paul mallett advocates for Launceston to take a leadership role in building the regional care workforce our community needs, and to advocate hard to the State and Commonwealth to back it.

The care workforce is what enables the rest of our local economy to function. That is not overreach. That is a fact. Without early learning and care educators, parents cannot return to work. Without aged care staff, families reduce their hours or leave their jobs to fill the gap. Without disability workers, people cannot participate fully in community and economic life. Without community services, crises arrive and support costs more.

What shapes whether care is available in Launceston and the Tamar Valley is not the commitment of the people doing the work. That commitment is extraordinary and beyond question. What shapes it is the strength, timing, continuity, and fairness of the care systems around them.

And the warning lights are flashing. Care workers are burning out faster than the system can train replacements. Demand is not slowing down. These are not random misfortunes. They are the predictable consequences of a care economy that has grown in scale and importance without being redesigned to match the reality of the work. For too long, caring work has been treated as background labour rather than core economic infrastructure.

We pay either way. We can invest upstream in the care workforce that prevents harm, or we keep paying downstream in hospitals, crisis services, youth justice, and families quietly breaking under the weight of what the system cannot hold. The only question is when we pay, and what we get for it.

Convene the partners and build one regional plan

At the moment, everyone holds part of the picture. Nobody holds the whole picture. TasTAFE trains workers. UTAS produces graduates. Employers recruit. Service providers manage demand. Neighbouring councils face the same pressures. State and Commonwealth agencies hold the funding. Each is doing something useful. None of it is joined up strongly enough to build and keep the care workforce this region actually needs.

paul will advocate for the City of Launceston Council to take a convening role: bringing together neighbouring councils, TasTAFE, UTAS, State and Commonwealth agencies, community service providers, and employers around one regional Care Workforce Strategy, with names on it and dates attached. A workforce report is not a workforce pipeline. A training subsidy is not a worker retained in a community. What this region needs is stewardship.

Advocate for a regional care workforce pipeline

Training places on paper are not the same as workers in communities. paul will advocate for a regional care workforce pipeline that aligns university and vocational training with projected demand across the North, creates paid earning-and-learning pathways so people do not have to stop working to retrain, builds the supervision infrastructure that keeps new workers in the profession, and uses bonded arrangements carefully in communities of persistent shortage, with the supports that help people put down roots rather than simply serve out a contract and leave.

People trained here. Staying here. Caring here.

Use council’s evidence and voice to leverage State and Commonwealth investment

The most powerful thing a city council can do is make the invisible visible. paul will advocate for Launceston to establish the local evidence base that shows exactly where care workforce shortages are biting in this region, suburb by suburb and service by service, and use that evidence to go to the State and Commonwealth with a clear and compelling case for investment.

Launceston has done this before. The City Heart. The University of Tasmania campus in the CBD. These were not accidents. They were the product of all three tiers of government choosing to work together around a shared place-based vision. That is exactly the model paul is calling for here.

What this delivers

When care works, families are stronger. Workers stay longer. Participation rises. Hospital emergency departments carry less preventable demand. Young people in crisis get help earlier. Older people stay independent longer. And the local economy functions better because the workforce that holds everything else up is finally being treated as the infrastructure it has always been.

The care economy has been treated as a side issue for too long. The warning lights are flashing. The work cannot be deferred. The choice is ours. And Launceston can lead.