Mr GAFFNEY (Mersey) - Mr President, I rise to offer my thoughts and reflections on the Premier's Address, which has been delivered following a year of unprecedented challenges to our community and economy on the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

I congratulate the Premier, the Government and those in the public service for taking such a proactive approach in the face of an invisible foe, at a time when so little was understood about how the spread of the virus could be managed and stopped. I also acknowledge the wider Tasmanian community, which has gone above and beyond in doing the right thing by following the advice of the Government, epidemiologists and our health professionals as the impact of the virus evolved, often leaving families and businesses in extremely challenging circumstances.

The north-west outbreak and subsequent hotspot was an incredibly difficult period. It had a huge impact on the region, especially with many members of the Mersey electorate who were directly impacted by loved ones with COVID-19 and the necessary restrictions of the quarantine and wider lockdown processes. We still have a lingering memory of those times and we have no desire to revisit them.

I also pay tribute to the essential workers in health and retail who maintained essential services with stoicism, courage and great fortitude, when the majority of us were able to stay at home in relative safety at a time when so much was unknown. Managing the COVID-19 threats - both tangible and intangible - to the wellbeing of our proud island state has rightly been at the forefront of our thinking, especially as we look to the rollout of the vaccination process and the future of our community.

I note with interest the report of the Premier's Economic and Social Recovery Advisory Council - PESRAC. I acknowledge the Premier's commitment to accepting all of its 52 recommendations. Within those recommendations there are many points of interest that point to future opportunities and complement ongoing initiatives.

It is with this context that I frame the following comments and observations. Like many of us in this place, I speak from a position of experience. As a former Latrobe councillor for 20 years and mayor for 12 years, I have been party to significant growth and development and the associated strategic implications - especially as Latrobe is one of the fastest growing municipalities in Tasmania and has been for many years - together with the initiation of the Devonport Living City project and the ongoing business and community developments in my Mersey electorate.

The COVID-19 crisis has left the future of many businesses and jobs in doubt, and many are still navigating their way forward.

Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2.30 p.m.

[2.57 p.m.]

Mr GAFFNEY (Mersey) - Mr President, from a national perspective, the scaling down of the federal JobKeeper and JobSeeker payments may yet lead to a new local issue that will need to be addressed.

However, the Government's move to support development has led to an extraordinary situation, where a thriving construction industry and national confidence in housing fuelled by low interest rates have seen booming house prices and surging rents across Tasmania. Add to this the mainland exodus to our island state that has seen challenging times for many of my constituents who are struggling to find housing they can afford in a tight rental and sales market. I can only hope the Government's housing support initiatives together with its headworks holiday will encourage more developers to release blocks for developments to meet the demand for housing and return the market back to some sense of normality.

The other issue developing with our construction boom is a shortage of skilled trades professionals. One of the Government's proposed solutions is the evolution of the TasTAFE into a government business enterprise. I understand the Government's interest in expanding the scope of TasTAFE central training service that so many employers and student have come to know and trust. My concern is this step - one that I hope will achieve what the Premier expects - will not be a step blindly into the unknown. The strength of TasTAFE comes from its committed staff who have a direct interest in supporting their students to be the best they can be.

If the proposed restructure leads to a higher course fees and a period of instability as these changes establish themselves, are we going to see students laden with debt and dissatisfied industry clients? Especially if TasTAFE is to become a fully commercial enterprise that has to compete with private training providers who will naturally attempt to cherrypick the most lucrative parts of skills training for their own benefit.

In addition to this, how will this new TasTAFE structure partner with the Education department seeing growing enrolments in school- and college-based vocational education and training courses. I have to reference Don College in my own electorate which has a hugely popular range of VET courses that are oversubscribed with facilities that do not allow the pent up student demand to be fully met - a huge opportunity for expansion that the new TasTAFE may see as a future competitor to its activities. I hope the Government can find a way to support our schools and colleges through this.

While I am on the subject of education, I am sure all members fully appreciate the value of education in developing the future life chances of the young people in our constituencies. For those coming from less advantaged backgrounds, a high-quality education is a route that offers better employment and greater chances for successful lives and satisfying careers. For these young people, often there is only one shot at this, and it has to be right.

I welcome the Government's focus on helping more students to successfully complete year 12. The Don College has been supporting this for many years with inspired leadership, active industry partnerships, and a keen understanding and analysis of where its students go on to, be it further education, employment or apprenticeships.

The COVID-19 pandemic has redefined the delivery of education and brought new challenges to bear for both staff and students in all our schools and colleges. With the challenges brought to student wellbeing in such a turbulent time, it is deeply gratifying to see the Government commit additional funding to fully support phases 1 and 2 of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services review.

