Tasmanian State Election 2018: Will Hodgman reveals action plan for re-elected Liberal Government

PREMIER Will Hodgman says his government will get straight down to business if it is re-elected in Saturday’s election.

Premier Will Hodgman has released a plan for what his government would do in its first 100 days if re-elected. Picture: CHRIS KIDD

PREMIER Will Hodgman says his government will get straight down to business if it is re-elected in Saturday’s election.

He has released a plan of what the Government would do in the first 100 days.

Parliament would resume on May 1 and the first action would be to introduce legislation to bring the Tasmanian Health Service under the direction of the Department of Health and Human Services secretary.

A clinical planning taskforce would be formed to examine issues arising from the Royal Hobart Hospital redevelopment.

The Liberals have promised expenditure of $757 million on health after Labor made it their number one election issue with a $560 million promise.

Mr Hodgman denied today that the government had been forced to make big election promises because it had not done enough during its four years in Government.

“That’s completely wrong,” he said in answer to a question from the Mercury.

“If you look at what we’ve done over the last four years, we’ve improved the economy which was in recession and supported Tasmanian business to drive that, created 10,900 jobs again with the most confident business sector in the country, erasing $1 billion of deficits, $400 million of net debt left to us just can’t happen by chance,” he said.

“We have employed more teachers, employed more medical staff, we have reopened wards that have closed, we have built road networks around our state to support increased traffic and decongest roads that are becoming increasingly congested.

“We have done a lot over the last four years and when you consider the investments we have made in those priority areas which we intend to build upon it does demonstrate how far we have come in the last four years.”

The Hodgman Government has scaled back Budget surpluses over the forward estimates that it had predicted in the 2017-18 Budget.