DENISON independent MHR Andrew Wilkie is ramping up pressure on the federal government to show its hand on the future of Bass Strait subsidies.
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Mr Wilkie is urging the government to respond to a Productivity Commission report into Tasmanian shipping and freight, which it received twelve months ago this week.
He said Tasmanians were understandably nervous about future costs of moving people, vehicles and freight to and from Tasmania by sea.
''Why is the Government stone-walling? Why won’t it respond in detail?'' Mr Wilkie said in a statement this morning.
''Is it because it simply doesn’t understand that the cost of Bass Strait remains the biggest brake on Tasmania’s economic development and the easiest to fix?''
Mr Wilkie said the existing schemes must at least be retained in full, but argued they were insufficient and full of gaps.
''I call on the Government to commit to effective subsidies applying to all people, vehicles and freight going both north and south, including all Tasmanian exports bound for international markets,'' he said.
MORE TO COME
