An empty seat bore the brunt of frustrations on stage for the Australia Institute forum on good governance for Bass candidates on Tuesday night.
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The seat was left empty by candidates from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, and the Animal Justice Party, but the party bearing the frustrations were the Liberals.
The SFFP and AJP could not attend, however when asked why the Liberal Party did not send candidates, Premier Peter Gutwein said it was because the institute was a "green front group".
The Liberals did not send candidates to the Bass or Braddon institute forums.
Bass independent candidate Roy Ramage, Greens candidate Jack Davenport and Labor candidate Janie Finlay fronted the crowd of about 100 people and answered questions focused on political donation reforms, climate change and the kanamaluka/Tamar River.
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All three supported publicly funded election campaigns for fairer campaigns and committed to support truth in political advertising legislation.
They also all agreed reform was needed on political donations. Ms Finlay and Mr Davenport said all donations that accumulate above $1000 should be disclosed, and Mr Ramage said all donations should be disclosed.
A question from a 12-year-old attendee from Strike4Climate received strong support from the candidates. All agreed the climate emergency was a pressing issue that needed to be addressed.
Mr Davenport said the Greens supported a move away from fossil fuels, coal and native growth forest logging in the state and calling it a climate emergency was not alarmist language, it was reality.
"It's an emergency and we need to act," he said.
"I feel like I should apologise as an adult, that you have to strike [for this]."
Ms Finlay and Mr Ramage said they supported Strike4Climate and changes to address the emergency.
A fix for the silt build up on the kanamaluka was asked, all candidates questioned the timeliness of the delay of the Tamar Estuary Management Taskforce report.
All agreed an independent authority was needed, Ms Finlay said Labor would await the TEMT report findings as a long-term, multifaced vision was needed and Mr Davenport said the Greens were committed to funding solutions driven by evidence and science.
"When the Premier made the announcement about the [$4m funding for] dredging it was actually really disappointing, because it appears to many in the community to be a large amount of money, and when you use the word dredging with that it seems like it's a fix, but it's not, it's just a simple band aid," Ms Finlay said.
"The amount of money that's going to be required to invest in a long term sustainable future for the [river] is far beyond that amount of investment."
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