As cost of living pressures continue to drive increasing community demand, TasCOSS has welcomed a raft of targeted announcements by both major parties made at this week’s 2024 Tasmanian State Election: Community Services Industry Forum.

Tasmania’s community services are reeling from the Tasmanian Labor and Liberal election promises of cuts to industry indexation, putting the delivery of essential services to Tasmanians in need at risk.

In the face of surging community demand, TasCOSS have joined with Colony 47 to call on all political aspirants to commit to increasing investment in the state’s community services industry to ensure Tasmanians can get the support they need, when they need it.

The Tasmanian Community Services Industry Peaks Network has today launched a Joint Statement of 2024 Tasmanian State Election Priorities, which calls on all political aspirants to place the wellbeing of Tasmanians first by ensuring community services are adequately resourced to meet surging demand.

The incoming Tasmanian Government has a responsibility to build a strong community services industry that will serve the next generations of Tasmanians to keep them safe and well. This is all the more important in times of great uncertainty and challenge, as we are in now.

TasCOSS’s 2024 Tasmanian State Election Priorities proposes a suite of measures that would provide Tasmanians with much-needed, targeted cost of living relief, and ensure a well-resourced community services industry that can meet increasing levels of need and complexity in the community. 

More investment is needed to address both immediate need and ensure a food secure Tasmania into the future. The Tasmanian Food Security Coalition looks forward to working with the incoming Tasmanian Government to support all Tasmanians to be able to eat fresh, local and nutritious food every day.

The McKell Institute report further underscores the underinvestment and neglect of our public transport system for many years, which has constantly fallen short of community expectations, and most importantly is falling short of its core function: getting Tasmanians where they need to go, when they need to be there.