Premier can’t rule out frontline workers being thrown overboard to pay for Spirits waste

The impacts of the Liberals’ ferry fiasco look set to haunt the state for years to come, with Premier Rockliff failing to rule out frontline workers being thrown overboard and losing their jobs to pay for the waste.

The Premier’s attempts to argue that $717 million in cost blowouts didn’t amount to waste are hard to swallow.

The bungled replacement project has stood out as the greatest example of Liberal mismanagement of the past 13 years. Following last week’s half-a-billion dollar bailout, Tasmanians will also have to pick up the tab for a Spirits tax in the order of $30 million per year – just to pay down interest on the bailout.

To make matters worse, the Liberals still can’t provide any confidence about the future solvency of TT-Line or whether last week’s bailout is likely to be the last.

The fact that the Premier can’t rule out frontline job losses shows the true cost of this sorry saga, with Tasmanians only just starting to feel the massive repercussions of the biggest infrastructure stuff-up in our history.

Premier Rockliff has put Eric Abetz in charge of cutting jobs and services to pay for 13 years of Liberal waste – including the Spirits – and Tasmanians will continue to pay the price for decades to come.