BLAIR RICHARDS ON THE ELECTION
In the first of a series of columns, Blair Richards looks back on the first week of the State Election campaign
THERE was a feeling of deja vu when the real State Election campaign began this week with an opposition promising to fix the health system.
It was only four years ago the Liberals were swept in to power on a platform that included fixing a health system they said was broken by Labor.
At that time the Royal Hobart Hospital redevelopment had ground to a halt in the planning stages and the elective surgery waiting list was woeful. Fast forward four years and the RHH redevelopment is finally in progress and the waiting list, while still woeful, has gone down.
But significant problems remain: the continually overstretched RHH, an exodus of doctors from the Launceston hospital, and the Australian Medical Association expressing no confidence in the management of the Liberals’ redesigned health system.
The Liberals realised last year they couldn’t go to an election without addressing problems that won’t go away in health, and so headlined the May State Budget with a $7 billion health spend.
Labor responded this week with an additional $560 million, and have been running hard on health since the election was called.
Labor’s focus on health is a continuation of a winning strategy employed by the party in Tasmania at the 2016 federal election.
But the problem with state governments promising to fix health is that so much of it is out of the state’s control.
While the state may give, the Federal Government may take away — remember the tough-love Abbott budget of 2014?
And because the Federal Government runs Medicare there’s not much a state government can do about people being unable to access or unable to afford to see their GP.
This in turn contributes to the ever-increasing demand on hospitals, and state parties will continue to promise to out-spend each other on health every election and we will keep wondering why the health system continues to struggle.
POKIES DEBATE
THE Tasmanian Hospitality Association wasted no time rallying members against Labor’s new policy and the Greens’ longstanding policy to remove poker machines from Tasmanian pubs after 2023.
Not only are venues’ gaming revenues at stake, but massively increased future revenues. The Liberals have agreed to the industry plan that involves breaking Federal Group’s monopoly and allowing individual venues to own machines outright.
It was in this climate that THA boss Steve Old fronted the media on day two of the campaign to deliver an epic spray against Labor and the Greens. Behind him were hospitality staff wearing T-shirts urging people to vote Liberal.
The major parties have been wary of taking on the THA in the past given the organisation’s ability to mobilise its network of venues against anyone who gets in their way, and no wonder.
A massive banner on the Brooker Inn, which will be seen by tens of thousands of commuters between now and election day, has a blunt message: “Labor and the Greens think you are stupid. What’s next? Don’t let them tell you what to do.”
Spotted at the Dunalley pub: “Save our jobs, vote Liberal.” The banner is flanked by rows of blue Liberal signs.
War veterans have also been controversially included in the campaign, expressing concern the removal of pokies from the Glenorchy RSL will spell the end of their Anzac Day commemorations.
Labor shouldn’t take all this personally, though. Ten years ago, then-opposition leader Will Hodgman was the target of a similar attack after he questioned whether the state had got a good deal out of Federal’s 20-year pokie monopoly.