The first 100 days of the Hodgman government has confirmed fears that the worst characteristics of majority government will predominate, including an arrogant dismissal of other points of view, lack of transparency, and blind ideology steamrolling good public policy.
“There clearly are no laurels here at risk of being crushed by the Hodgman Liberal government,” Greens Leader Kim Booth MP said.
“Any meaningful scorecard rating the first 100 days performance by the new government would have to give a fail for transparency, a fail for vision, and a fail for sound public policy that is not ideologically driven.”
“The Liberals’ self congratulatory list is nothing more than a deceptive grab-bag of items which demonstrate an ideological leap back to the future, are ill-though out and incomplete, or were developments initiated by the previous government for which Mr Hodgman is now trying to take credit.”
“The fail for transparency is evident in Mr Hodgman’s claim that that the promise to meet with timber industry representatives to begin rebuilding the forest industry was achieved.”
“What Mr Hodgman fails to declare is the peak industry body FIAT’s publicly voiced bemusement at the unseemly ‘haste’ of the Liberals’ Bill to undo the forest agreement. Nor does he mention that FIAT does not support the current attempt to delist 74, 000 hectares of forest from the World Heritage Area.”
“In this day and age, when even the US President publicly states that action on climate change is an economic imperative, it is irresponsible to move to abolish the state’s Climate Change Action Council. This should be made a stand-alone State Authority, just as the Liberals are crowing they are doing with Tourism Tasmania.”
“The fail in good public policy is further evident in the use of millions of public money to prop up selected private ventures with the big end of town, while using the tight budget situation to justify hanging the axe over approximately 1500 public sector workers.”
“It is laughable to try and claim credit for recalling Parliament after the state election, as one of their 100 days achievements. Not only is this desperate, it provides a worrying insight to the Liberals’ commitment to democracy, and begs the question whether they considered not recalling Parliament?”
“All the hallmarks of arrogant, out-of-touch and out-of-control majority government is evident in this disingenuous 100 day self-assessment, which is silent on long term vision for Tasmania.”
“We hope that Mr Hodgman has taken seriously his own exhortations for the need for reduced spending, and that taxpayers will not be subjected to glossy brochures in their letterboxes promoting the latest Liberal spin,” Mr Booth said.