Flicking through the budget papers on Tuesday it soon became clear there was very little new money for Tasmania.
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What became even clearer was that the Tasmanian election package must still be coming.
I made my debut in the budget lock up this year, and spent a significant amount of time scratching my head.
The lock up is where journalists get shut in a room for a six hours with nothing but the federal budget papers and some Arnotts Family Assorted biscuits.
Phones are confiscated and you’re cut off from the outside world to make sure none of the contents are leaked until the Treasurer is on his feet in Parliament to deliver the budget speech.
Friendly advice from predecessors was that the “control F” search function would be my saviour to assist with the hundreds, if not, thousands, of pages.
With the budget papers ready to go, I began the search for any mention of Tasmania and Launceston.
To my horror, knowing I had at least two stories to write with a Tasmanian focus, I kept getting “no results found”.
Deep in the third volume I found some mention of health funding, and money to manage the World Heritage Area.
Like the kid with a test paper they can’t answer, I looked around the room to observe what the other journalists were doing.
It was silent reading time while people went over the various files, and I didn’t want to be the one to break the hush to ask if they too were struggling to find Tasmanian funds.
I felt reassured when my colleague passed me a note with the words “no money for sewerage and UTAS??” scratched onto some newspaper.
Six hours and six biscuits later, I was still yet to find any big ticket items for Tasmania.
But it’s fair to say it was a sober, if not boring, budget that contained no shocks, and no surprises.
The surprise, if anything, was how little it contained for Tasmania.
There were no new pre-election sweeteners to secure the Three Amigos, and the most notably absent was any money to fix Launceston’s ancient sewerage system or funds towards the University of Tasmania’s proposal to move its campus to Inveresk.
Rest assured, that doesn’t mean the sweeteners aren’t coming.
With a federal election looming, the state can expect an influx of ministers, and even the Prime Minister, coming to visit with cheque books at the ready.
The empty budget can only mean that the government is deliberately keeping a package of promises to announce in the lead up to the July 2 election.
If the budget contained everything, there’d be nothing to announce to help win votes closer to the election.
An announcement on the UTAS funding should be expected soon.
The longer the government waits, the more the pressure builds up, given Labor has already announced its committment to the project.
The Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Property Council have both expressed disappointment that the funds were not there.
In the lead up to the budget, Treasurer Scott Morrison said sweeteners “wouldn’t change the circumstances of people facing difficult times”.
But with a beige budget, the government must have some impressive announcements still up its sleeve to secure the votes of Northern Tasmania.