What the Tasmanian Liberals will do:

Begin the long overdue task of fixing the State’s critical infrastructure by preparing and releasing a detailed infrastructure plan for Tasmania within nine months of taking office. The plan will cover all major infrastructure, including rail, ports, major roads, energy, and water and sewerage.

Development of the plan will be overseen by a new independent body, Infrastructure Tasmania. This independent body will be tasked with reporting on the current state of our critical infrastructure, identifying future needs and recommending priorities to the Government within one year of the election.

The plan will be developed in consultation with relevant Government departments and agencies, local government and the business community. There would also be opportunities for input from individuals and community groups.

Infrastructure Tasmania will work along the lines of Infrastructure Australia. It will comprise three people with expertise and experience in the infrastructure area, including a person with experience in local government. It will be supported by a small secretariat drawn from appropriate Government agencies.

Infrastructure Tasmania will connect with key infrastructure interest groups to ensure the plan it produces actually responds to needs in the community, and is not an academic document produced by bureaucrats.

It will not be a large bureaucratic body, and will draw on the expertise and resources across government to support infrastructure planning. The plan it develops will be a living document, which will guide our State’s infrastructure priorities into the future.

Why this policy is needed
Tasmania needs leadership and vision in the coordination and development of its critical infrastructure. The State’s future prosperity depends on it.

Developing infrastructure is expensive and requires longterm planning. This means that infrastructure spending decisions must be based in need, not politics, putting the State’s interests first.

These critical decisions are too important to be driven by the kind of short-term political considerations we have seen so often over the last eleven years of Labor. It’s time to take the politics out of infrastructure development and replace it with sound, long-term planning and good policy.

A Hodgman Liberal Government will ensure that decisions about Tasmania’s future infrastructure needs are properly thought through and driven in the best interests of the State’s long-term future. It will give certainty to the business community that the State can meet their transport, energy and essential service requirements in the decades ahead.

After 11 years of Labor...
Under Labor infrastructure development in Tasmania has been driven by politics rather than need, and characterised by pork-barrelling rather than what is right for the State.

Examples include Labor’s decision to build a $20 million-plus grandstand at Elwick Racecourse; the decision to buy the failed third Bass Strait ferry; and Labor’s stubborn refusal to upgrade the Midland Highway to be a four lane, divided highway, despite the fact that everyone knows it’s an essential long-term project to meet a long-term need.

After 11 years in office Labor still hasn’t produced an infrastructure plan for the State.

Our trains have literally run off the rails; the arterial road link between Launceston and Hobart is in poor repair, with some sections littered with pot holes; and Labor still has no long-term plans for the future of our ports, rail and energy supplies.

Our roads are in such poor shape that Infrastructure Australia said after its national audit that Tasmania’s roads are the “weak link in the state’s export chain” and “infrastructure deficiencies, compounded by a maintenance backlog, mean that many roads require major investment.”

Despite all this, the State Government did not ask for any federal funding as part of the Rudd Government’s $22 billion economic stimulus package.

Over the last 11 years Labor has had seven Infrastructure Ministers, and the latest Minister only remains in the job only because there is no one else left to choose from. It’s no wonder Tasmania’s infrastructure is crumbling.

And on top of this, taxpayers are footing a $500,000 bill to pay two Secretaries of the Department of Infrastructure, Energy and Resources because the Government doesn’t know what to do with the one it doesn’t want and who is currently doing nothing.