The extra 80 full-time equivalent (FTE) professional staff for our schools to support children and young people impacted by trauma builds on its previous funding commitments in this area. This will be welcomed by TANA - the Trauma Awareness Network Australia - a north-west-based organisation whose essential work I fully support and which I have spoken about many times.

I also welcome the Minister for Education and Training's recent announcement that the Government has set a target that by 2030 at the latest, all grade 7 students will be above the national minimum standard for reading skills. As we all know, reading is the key that unlocks learning and is an essential life skill. I await with interest the development and impact of the various initiatives that will support this, but I am concerned that it was only three or four years ago that the Government said we would be the healthiest state by 2025, and yet we have slipped further down the scale, and it is another 10-year period.

I know that many of the schools in my electorate are actively working in this area, one of which is the Latrobe High School, with Brent Armistead as its truly inspiring principal and his superb staff team, who have developed a range of literacy support programs for students who need additional input. The school has been so successful that even with its recent additional developments, it is now close to 600 enrolments. It is almost at full capacity and is at the point of having to turn students away.

It is schools and staff teams like these that inspire our students and families to accomplish great things, and they need their due acknowledgement. It was only a few years ago that the school received a $12 million to $13 million redevelopment and already it is bursting at the seams, and the local primary schools are also full.

Establishment of reading skills in early childhood starts in families and it is Tasmanian's groundbreaking Launch into Learning (LiL) and Learning in Families Together (LiFT) that helped families understand and develop these learning skills and networks that can help their children thrive in the school environment.

Added to this are our child and family centres where family members can go with their birth- to five-year-old children for a range of social support and learning activities. The positive outcomes of these are so pronounced that they are attracting national attention. While we can commend the Government's support for six new centres, I am sure we can all recommend additional support for these uniquely Tasmanian initiatives. They are achieving exception outcomes in a grassroots front-end delivery model.

I also have to ask: how can we enhance and build on the strengths of these initiatives across all governments in Tasmania that underpin better education outcomes for those with most to gain from a high-quality education in our public system? Maybe there a greater focus on the tail-end transition into employment was of greater interest to industry and business. Notwithstanding this observation, the creation of the Jobs Tasmania local networks to facilitate the transition to better employment prospects and the Youth Navigators project offer hope for our next generation. I hope within this that thought has been given to how these initiatives will integrate with our schools and colleges.

Like many in this place I have a lifelong interest in sport, and the communities that support our clubs and sporting groups. While soccer - or football - is flourishing with the highest participation rates of any sport in Tasmania, it has come as a huge shock to the community to see that the senior teams of the East Devonport Football Club, the Swans, are entering recess and have withdrawn from the NWFL senior competition for the 2021 season due to a lack of players. This perhaps speaks to the challenges all voluntary organisations face, with increasing demands and pressures in people's lives impacting on their availability to give back to the activities and organisations they love.

There is a well-understood anecdotal observation of funding ratios, that a dollar given to support a voluntary body achieves as much as $10 spent in a commercial setting. We, as legislators, need to be fully aware of this. In spite of its challenges, the Swans are maintaining their junior teams, together with the superb work and events that actively support mental health and wellbeing in the community.

Without our volunteers, so much of what we hold dear in Tasmania would not exist. Many of these, like the Swans, have a long history that is woven into the fabric of our society. I recently attended the fiftieth anniversary dinner of the Lions Club of Latrobe, a wonderful group of volunteers who give so much back to their community. Their goodwill, enthusiasm and ability to deliver huge events and significant fundraising for the local community's enjoyment and benefit never cease to amaze me.

Over 50 years, they have raised $480 000 for our local community. While for some people that might not seem a lot, the president who spoke on that night said that in 1971 he purchased his brand new house in Launceston for $12 000, so times have changed.

This leads me to consider our entertainment and arts communities, a sector that has probably had the greatest impact from the COVID-19 pandemic. We have seen many events, functions and performances cancelled in a way which saw them as the first to be shut down, and maybe the last to re-establish themselves due to the necessary social distancing requirements.

I hope the rollout of vaccines will speed the return to full capacity for our performance venues. We have uniquely Tasmanian success stories. With the advent of COVID-19, the Latrobe Federal Band had to cease its practising and public events. However, it came up with the novel solution of recording individual parts at home and then amalgamating them into a full band to be shared as a complete video on social media.
The band has now made a welcome return to live performance as an essential part of our local community and its established culture. This is indicative of what many community arts groups have achieved, despite the challenges of the pandemic.

On a lighter note, Latrobe Council's declaration of two 'ministry of silly walk' zones in Latrobe and Shearwater during the pandemic has brought a bit of fun to my community and to the council's social media. The sign has even been retweeted by John Cleese himself. I have yet to indulge - but you never know.

