CASH SPLASH ON SCHOOLS
MAJOR spending on high schools and $ 89m for the next stage of the Royal Hobart Hospital redevelopment will form key elements of the state budget, to be delivered today.
In the south, there is $ 40m for the Brighton High School, $ 20m to revitalise Cosgrove High and $ 25.3m for the new K- 12 Sorell School, the Mercury can reveal.
FUNDING for the next stage of the Royal Hobart Hospital redevelopment and a major school building spend will headline the state government’s recovery budget to be announced by Premier and Treasurer Peter Gutwein today.
It will be a budget of records: record spending, a record deficit and record debt.
The 2020- 21 state budget will include $ 89m for the Royal Hobart, plus $ 40m for the Brighton High School, $ 20m to revitalise Cosgrove High School and $ 25.3m for the new K- 12 Sorell School, the Mercury can reveal.
Infrastructure will be the centrepiece of the budget – including $ 2.4bn in road funding over the next four years.
“We will build the intergenerational infrastructure our state needs to thrive, including more homes, better schools, roads, bridges, irrigation schemes, as well as renewable energy assets, health, housing and justice facilities,” Mr Gutwein said.
“We are investing $ 89.8m to continue stage 2 of the Royal Hobart Hospital redevelopment, including an expanded emergency department and intensive care unit, $ 3.7m for the pharmacy redevelopment at the RHH, and $ 19.8m over two years to build 27 mental health beds in southern Tasmania.
“And $ 3.4m has been allocated over two years for the Hobart Safe Spaces homeless accommodation, and $ 15.9m for the Southeast Irrigation Scheme.”
It is unprecedented to hand down a budget so late in a financial year – this budget was originally scheduled to be handed down in May but the pandemic has played havoc with the state’s finances and with the economic forecasts on which the budget is based.
Mr Gutwein has already revealed that the budget will include a $ 1.1bn deficit for the 2020- 21 financial year – the biggest in the state’s history – and following a $ 338m deficit recorded in 2019- 20.
The state will be $ 1.8bn in debt by this time next year.
“This wasn’t about bottom lines, this was about saving lives,” Mr Gutwein said on Wednesday.
“While the budget bottom line will be in the red and for a Treasurer, obviously, that’s not what you’d like to see, I do know very clearly that the investment we’ve made and the spending we have engaged in will put our community back on track.”
Budget funding already revealed: $ 45m for improved access to elective surgery; $ 23m for health information technology systems; $ 17.6m for improvements to bushfire mitigation, planning and response; $ 6m for biosecurity improvements; $ 5m for Launceston Airport upgrades; $ 4m for reforming Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services; $ 3m for the Office of the DPP.