After 13 years of waste Premier Rockliff has put Eric Abetz in charge of cutting jobs and services to pay for it – and workers’ compensation is on the chopping block.

The latest casualty of Abetz’ cuts is the Department of Justice’s specialist staff wellbeing unit, which provides case management and psychological support to correctional officers and other Justice employees dealing with difficult and traumatic work.

Up to 200 Justice workers rely on this service, including those assessed as high risk, and they will now be given a wellbeing plan and expected to manage their own support instead.

In his budget speech, Eric Abetz made no secret of the fact he was going after workers’ compensation entitlements and today, he refused to rule out workers being left worse off.

Health Minister Bridget Archer couldn’t rule out narrowing or removing presumptive PTSI workers’ compensation protections for first responders.

Police Minister Felix Ellis couldn’t either, showing he doesn’t care about trauma or injury to those officers regularly facing violence and enormous psychological pressure simply by doing their jobs.

After 13 years of waste Premier Rockliff has handed Eric Abetz a massive knife to in charge of cutting jobs and services to pay for it.

He’s cutting $700 million from Health, $228 million from Education, $72 million from Police, Fire and Emergency Management, $68 million from Justice and $59 million from NRE Tasmania – and now he’s going after workers’ compensation too.