Reply State of the State Address
Reply to Premier’s State of the State Address 2020
March 19, 2020
Ms WEBB (Nelson) – Mr President, I note the Premier’s State of the State address. I begin by acknowledging the Tasmanian Aboriginal community, in particular the muwinina people as the original owners and custodians of the land on which we are today, nipaluna, Hobart, in lutruwita, Tasmania. I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging. I acknowledge the continued connection of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people to this land for over 40 000 years, despite invasion and dispossession, and the rich and enduring culture that lives with that connection.
I would join with my colleagues here, many of whom have acknowledged the former premier, Will Hodgman , on his retirement from parliament. I thank him for the service he provided to the state and to our community, and wish him well with his endeavours henceforth, for him and his family. I particularly congratulate the new Premier, Peter Gutwein. Not many new premiers step in and face a challenge of such magnitude in the early days of their premiership. I thank him for the efforts he is making. Congratulations to the member for Prosser on her new position as a minister, and I join others in very excited congratulations to the member for Pembroke, Jo, and Daniel, her partner, on becoming parents of Ivy.
I thank all the members in this Chamber for their thorough and considered responses so far, today and yesterday. We are all making these speeches in response to the Premier’s State of the State address, an address which could have been given in a different world to the one we are now in. It is challenging for us to frame our contributions as a response to that address, but I also recognise these very difficult, fast-moving and uncertain times that we are in today. Members have walked this line in their speeches very effectively and I thank them for it, speaking eloquently and passionately about the issues that are important to their constituents and communities.
This is the first time since being elected as the member for Nelson that I have had the opportunity to provide a reply to the Premier’s State of the State address. To do so in such unique circumstances will certainly make it memorable for me in years to come, but it will probably be quite a departure from the usual model. It is now clear to all of us that 2020, as a year, will be very memorable in all lives and quite a departure from the norm.
The disruptions to our normal lives we have in store for many months to come will render 2020 quite an exceptional experience. I have spoken to my children about the fact they may well one day tell their grandchildren about this year and describe to those future grandchildren the challenges we all faced together.
I recognise we here are among the most privileged in our capacity to weather this storm. Compared to most others in our community, we have a great deal of advantage. Compared to most others in our communities, we are financially secure. I suggest all of us would have secure housing we are able to afford. We have the capacity to meet our health needs. I suggest we all have networks of support we could reach out to if we have the need, and I imagine that most of us would be in a position to ensure our own immediate family members can also be safe and secure at this time in their basic needs.
We are very fortunate. We are not faced with the same intensity of personal challenge many Tasmanians are facing in what must be very uncertain and quite terrifying circumstances for many – those who face a risk, not just to perhaps their immediate health but also to their livelihoods, to their housing security, to their connections with family and the broader community. People in these circumstances are having to manage great anxiety and fear. I can only imagine and my heart goes out to them that they are placed in this situation.
I know there are also many other people who are bearing the responsibility for others who rely on them as we progress through this uncertain time. I am thinking here of people who run businesses and are employers of those whose jobs might be at risk right now and people who provide support and care to those who are vulnerable. Especially, I am thinking of our health workers who are going above and beyond to ensure people are provided with the right medical care.
In light of all this, I plan to be quite general and brief in my comments. I will look forward to next year when under different circumstances I can perhaps make a more usual State of the State response.
I will mention briefly, in the 10 months since I have had the privilege of being elected as a member for Nelson, one of the things that has struck me about this place is the value of having members who come from such varied backgrounds. I wanted to mention it today because I see our backgrounds and experiences have probably been quite a factor in what inspired us all to run for election and enter into the role of public service.
I see those backgrounds and experiences are often what shapes the issues important to each of us – those things we are particularly focused on and for which we work passionately to achieve outcomes for our state. We have heard that echoed in the speeches given in response to the State of the State address and that is why I regard the variety of backgrounds and experiences present here amongst members as a real strength of our Chamber. I thank members for bringing that and sharing it. The Tasmanian community would hope to see itself reflected and represented in this place and we are doing better towards that end.
As the first woman elected to the seat of Nelson, I am part of what I regard as a much more appropriate gender balance in our Chamber with the majority of female members. However, we still have a great distance to go in achieving other aspects of appropriate inclusion and diversity here. In particular, I say this of a lack of cultural diversity and inclusion of people with a disability for instance, so may we continue to see progress on both those areas in coming years.
People are aware my background and experience my entire professional life, has been working towards achieving a fairer and more equitable Tasmania. My attention generally turns to bread and butter social issues the people of Nelson and those, in fact, across the whole of Tasmania face every day. That is, whether that is making sure Tasmanians have a roof over their heads or they have access to the right health and social services when they need them or speaking up on issues in which we can do much better, such as poker machine reform.
