The first week of the election campaign saw both the major parties take swipes at each other over economic mismanagement and magic pudding promises.
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And Fairfax Tasmania’s expert election panel was watching proceedings with a keen eye.
Saul Eslake
Economist Saul Eslake said Labor would be prioritising health expenditure in a bid to woo voters whereas the Liberals had put infrastructure spending at the forefront.
On the debate around budget surpluses and deficits, Mr Eslake said there was nothing wrong with a government choosing to run into an overall deficit to fund capital works projects, provided they were well-chosen and the government could cover interest and depreciation costs.
“Tasmania needs to spend more on health, so I’m not critical of the Labor Party proposing to spend more on health, but I’ll be interested to see how they fund it,” he said.
“On the other hand, a lot of what the Liberals have proposed with regard to capital works … that can be legitimately funded by borrowing.”
Mr Eslake said borrowing to fund increased health expenditure would not be a legitimate use of funds.
He said it would be fiscally responsible for Labor to announce it would fund increased health expenditure through increasing one of the state taxes – provided it was well-thought-out and a tax which was not particularly damaging.
If this was to be done, Mr Eslake said most likely an announcement would come before election day.
“It’s not like Tasmania has a big budget surplus that can be run down,” Mr Eslake said.
Kate Crowley
Political scientist Kate Crowley said the policies announced so far in the campaign appeared to provide answers to certain questions from the electorate.
The Liberals had an answer for power price pressure concerns with their announcement that they would “de-link” Tasmania from the National Electricity Market, whereas Labor provided a supposed solution to the health “crisis” with its pledge to inject $560 million into the health system over four years.
Associate Professor Crowley said the Greens had also engaged with the community on an issue that people have concerns about: planning laws.
She called Labor’s health policy “a bit disingenuous”.
“I think most Tasmanians realise it wasn’t that long ago that [Labor] didn’t rescue the health system,” Associate Professor Crowley said.
“And … there’s probably a lot more money now required to fix things than has even been pledged.”
Associate Professor Crowley said door-knocking was still one of the most important things a candidate could do in order to gain traction in the community.
She said she hoped the state’s political parties were “saving something better than what’s come out in the last week” in terms of policy reveals.
Associate Professor Crowley also said she believed Braddon Jacqui Lambie Network candidate Rodney Flowers and Lyons Labor candidate Darren Clark should both have been “booted” off their respective parties’ tickets.
It came to light last week that Mr Flowers had been charged with illegally riding a quad bike through the Arthur-Pieman Conservation Area.
Mr Clark, meanwhile, was scolded by the ALP after a photo taken several years ago emerged, in which he appeared to be posing with another person’s mobile phone inserted between his buttocks.
“How low do we have to go for our calibre of political candidates?” Associate Professor Crowley said.
Barry Prismall
Veteran journalist Barry Prismall said the poker machine issue had handed the Liberals an opportunity for “a scare campaign”.
“Scare campaigns are usually the stuff of Opposition strategies in elections,” Mr Prismall said.
“The Labor pledge is holding up well in the face of an industry backlash that was always expected, but one suspects this policy will dominate the battleground for better or worse.
“Whether it backfires on Labor or is a winner, its real value lies in being a point of difference.”
Mr Prismall said that without the party’s policy to remove pokies from pubs and clubs by 2023, “Labor would seem to be missing in action”.
He also observed that, on a trip recently from Hobart to the state’s North-East, Liberal election signs outnumbered Labor signs “tenfold”.
“The election is too low-key to the point of being boring and this will favour the government,” Mr Prismall said.
“Bec White needs to go on the attack.
The election is too low-key to the point of being boring and this will favour the government.
- Barry Prismall
“Her troops better believe that Labor has some wow-factor secrets to unleash in the final two weeks.”
Mr Prismall believed the ALP should have a jobs strategy to back up its claims that pokies reform would not “devastate” pubs and clubs.
”I am curious to see if Jacqui Lambie hijacks the poker machine debate,” he said.
“She alone has the profile and potential to steal it from Labor, and she doesn’t have to justify what a Lambie government would do.”
It is JLN policy to remove the machines from pubs and clubs by 2023.
Addressing the Liberals’ newly announced plan to exit the National Electricity Market in a bid to lower power prices, Mr Prismall said Labor was right to be demanding more information on the proposal.