Showtime as ScoMo hits state

PM announces rural boost

PRIME Minister Scott Morrison will promise more visits to Tasmania in his speech to party faithful today as he celebrates the Liberals’ success in the state at the federal election.

Mr Morrison, who is in Tasmania for the second time since the May poll, will also tell the Tasmanian Liberal State Council what his Government has planned for this term and hear what issues are important to this state.

The council will be held in Devonport over two days.

Yesterday Mr Morrison was at the 100th Burnie Show to announce $20 million in funding to boost such agricultural events around Australia and $13 million for national onfarm water infrastructure.

“How good is the Burnie Show?” Mr Morrison asked the crowd, expected to be 20,000 over the two days — almost triple the attendance recorded in 2018.

“Notching up 100 shows over 102 years shows the mettle of rural communities,” he said.

“The Burnie Show continued through two world wars and the Great Depression but two years were missed. One year fire burnt down the showground’s grandstand and another year an animal judge was hospitalised after being bitten by a prize-winning boar.”

Mr Morrison declined a patron’s offer to buy a lifesize cutout of Pauline Hanson at the One Nation tent but did accept to meet two Clydesdales called John and Ted and pose for a multitude of photos with showgoers.

He also failed to answer a plea from a local Labor volunteer to increase the Newstart allowance.

“People my age on the allowance are really suffering,” she told the PM as he walked through the crowd.

At today’s Liberal conference, the Southern Young Liberal Branch will put up a motion for the council to ask the Federal Government to call upon China to respect the rule of law, democracy and civil liberties in Hong Kong.

Mr Morrison said the motion represented an important sentiment and acknowledged concerns felt across the country about the Hong Kong situation.

“The motion expresses the concerns of Australians, and Tasmanians in particular,” he said.

The Southern Young Liberal Branch has also put up a motion that the council calls upon the State Government to reject any expansion of the Aboriginal and Dual Naming Policy.

The branch called it “divisive and tokenistic”.

“It does nothing meaningfully to help Aboriginal people, and serves only to devalue Australia’s shared history,” the motion says.