our infrastructure remains inadequate, due to underinvestment and we have no comprehensive, future focused, integrated infrastructure plan.
The new Minister for Industry, Michael Aird, has not even yet made a single statement about the government’s plans for growth in industry.
The fact that Mr Bartlett cannot even pull together a round table to help guide the forest industry through extremely difficult times shows how hopeless they are.
It’s little wonder that important projects like the Mussleroe Wind Farm have stagnated.
The rising cost of living
We will continue to pursue the government on its flawed policies that increase the cost of living for Tasmanians.
The problems in our energy sector must be addressed, but again the government has not outlined any plan as to how they will do that.
The government cannot guarantee, for example, that power prices won’t rise as a result of Aurora’s financial difficulties.
And another of the previous government’s colossal stuff-ups, the water and sewerage debacle, must also be fixed.
The TCCI has now backed our policy for an immediate review of water and sewerage policy, which we welcome.
Child protection
And in recent weeks Tasmania has been confronted with shocking examples of Tasmanian children at risk being failed by aspects of the State’s child protection system.
Prostitution, allegations of inappropriate relationships between children and adults, pregnancy, and the provision of contraception to very young girls are just some of the shocking realities of the situations faced by some of Tasmania’s most vulnerable young people who are supposed to be in the care of, or protected by the state.
We have three cabinet members who are responsible for various elements of looking after the welfare of children and yet none seem willing to accept responsibility for situations that we believe demonstrate systemic failure of the system.
Greens to push for duck-hunt ban: HERE
