A $30 million cash injection for the Northern Cities Project will be warmly welcomed by supporters of the University of Tasmania’s campus relocation plan for Inveresk.
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The announcement by Treasurer Peter Gutwein yesterday during his 2016 budget speech was the final missing piece in what is potentially a project of major significance for Northern Tasmania.
Federal Labor has already promised $150 million for the project, with the state government required to tip in half that figure. And it did so in yesterday’s budget by increasing its $60 million Northern Cities Project to $90 million – $75 million of that going towards the Inveresk relocation project.
A federal Liberal pledge of a similar funding announcement to match Labor’s is expected, and once that does happen, the project will virtually be a fait accompli.
That announcement wasn’t the only good news story to come out of the budget for the North yesterday – although many of the funding projects had already been drip fed by the state government to the media over the past fortnight.
A $7.9 million upgrade of the children’s ward at the Launceston General Hospital was made public more than a week ago. It will be the first upgrade of that facility at the hospital in 30 years.
The North has already seen the benefits of major school infrastructure funding as part of the $113 million state school upgrade. Riverside Primary, Queechy, Kings Meadows, East Launceston and Prospect have or will benefit.
But the biggest education story in town yesterday was the announcement of $134 million for the full six years of Gonski for Tasmania’s schools. The funding will certainly put the pressure on Malcolm Turnbull’s federal Liberal government to follow suit and fully fund the programme, which many in the education system see as a pivotal forward in improving our educational outcomes.
The state government promised a sizeable surplus in 2016-17 of $77 million, although critics claim the figure is nothing more than a mirage, propped up by Commonwealth grants. Employment remains an issue the state will need to address over the next financial year, although Wednesday’s announcement of a boost to the first home builders grant, on top of the many infrastructure projects already announced may go a long way to help arrest the trend of a rising jobless figure.
