G'day John,

It’s been a busy two weeks in the Senate – I am looking forward to getting back to God’s country for a week!

Senator Pocock and I have been working together to get four pieces of the government’s industrial relations bill through parliament. The government calls this bill “Closing Loopholes’ – it’s what they call an omnibus bill – which basically means that they stuff every workplace change they want to make into one bill.

This one is 278 pages long!

There are good bits; like not making federal first responders prove they have PTSD, stopping discrimination against victims of family violence, bringing silica in line with asbestos, and making sure that workers get redundancy when the large business they are working is going out of business. Nobody in Canberra disagrees with these changes, so we split them out of the big bill and we got them passed through the senate, but the government is being stubborn and won’t put them through the lower house – I’ll keep pushing, it’s not over yet!

There are other good bits of the bill, but a lot of is pretty complicated, and I am really worried about pushing a big bill like this when our economy is in trouble.

For people like me, politicians on a very good salary, the cost-of-living crisis can just be a headline. But I know for many Tasmanians and Australians it’s a daily struggle and I think there is a hell of a lot more that all levels of government could do to help struggling families.

I spend a lot of time thinking about where else our state government could find more money, so I asked the parliamentary library to do some digging and what do you know? They’ve spent over $81 million on consultants like PWC! I think that’s rubbish, and probably more about government spin than it is about making the lives of everyday Tasmanians better.

I hope you’re all OK, I know it’s going to be a tough Christmas for a lot of people.

If you’re doing it tough and don’t know where to turn, our Burnie office can direct you to services that could help. Send us an email or drop by.

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Finally, my re-election is coming up and I've been hearing on the grape vine that the majors are going to spend big in Tassie to try and knock me out. I guess they're sick of having someone around who tells it like it is.

If you've got a few spare dollars (and only if you do!), can you chip in to my re-election fund? 

Thanks again for your support mate, we won't make progress without working together.

Jacqui

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