It is a priority for me to use opportunities I have to provide a voice for those Tasmanians who need it most – homeless Tasmanians, young Tasmanians, unemployed Tasmanians, Tasmanians who are unwell or at risk, people who I would term broadly, vulnerable Tasmanians.
This has been a focus of my work before coming to politics and it continues to be a priority and why I was pleased to hear the Premier in his address emphasise his commitment to becoming a government of compassion. As the member for McIntyre and others have mentioned in their contributions today, this is a time at which compassion will not just be an aspiration for us but an essential reality in the way that way we treat each other and behave in our personal interactions and the structural responses and measures we put in place across all levels of government. More than ever, compassion needs to sit at the heart of our public decisions made, the structural supports we provide and in fulfilling the responsibilities of government. I firmly believe we will best weather this storm together on the strength of our compassion.
I believe that acts of compassion build trust and a government that acts with genuine compassion in words and in behaviours and decisions will garner the trust of the community. There is almost nothing I would like to see more in Tasmania than trust in government to grow and for us to become a real national exemplar in this area. For years, we have witnessed serious erosion of the public’s trust in us as politicians and elected representatives. It is an issue that is not confined to Tasmania. We have seen evidence of this sort of erosion of trust all over the world and nationally.
Trust in governments is eroded through the pursuit of simplistic solutions or the exploitation of fear in division, particularly toward political gain rather than community benefit. We have seen it play out internationally and we must acknowledge that a lack of trust in government is also a very Tasmanian issue. For too long, we have witnessed what I think is unedifying political bickering. For too long, we have witnessed how big money has compromised politicians, parties and elections and, for too long, we have witnessed cosy deals that have achieved far too little for Tasmanian people overall. It comes as little surprise that the public’s confidence in us has deteriorated in recent times, but it is not to say that we cannot reverse this.
We, as elected members, can help and do our bit to start restoring the public’s trust. I want to remind all members that restoring the public’s trust in us is achievable. I am going to mention, briefly, two things available to us right now to do just that. We could reform electoral donation laws in the very near future, before our next election, so the public can have confidence that political and policy outcomes cannot be bought by those with the deepest pockets. Given Tasmania’s nationally weakest donation laws and a clear recommendation made from an inquiry process, reform is necessary and urgent in this state. Reducing the influence of big money would be a major step forward in building public trust.
Another straightforward reform measure would be to provide genuinely proper funding and capacity to key transparency and accountability mechanisms. For example, increasing the capacity of the Ombudsman responsible for reviewing RTI requests. Some increase has occurred but not enough to make a tangible difference and delays of many years in processing these reviews is unacceptable. It presents a terrible lack of transparency and an inability for government to be truly held to account.
These are just two matters that have the potential to tangibly build some of the trust and faith in our political system, which we are lacking at the moment. Bringing back that trust is not something the government can do on its own. Individually, as elected members of parliament, we can play a part, we can begin by the way we act and present ourselves in parliament and in our communities. Politicians can lead from the front; we can be open, honest and truly accountable to our constituents in our decision-making.
Restoring public trust in parliament is important, so too is ensuring our government delivers on its promise of supporting all Tasmanians. I look forward, once we are through this very difficult time, to being involved in discussions and efforts from the government to see this truly play out. We know that indicators have been going in the wrong direction in many social issues over time. TasCOSS provided us with a recent report, Measuring Progress in Tasmania (2014-2020), confirming this. It makes for poor reading and I would like to think that we can look ahead to the next 60 years as an opportunity to move in the opposite direction and build from where we are now, in crisis and in extremity, build forward from that and improve.
I recognise that when things are in these uncertain and crisis situations, things become a bit wobblier when people are called upon to be compassionate. People are caught up in panicky actions during a crisis but I also see many, many people reaching out selflessly to help others. I hope as we stick together and manage as best we can over the next, say, six months we will all have our sense of community expanded and enriched through this. I hope that compassionate and people‑centred emergency actions and support provided by the Government over this time will also lead to an expanded and enriched ongoing approach from the Government of key social policy areas. Once our emergency crisis situation is eventually resolved, I hope we will see a distinct trajectory of improvement over the years in our social indicators building on the connections and compassion we are drawing on right now.
While in other circumstances I might have focused on a whole range of specifics from the Premier’s speech and on certain of my own priorities, today I am going to stick to these just general remarks.
I conclude by offering my sincere best wishes to the Premier, to the Health minister and to the Cabinet members, the many crucial teams of public servants currently working extremely hard to do the best for our state. They are all showing true leadership and determination in the face of uncertainty, fear and a future that holds enormous challenges for us all. I thank them for the work they are doing and I know we all stand ready to best support our community in coming days.
