It’s a budget about cuts, but there were some genuine wins worth acknowledging: a food relief strategy, another year of free bus travel, the school lunch program, Thriving Kids, and a 20-year Preventive Health Strategy.
Community service organisations dodged the cuts they were bracing for this year – but it’s only a temporary reprieve, with funding dropping from next year. Most are already stretched thin by rising fuel, insurance and rent costs, plus growing demand. Without a proper funding boost, supporting Tasmanians who need help is only going to get harder.
The big number is $1.47 billion in “operational efficiencies” over four years. The budget papers say these should be found in ways that “minimise” the impact on frontline services. Economist Saul Eslake points out the cuts aren’t huge as a share of the overall budget – but even he agrees finding those savings without hitting the services people rely on will be a real challenge.
Leaning this hard on spending cuts goes against the advice of the government’s own Treasury and plenty of independent experts. The Premier overruled his own Treasurer on raising revenue through new taxes, which leaves public services to carry the load.
And that’s if the cuts even happen. The government’s track record on hitting savings targets isn’t great, and ratings agency Standard & Poor’s reckons these ones will be hard to achieve too.
Budget Estimates kicks off on 1 June – looking forward to asking the government exactly how it plans to deliver on all this.