Tasmania’s community sector has come together ahead of the state election to call on political parties to pledge a minimum of $250 million over the next decade to invest in bridging the gaps that exist in health, education, housing and transport.
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In a statement of priorities, released on Thursday, TasCOSS outlined 10 key areas that “needed addressing”, calling on the three tiers of government – local, state and federal, to work together to provide long-term planning and investment.
“We’re asking for the establishment of a coordinator-general role that would assess across the 29 local government areas what their needs might be and then make decisions about what would be funded,” chief executive Kym Goodes said.
“So we’re saying we need to start to look across the state, look at where the priority areas of investment are, to play catch up for some of the under-investment over the past 15 to 20 years.”
Ms Goodes said the initial investment needed to be a minimum of $25 million a year for the next 10 years “to put the most basic resources back into communities”.
“We spend a lot of our time putting out fires, working out the crisis end with communities, with people, with families - we do that across health and community services and in our general day-to-day work, even in the transport space.
“What we’re saying is, we need to invest properly so people don’t end up in crisis, or the number that do will be greatly reduced, and then we’ll have more money to invest back into that preventative end.”
The priorities included health, cost of living, education, housing, employment, families and children, community sector, transport, pokie-free communities, and resilient communities.
“We’d like to see after an election the next Tasmanian government make an allocation in the May budget this year so that we can get this up and running.
“It would be run out of government, but we want to see community play a big role front and centre in actually planning that roll-out.”
Premier Will Hodgman said the Liberals would consider proposals from peak groups like TasCOSS in the lead-up to the election.
“We’re working with them on ways, not only to support the community sector, but also to get more Tasmanians into work,” he said.
Opposition Leader Rebecca White said Labor recognised “an agenda that promotes fairness is also a good economic agenda”.
“Labor shares the same goals as TasCOSS when it comes to improving the lives of Tasmanians and the health of communities.”
TasCOSS outlines 10 key priorities
- HEALTH: Increase preventative health investment to 5 per cent of health budget by 2020; establish independent oversight of preventative health; health in all policies.
- COST OF LIVING: Distributional analysis of budgets; introduce a ‘cost of living impact statement’.
- EDUCATION: Invest across lifespan; increase support for vulnerable students, families.
- HOUSING: Implement Shelter Tasmania’s priorities.
- EMPLOYMENT: Partnership with government, community, business.
- FAMILIES, CHILDREN, YOUNG PEOPLE: Recognise early intervention is key in all policies; invest more in evidence-based initiatives.
- COMMUNITY SECTOR: Convene joint committee of sector and peak body leadership representatives, including from the Health Department and Department of Premier and Cabinet.
- TRANSPORT: More frequent, affordable public transport; more driver mentoring programs.
- POKIE-FREE COMMUNITIES: Remove pokies from pubs and clubs; don’t increase poker machine numbers in casinos.
- RESILIENT COMMUNITIES: Recognise Tasmania people as a ‘project of state significance’.
