‘Minding the store’? Or ‘building a bigger and better store’?
Economic Policies, Tasmania, The Australian Economy | 3rd December 2021
Saul’s presentation to the Economic Society of Australia’s annual Tasmanian Economic Forum in Hobart on 3rd December.
Tasmania’s economic performance has improved considerably in recent years – and the current state government is entitled to claim some of the credit for that. It’s done a good job of ‘minding the store’ since being elected in 2014. But is shows little inclination to spend any of the political capital its earned in order to ‘build a bigger and better store’, in ways that would address the underlying reasons why Tasmania is still, despite the improvements of recent years, the poorest state in Australia by most metrics. In particular, it appears, still, to have little appetite for bringing the structure of Tasmania’s under-performing education system into line with that of other states; it has no appetite for reform of Tasmania’s inefficient and inequitable taxation system; and no appetite for reform of Tasmania’s outmoded governance structures.