The Premier and his Minister for Police, Fire and Emergency Services have been caught out using fraudulent figures to conceal the true impact of their plans to hit Tasmanians with a massive new fire tax.
Documents the Treasurer was forced to table yesterday have revealed the figures Minister Ellis released to the public falsely showed a much lower impact than was actually the case.
The documents clearly show the figures were not produced by Treasury, with one senior Treasury official saying they were not aware who modelled the rates that were eventually released.
So where did these dodgy figures come from? Did Minister Ellis make up the numbers himself or did the Premier or his office try to cook the books so they could hit Tasmanians with even more tax than they were willing to admit to?
Premier Rockliff and his Minister owe Tasmanians an explanation. They have been telling Tasmanians one thing about the impact of this new tax for months, while secretly knowing the impact will actually be much higher.
And just as badly, revelations that fire services funding tax was first considered by Cabinet’s Budget Committee as “part of broader work being undertaken to rebuild fiscal buffers” shows this has been less about fairly funding fire services than it has been a tax grab to fix the Liberals’ broken budget.
It appears the Liberals have been using career and volunteer firefighters, their need for a sustainable funding model, and their deserved respect and reputation in the community, as a human shield for their massive tax grab.
The Premier has a lot of work to do to rebuild the trust that has been destroyed by today’s shocking revelations.
Rebecca White MP
Tasmanian Labor Leader
