The Liberals have mismanaged Tasmania’s budget for the last decade, and now our finances are the worst in the country.
Under the Liberals, spending has increased substantially but service delivery outcomes in healthcare, educational achievement and housing have declined.
Today in my budget reply speech, I announced Labor’s first steps towards getting the public finances back on track. Ten things we will do from day one, to get our budget back on track, after ten years of the Liberals’ budget mismanagement.
Labor will:
- Bring more consulting services in-house, as the Federal government has done successfully.
- Conduct an audit of all outsourcing contracts to ensure taxpayers are getting value for money. And we will not hesitate to renegotiate or terminate contracts that are not delivering cost savings, high-quality outcomes or which could be delivered better in-house.
- Ban pork-barrelling and rorts to stop taxpayers being ripped off. We will pass a law to make all government grants go through a rigorous assessment process.
- Stamp out dodgy deals and the improper use of public money by enhancing the powers and independence of the Tasmanian Audit Office. Our Auditors have the weakest powers of all any similar agency in the country and we believe that needs to change.
- Ensure decisions are taken with a long-term view of the state’s finances, by including 10-year projections for debt and deficits in every budget, as Saul Eslake has recommended.
- Improve financial transparency and the policy development capacity of the entire Parliament, by establishing a Parliamentary Budget Service. We will negotiate a deal to enable a Treasury officer to be based within the Federal PBO to help reduce the cost.
- Establish a Review and Evaluation Unit in Treasury so failed programs and policies can be identified and ended.
- Examine opportunities for specialised delivery of services.
- Explore merging the generic IT infrastructure of various government departments to reduce maintenance costs, strengthen buying power and improve cybersecurity.
- Introduce performance-based budgeting that links government spending to measurable outcomes.
Every dollar saved with this policy will go directly towards debt reduction.
We acknowledge these measures are not going to fix the Liberals’ budget disaster overnight. The hole they’ve dug is so deep that it’s not credible to suggest that is even possible.
Digging ourselves out again will take years of discipline and hard work.
I acknowledge that much more will have to be done, but I’m willing to do what’s required to get Tasmania out of the financial mess the Liberals have put us in.
Dean Winter MP
Labor Leader
