TasFarmers Matters - State needs long-term plan

The majority of Tasmanians are frustrated and angry by the dysfunction and waste plaguing our State Parliament as we head to our fourth election in just seven years. 

This instability and lack of strategic long-term direction has eroded confidence within the business community.

This has real and immediate impacts on the willingness of business to invest into capital, into innovation and into employing more Tasmanians.

TasFarmers will again be developing a strategic election package for the agricultural sector in the lead-up to the election.

This will contain many long-term strategic priority policies, which if acted upon, will strengthen the sector and enable the state to deliver on its 2050 Agrivision Target of achieving a farm gate value of $10b a year.

What this package won’t contain are short-term “pork barrelling” requests, but will present a roadmap for supporting our industry to meet its true long-term potential, something that should be the ambition of all fully functioning governments. 

As we get closer to election day our scorecard on parties’ policies will be released to help the agricultural community understand who has the right long-term vision to drive our industry’s success.

At the last election only 15 months ago the elected Liberal Government committed to developing, in consultation with TasFarmers, a fair and contemporary compensation framework that would include a Strategic Benefit Payment for landholders affected by the proposed North West Transmission Development.

This commitment was of huge importance for this group of landholders, who took the government at their word when casting their vote. 

Over the past 15 months, TasFarmers has been actively engaged in negotiating a strategic benefits payment on behalf of landholders based on expert and independent advice. 

This involved a series of meetings with TasNetworks representatives; however, progress has been slow, frustrating landholders and eroding their confidence.

Interestingly, in its second 100-day plan, the government marked this commitment as complete as a result of writing a new Ministerial Statement of Expectation to TasNetworks requiring this to occur.

Negotiations are about discussing the interests of two parties and making a series of counteroffers until an outcome can be reached that both parties accept. 

However, in this negotiation, it became clear that the same Shareholder Ministers who had issued expectations to TasNetworks, had also prevented it from negotiating an outcome, as they had not delegated sufficient authority to the TasNetworks negotiating team.

This week, as the vote of no confidence progressed through the parliament, Energy Minister Nick Duigan advised TasFarmers that they would be communicating directly with landholders about their Strategic Benefit Payment for this project

Its Strategic Benefit Payment model did not consider in its design the independent advice put forward by TasFarmers during negotiation meetings and appears to have been reached in isolation without consultation, as the government committed to doing just 15 months ago.

As Tasmanians head back to the polls, they will have some important decisions to make. 

Our island state expects more.

It expects government to have a strategic long-term plan for our economy, which is backed by our people and industries. 

As we vote we must be able to take political parties at their word and have confidence and trust that our government will deliver on its commitments.