Day one: Will Hodgman tackles budget

INCOMING Tasmanian premier Will Hodgman has told public service chiefs he will do whatever is necessary to “get the budget back under control”.

INCOMING Tasmanian Liberal premier Will Hodgman has told public service chiefs he will do whatever is necessary to “get the budget back under control”, as one of his team flags a commission of audit.

Within hours of sweeping Labor from office after 16 years, Mr Hodgman called in heads of the Premier and Cabinet and Treasury to begin steps to cut public servant numbers, reprioritise spending and merge departments.

One of his new MPs and a frontbench hopeful, Paul Harriss, flagged a commission of audit to assist the new majority government in tackling a record budget deficit and mounting debt.

Mr Hodgman, who on Saturday led the Liberals out of the political wilderness for the first time since it lost the 1998 election, declined to talk to journalists on his first day as premier-elect, prompting claims he was already being run by spin doctors.

Instead, the media was permitted to witness the start of his meeting with public service chiefs.

The third-generation Liberal MP told them he wanted to act immediately to tackle the record $376m deficit and implement key election promises to cut 500 public service jobs, while increasing frontline medicos, teachers and police.

“We understand there are significant challenges facing the state budget and we want to talk to you today about the extent of the challenge and what we propose to do to get the budget back under control,” Mr Hodgman said.

“We have also made commitments to reinvest in essential services — to redeploy additional numbers of police officers, teachers and health professionals — so we want to commence the work of not only restoring those frontline services but also implementing some of our new policies.”

The last vote count suggested the Liberals would win 14 or 15 seats, Labor six to eight seats and the Greens three to five, with final results unlikely to be known until the counting of final postal votes from March 25.

Mr Hodgman expanded on his election-night victory speech, in which he promised to use majority government to restore Tasmania’s economy and credibility, after four years of Labor-Greens power-sharing. “We are serious about making Tasmania a place that’s attractive for investment; we are serious about tackling the jobs crisis,” he said. “We want to get our unemployment rate down to at least the national average.”

While before the election he ruled out a commission of audit, one of his new MPs suggested such a process would be needed.

Mr Harriss, a former upper-house MP who appears certain to win a seat in the lower house, said the government needed a process similar to commissions of audit held federally and in Queensland.

“We need to find out not just which departments overspent but where, and how, and why — we really need to drill into that detail on individual programs,” Mr Harriss told The Australian.

“If we don’t do that, we can’t make progress on the budget, which is absolutely fundamental to confidence in this government.”

Labor has suffered its lowest statewide primary vote, 27 per cent, after a 9.6 per cent swing against it. The Liberals recorded a 12 per cent swing to take 51 per cent of the statewide vote and at least 14 seats in the 25-seat assembly, as forecast by Newspoll on Friday.

Tasmania’s Greens, who had talked up replacing Labor as the official opposition, instead face possible loss of party status, after an 8 per cent negative swing and the loss of one or two seats.

Mr Hodgman, a 44-year-old father of three, paused on election night to express sadness that his parents, Fraser government minister and state MP Michael Hodgman and wife Marian, had not lived to see his success.

A former child-protection lawyer, he also acknowledged the support of his English wife, Nicky, “my little piece of England”.

After eight years as Opposition Leader, he thanked Labor voters who had switched to the Liberals to deliver “stable, majority government”, vowing he would repay their trust.

As the Liberals prepared for government, Labor broke into recriminations and speculation about the leadership of outgoing Premier Lara Giddings.

Ms Giddings said that while willing to rebuild Labor in opposition, she would stand aside or quit parliament if this was the will of the surviving caucus.

“It’s been a disappointing result and as a Labor Party we will take our time to review the result and look at how we can rebuild our party so that we are a strong, alternative government,” she said.

Her most obvious replacement as Labor leader, outgoing Economic Development Minister David O’Byrne, appears to have lost his seat, but would be elected on a recount should she resign her seat in the same electorate.