Tasmanian seat of Braddon in play at the election this week

In Tasmania, the seat of Braddon is in play this election with incumbent Liberal MP Gavin Pearce stepping down.

Transcript

00:00It's a really interesting seat.

00:03It's one of three seats across the north of Tassie that are considered marginal.

00:08And for Braddon that's because it tends to lean Liberal as opposed to the rest of Tasmania

00:12which tends to lean Labor.

00:14And that's really a legacy of the Franklin Dam and the decision around that.

00:19The audience might remember in the early 80s Federal Labor made a decision that put an

00:24end to the Franklin Dam being built.

00:26There was a lot of anger about that in terms of the impact on jobs on the region.

00:31And the seat stayed with the Liberals until 1998.

00:34So for close to two decades, Labor wasn't able to win it back.

00:38Since then, in the past couple of decades, it's tended to flip every couple of elections

00:41between major parties.

00:43It's a really large electorate.

00:45It covers everything from the North Coast, cities like Burney and Devonport, right round

00:49to the West Coast, which has really high rates of social disadvantage, some really entrenched

00:54social challenges, and is quite culturally distinct.

00:59And I think, like in a lot of places around Australia, there's a fair degree of cynicism

01:03around politics and the difference it can make.

01:05What are the key issues in the electorate?

01:07Well, once again, something that we hear over and over again in Braddon, which is certainly

01:14not unique to Braddon, is cost of living.

01:17What is distinct for Braddon is that it is the most disadvantaged area in the poorest state

01:21in the country, which does make that cost of living particularly hard.

01:26And when we talk about improving standards of living, there are some additional barriers

01:30to that.

01:30Tasmania, as a whole, has a functional literacy rate of 50%, which means half the population

01:36essentially struggles to do the daily tasks required, like reading a prescription, understanding

01:44the directions on the back of a paracetamol bottle, for example.

01:47And in Braddon, what that looks like is only 50% of the population has an educational attainment

01:52above year 10, which obviously when we then talk about improving job outcomes, improving

01:57employment outcomes to generally improve standards of living, there are some real additional barriers

02:04there and the work to address some of those problems needs to start really quite young.