BUDGET PREVIEW: Premier’s pledge to deliver on promises

Premier Peter Gutwein says the 2021-22 Tasmanian state budget will honour election promises, signalling it will have few major surprises. FULL BUDGET PREVIEW >>

PETER Gutwein says the 2021-22 state budget will honour the promises he and the Liberals made during the election campaign, signalling it will have few major surprises.

The Premier, who has remained Treasurer since being appointed to the role in 2014, is preparing to release his eighth budget on Thursday.

“The 2021-22 Tasmanian budget builds on the strong foundations this government has established since coming to office in 2014, and delivers on the commitments we made to the Tasmanian people during the election,” Mr Gutwein said on Sunday.

“It is based on listening to Tasmanians, and providing support where it is most needed in our communities, our businesses and our broader economy.

“It reflects the plan we took to the election to secure ­Tasmania’s future, with ­significant investments into health, housing, education and infrastructure while keeping our community safe.

PREMIER FOR BUDGET

“The budget will underpin our economy and support jobs while ensuring we deliver the services Tasmanian communities need.”

Late last month, Mr ­Gutwein released the 2020-21 Preliminary Outcomes Report, which forecast a $411m deficit, which was a $706m improvement on what was budgeted last year.

Net debt, meanwhile, was $459m instead of $1.4bn, as had been forecast in the previous budget.

But Mr Gutwein has said the budget will not return to surplus until 2023-24, which is a year later than originally ­estimated.

Labor’s Treasury ­spokesman Shane Broad said at the time that Mr Gutwein had broken a promise to keep to his original timeline for bringing the budget back into the black.

Cautious welcome for youth strategy

THE state government’s new Children and Youth Wellbeing Strategy has been hailed as nation-leading but a key stakeholder says a system to ensure that targets are met needs to be developed “quickly”.

Ahead of the release of the state budget later this week, Premier Peter Gutwein launched the Children and Youth Wellbeing Strategy on Sunday. It promises $100m over four years for an action plan to deliver 65 initiatives to improve the lives of young Tasmanians into the future.

The strategy, titled ‘It takes a Tasmanian village’, is based on consultation with children and young people.

Its focus is on Tasmanians aged between 0 and 25, with particular attention given to the first 1000 days of life, which research shows is a vital period for a child’s development.

Commissioner of Children and Young People Leanne McLean welcomed the strategy and said she was “very interested” in seeing how its success was measured.

“An action of this strategy is establishing how we do that,” she said. “A new information strategy to measure our progress and agree as a community what it is that we want to make a difference on – and we’ll need to get on with doing that pretty quickly, because that’s extremely important.”

The Commissioner for Children and Young People Leanne McLean. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

The government committed to developing the strategy in March last year, after Ms McLean made a number of recommendations in a report for the development of a long-term strategy for improving the wellbeing of Tasmania’s children and young people.

Ms McLean said children and young people had told the government “very clearly” during consultation that the environment and climate change were “extremely important to them”.

She also said additional funding would be required to ensure the strategy was implemented successfully.

“I look forward to seeing concrete commitments in both the upcoming and future budgets to ensure the strategy can achieve its goals,” Ms McLean said.

Mental Health Council of Tasmania chief executive Connie Digolis said there was increasing demand for mental health services among young people in Tasmania and that the entire sector was “looking at ways to be able to respond to (their) needs … as they’re presenting themselves”.

“We’ve said over the last 15 months that what we need to focus on isn’t what’s wrong and responding to what’s wrong with people – which is how we tend to be in the mental health space,” she said “This is actually about focusing on what’s good and strengthening those better outcomes for people.”

“So the focus on wellbeing (in the strategy) is particularly significant for us.”