You helped mount a joyful, decent, honest campaign and you are reaping the reward.
On your behalf, I look forward to four years in Parliament representing the best interests of Franklin and the best interests of Tasmania.
Our campaign won on the back of the clearest of principles.
Four pillars:
Budget Repair, Social Repair, Island Repair and Integrity Repair to guide us for the next four years.
It’ll mean working above narrow political interests to create a healthier state, better education outcomes, more sustainable jobs and adequate housing for all Tasmanians.
It’ll mean protecting, nurturing and valuing both our natural resources – like our native forests and waterways – as well as our human resources by achieving better education, health and housing that drive the growth of sustainable jobs, a sustainable economy and better lives.
It’ll mean nurturing the growth of small businesses that are the backbone of our state’s economic life instead of subsidising and favouring the big end of town – the multinationals, the corporate interests, the entitled insiders that have captured the two old parties.
This is where it should start.
- End the destruction of our waterways by multinational industrial fish farms.
- Stand up to the bullies of the AFL and demand men and women’s teams without breaking the bank on an unnecessary, unwanted stadium.
- Drive forward legislation that rebuilds trust in public life through an Integrity Commission fully resourced and enabled with investigative freedom to genuinely do its job.
Across Tasmania, voters seem to have sent the clearest of messages to the two old parties – never again will either of them govern in majority.
They’d better get used to it and learn some humility.
The reality is the debt crisis is now so bad we need a government of our best, not of our worst. A Government chosen from across the Parliament that includes the cross-bench from both chambers, regardless of political affiliations.
Tasmanians want a government of the sensible centre.
They want, expect and deserve a stable parliament that over four years will rebuild our state’s fortunes. No party can do that without the collaboration of the cross-bench. My responsibility is to the Parliament and the people – not to narrow sectional interests and political parties. That’s our system, that’s our tradition.
My responsibility is to work with all elected members of Parliament, to make sure that we spend our taxes responsibly and don’t waste them, to make sure we don’t destroy our land and give it away to foreign corporations, to make sure our Parliament is looking after our people responsibly and not selling their future out for the sake of football stadiums and salmon farms.
And I will work with anybody on that basis.
The two old parties also have a responsibility to heed the message Tasmanians have sent them in this election.
The responsibility for failure will lie at their door.
Hubris, arrogance and bullying will simply make them even more irrelevant and unpopular than they are today.
Global and national experience teaches us minority government best represents the will of the people.
Minority government is what Tasmanians have voted for loud and clear.
And let’s face it, the voter is always right.
Now the onus is on the 35 of us to make it work.
