Brad Stansfield analysis 2026-27 Tasmanian Budget

In the history of Tasmania, no State Government has ever delivered a budget that spent less money than the previous year.

The closest attempt was in 2011-12, when Labor Premier Lara Giddings boldly handed down a budget that promised a one pent reduction in expenditure, on the back of swinging cuts to health and education, including school closures. As it turned out, expenditure that year ended up increasing by 1.8 per cent, which to be fair by historical standards was relatively low.

In this year’s budget, Treasurer Eric Abetz predicts that the Government’s spending will essentially stay flat in actual terms, with only a one per cent increase this year, and a massive four per cent decrease in spending next year. All the while inflation continues to run rampant and the unions clamour for higher and higher wage increases.

And that’s not to mention the furious backlash that will no doubt come from the public sector, health and education sectors which will render most actual savings proposals dead on arrival.

Treasurer Abetz’s ambition is to be admired; however it might be said that like a hungry man at a feast, his eyes are bigger than his stomach because let’s be frank, the chances of these spending targets being delivered lie somewhere between Buckley’s and None.

In accepting the advice of the Treasury to cut so hard with no prospects of actually achieving the ambition, one wonders whether the Cabinet fully understands what they have gotten themselves into.

• Brad Stansfield is the owner of polling firm Enterprise Marketing and Research Services, and a part-owner of this newspaper. He was former Liberal Premier Will Hodman’s Chief of Staff from 2010-2018.