Fix the foundations first
- Tasmania’s fertility rate is about 1.46. Replacement is 2.1.
- Official projections have deaths outnumbering births from 2028–29.
- Hobart CPI ran 4.5% while wages rose about 3.1%. The gap is the point.
- A baby bonus does not cover nappies, let alone a home.
Fourteen months ago I wrote that Tasmania was on the precipice of generational failure if we kept chasing election-cycle band-aids instead of long-term solutions. I used Dick Smith’s phrase lazy growth. I wish I had been wrong.
Nothing listed then has got better. Fuel, food, power and water have piled on top of the same holes in health, housing and waste. We are stacking new problems on the old ones and calling it a plan.
The Centre for Population now puts our fertility rate at about 1.46. You need 2.1 to hold a population steady. In 2023 it was 1.51. We went backwards. At the end of 2025 the ABS had 579,110 of us here, up half a percent — slowest of any state. Natural increase for the year was only a few hundred people. Official projections have us as the first state where deaths outnumber births, from 2028–29.
Bringing people in without houses, nurses and a reason for young ones to stay is still lazy growth.
How do you ask a young couple to have kids when the bills eat the household before the rent is paid, or have faith our children have a future in Tasmania?
We do not need another baby bonus. Last time it landed hardest on families already doing it tough. It did not make life sustainable. Baby cash does not buy a house. A wage that keeps up, and a future worth raising kids in, should be the priority. Fix the foundations first. Make it possible to have children. Don’t bribe people into it.