Mr Valentine - Will you do a silly walk?

Mr GAFFNEY - No. Another new and unique offering has come in the form of Art Screen Events, the brainchild of Katrine Elliott. Many will know Katrine as a champion of bringing international theatre and opera performances to what was the CMAX Cinema in Devonport, an initiative she pioneered in Tasmania well over 10 years ago.

Hopefully, in a post COVID-19 world, Katrine can start her new enterprise screening a variety of recorded live performances, exhibitions and specialist performances in a number of venues. This Friday she will be simultaneously screening a live performance of the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra concert in Hobart at the Leven Theatre in Ulverstone. It will include an on-stage performance from the local group, the Al Dente chamber music trio, before the screening of the TSO performance begins. This is a great example of using COVID-19 and those initiatives to further the arts.

Within the Premier's declared support for the arts, I have to ask how innovative arts business and events like Katrine's can be supported by the Government, as they offer rich experiences that are normally unavailable to welcoming audiences in regional areas.

In this place we enjoy a certain sense of theatre, and there is nothing like a live performance to get a truly aesthetic experience. In my electorate of Mersey, we are incredibly lucky to have the Devonport Choral Society which this year is putting on a production of Buddy - The Buddy Holly Story. The recent opening up of theatre capacity regulations is a welcome development that we all can appreciate as we return to normality.

Tickets have just gone on sale and the show is directed by the honourable Sid Sidebottom, a doyen of musical theatre, with his usual aplomb, and with an incredibly talented cast.

In support for the arts, I hope that there is scope to fully support community productions, innovate new events and the methods of delivery, and not just see funding directed to long established entities with sound resources. The arts are a living, breathing part of our community and need to be encouraged to evolve as such, especially in rural Tasmania.

Mr President, one thing that has caught my attention and that of many in my electorate and the wider north-west region is the new Northern Forage Drive Journey signage. Whilst we appreciate any initiative that gives visitors a better and more enjoyable experience, it is almost as if the north and north-west of Tasmania have been turned into a strange blancmange of homogeneity when each region has a unique identity that we all celebrate. I actually thought they had put the signs in the wrong place as I was driving through Leith and saw we are now part of the north. Maybe it is just an old-fashioned view from Hobart that everything north of Oatlands may as well be the same. I could perhaps go on to suggest that the productivity of our north-west and northern regions, which do so much to support the Tasmania economy in so many diverse ways, seems to have been forgotten here.

Furthermore, what picture does the Northern Forage Drive Journey paint? For an urban based person, it might suggest fossicking on the roadsides and paddocks for something to eat, whereas for us from a more agricultural background, it suggests a trail of silage or hay fed out to the hungry livestock in winter.

Ms Rattray - I was thinking they were thinking roadkill.

Mrs Hiscutt - I need to point out there is an answer to that question; it was incorporated into Hansard yesterday for anybody listening who would like to know how they came about.

Mr GAFFNEY - Hardly an evocative image, especially since south of this we have the warm and engagingly described Heartlands of Tasmania. Either way, to use an old fashioned expression, it is disappointing and we could do better.

Additionally, as we all recognise, our tourism and hospitality industries have been hard hit and again the reduction in JobKeeper will come at a time when many enterprises are only just beginning to see a way forward.

The travel voucher scheme was a noble attempt to support our industry, but it is gratifying to see that the unclaimed funds from this are being fed back into new initiatives. The Government support for reduced fares on the Spirits has been another welcome addition to the flow of tourists into Tasmania, together with some certainty now about the future replacements for what is an iconic symbol of Tasmania tourism which is based in my Mersey electorate.

We have also seen increasing demand for accommodation, and hotel occupancy rates are on the rise together with increasingly busy cafes and restaurants. Perhaps we have to be mindful that the actions and sacrifices Tasmanians have made in controlling COVID-19 have allowed us to resume a sense of normality that is the envy of many nations around the world which are still suffering through the pandemic crisis.

I close by thanking the Premier for his leadership in what has been an extortionary time for Tasmania. I also thank some of the ministers who have supported him ably through that journey - Ms Courtney, Mr Jaensch and Mr Rockliff. We have collectively faced exceptional challenges and there is still much to do. The Premier has had to make some hard choices that some of us had to take on trust, but we do know he is a deeply compassionate family man who has the best interests of Tasmania at heart.

I am sure we will be keeping a keen eye on how these initiatives will play out together with any adjustments that may need to be made. In closing, many of us perhaps have had conversations with people from other states, even other countries, and generally those people speak highly of the way Tasmania has approached the COVID-19 pandemic from its leadership, but also from the community. I think that plays well for our state and the future.

With that, I note the Premier's Address.