SHADOW treasurer Chris Bowen visited Launceston on Wednesday to acquaint himself with the Bass electorate’s issues in the lead-up to the planned July federal election.
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Guiding him through the vast wishlist of pledge proposals was federal Labor candidate Ross Hart who was making cases for funding towards the relocation of the University of Tasmania’s Launceston campus to Inveresk, a Tamar estuary clean-up, and increased health funding.
But voters will have to wait a little longer before the opposition makes any firm pledges or presents a package for Bass, however.
“Today has been more of a listening exercise for me,” Mr Bowen said.
"Tasmania is always a battleground – five seats and none of them are safe for anybody.
“The member for Bass never has great job security and it's our job to make sure that's the case.”
Mr Bowen said he would swiftly discuss funding for UTAS project with opposition higher education spokesman Kim Carr and funding for TasWater’s sewerage improvement plan with shadow environment spokesman Mark Butler.
Mr Hart said water quality needed to take precedence over the aesthetics of the estuary’s silt problem.
“We need to enable TasWater to spend the money that should have been spent years ago in recreating our sewerage system,” he said.
“We have a sewerage system that originated in the 1860s … and we have a sewerage system that effectively delivers untreated sewage into the water.
“When both private and public organisations are spending significant amounts of money on capital improvements at the waters edge, we need to have a safe situation where people can use the river in all respects."
Mr Bowen said he was supportive of the university’s relocation.
"Universities play a vital part in the economic lifeblood of regional centres both in terms of the direct jobs created, research and development that creates jobs indirectly, and the pathways to education,” he said.
Mr Bowen said he was looking a geographically specific education programs to combat Launceston’s high youth unemployment rate.
He said the opposition would not present an alternative budget in response to the federal Budget in May, arguing that the party had already released a raft of tax policies and policies on key areas health and education.
Along with policies on superannuation concessions, an increased tobacco excise and honing in on multinational tax avoidance is the hotly debated end to negative gearing on all but newly built properties.
Mr Bowen said contrary to the government’s claims, changes to negative gearing would not cause housing prices to crash or led to an exodus of investors from the market.
"What it should do is take some of the heat out of future rises in an overheated market – that's what all the analysis points to,” he said.
“Negative gearing and capital gains tax discount intersect to make it the most generous treatment of housing investment in the world,”
"As a result, we have 50 per cent of the housing purchases being from investors.
“For the first time in history, investors outweigh owner-occupiers in terms of housing purchasers.
"For the first time, first-home buyers are down to one in seven purchasers. Something has got to give."
