poor handling of the budget
was nothing in the tank
response
The horrific figures outlined in the Economic and
Fiscal Update report exposes the government’s poor handling of the budget over
the last six years.
The reportshowed the forecast net debt for Tasmania for the 2020-21 financial year is
$2.35 billion dollars, 27,500 jobs lost by the end of June and an unemployment
rate of 12.25 per cent.
Shadow Treasurer, David O’Byrne, said when
COVID-19 hit, the government had nothing in the tank.
“This is a horrendous set of numbers,
made worse by the fact that the government has been running on empty,” Mr O’Byrne
said.
“Governments need to prepare for
economic shocks. Labor had a billion dollars in cash and investments at hand to
respond heading into the GFC, leaving Peter Gutwein $200 million in the bank
when he was elected and that has been frittered away.
“Tasmania
was already heading into net debt and budget deficits before the
pandemic hit.
“COVID-19 has exposed the poor handling of the budget
over the last 6 years, net debt, poor fiscal position despite years of economic
sunshine. These are the wasted Hodgman/Gutwein years.
“What we can’t see now is a knee jerk response. Our
first priority is the provision of good public services, particularly health,
education and housing.
“Labor won’t accept any further cuts to frontline
services and the government must acknowledge that the North West COVID-19
outbreak was in part due to poor resourcing of Health.
“We are calling on the government to rule out redundancies in the public sector and come clean on any plans to privatise or introduce new tax plans.”
David O’Byrne MP
Shadow Treasurer
