THE Liberals swept to power in March
2014 with a proposal to solve Tasmania’s problems.
Someone in the party had discovered
the wizardry of an Excel spreadsheet and had shuffled a few numbers in the then
government’s four-year budget and pronounced the result a Plan for a Brighter
Future.
The cornerstone savings were from a
more efficient public service, which meant downsizing by 500 saving $155m over
four years.
The Brighter Future was heralded by
the proposal to spend $76m in elective surgery to “ensure that Tasmanians stuck
on waiting lists for years can get their operations sooner, with up to 15,000
extra procedures”.
As Martyn Goddard observed in these
pages on April 2, “When the present government came to power in 2014, there
were 7610 people on the statewide elective surgery waiting list. The most
recent figure was 12,086, an increase of 59 per cent.”
No doubt hoping that most people
might have forgotten previous failed promises, Premier Gutwein has now pledged
to spend another $154m over four years to deliver an additional 22,300 elective
surgeries and endoscopies.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
