Labor days of broken promises
THERE was scarcely a trace in this week’s State Budget of any major promise the Labor and Greens parties took to the state election just 15 months ago.
No memory remains, nor was a dollar allocated, of the major pledges voters pondered at the ballot box in March 2010 — from new Bass Strait ferries to a new medical helicopter and enhanced anti-bullying strategies.
Of Labor’s top 10 promises, just two have survived — the Three Capes bushwalking track and the early stages of a medical centre at Glenorchy.
Long abandoned, amended beyond recognition or forgotten are the Hobart Private Hospital buyback, the boost for tourism marketing, the Cosgrove sports high school and the power price cap.
Not a single remaining major promise was slated for funding and Budget job growth predictions stand to mock a job creation target of 15,000.
Liberal leader Will Hodgman yesterday said the election promises of the governing parties were as much works of fiction as the current State Budget.
“It just shows that Labor’s promises are worthless, you can’t trust what they say before an election or indeed in a Budget,” he said.
“I think it’s a pretty ordinary state of affairs when you cannot believe the Government will deliver what they promise.”
Premier Lara Giddings said Labor had delivered on many of the smaller promises made before the election but others had been cancelled or deferred because of changing circumstances.
Read more of David Killick’s report in Mercury HERE
Big states chicken out on reform: Lara Giddings
THE woman hailed as Australia’s bravest treasurer Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings says the big states have “squibbed” on budget reform, surrendering their right to demand a revised carve-up of GST revenues.
Ms Giddings vowed to push ahead with $1.4 billion in budget cuts, despite threats from within the ALP to dump her as leader.
She said her willingness to go where other states feared to tread in reining in public spending should end perceptions of Tasmania as the mendicant state.
“People should look at Tasmania and see that while bigger states have squibbed on some of the decisions they should have been making, that Tasmania is not,” she said.
“We can stand very strongly up against the big states and say to them: ‘Well, we were prepared to get our backyard in order more than you have.’ We are not wasting the resources we gained through the (grants commission GST distribution) process.”
Ms Giddings said her first budget, delivered on Thursday — which included the axing of up to 1700 public servants, 100 police officers and 20 schools — stood out all the more because Tasmania was bereft of the mineral resources of Queensland and Western Australia.
Ms Giddings agreed that the austerity measures might cost her government at the 2014 election. “Possibly, (but) we need to make the right decisions now,” she said.
Unions Tasmania secretary and prominent figure in the state ALP’s dominant left faction Kevin Harkins said there was “nervousness” in the Labor ranks over the budget.
Read more of Matthew Denholm’s report in The Australian HERE
On Tasmanian Times: Jarvis Cocker: Not the GFC: 12 years of Labor neglect, Stupid
