1:30min
The 2026–27 Tasmanian Budget delivers a strong focus on fiscal restraint, preventive health and community-based care, but contains no direct investment in eye health, optometry or blindness prevention.
Health remains the Government’s single largest area of expenditure, with additional investment directed toward bulk-billing GP clinics, women’s health initiatives and workforce capability. While eye health was not specifically referenced in the Budget Papers, several priorities align closely with Optometry Australia advocacy agenda.
Despite ongoing engagement from Optometry Australia and the broader eye health sector, the Budget represents a missed opportunity to better recognise the role optometrists can play in:
- Chronic disease management
- Early intervention
- Hospital avoidance
- Preventive healthcare
- Improving access to care in regional and community settings.
Over the past year, Optometry Australia has continued active advocacy with Government, parliamentarians and key stakeholders on a range of important reforms and initiatives, including:
- Scope of practice reform, including oral therapeutics
- Improving access to community-based eye care, strengthening integration and collaboration through the Tasmanian Eye Services Network
- Reform of Tasmania’s Spectacle Assistance Scheme
- Building bipartisan engagement through the Parliamentary Friends of Eye Health.
The Government’s increasing focus on prevention and community health further reinforces the importance of ensuring eye health is recognised as part of Tasmania’s broader preventive health agenda.
The Budget also places significant emphasis on literacy, school engagement and child wellbeing. This creates a strong platform to continue advocating for children’s vision initiatives, including the proposed paediatric optometry alignment program based on the Queensland model. This is important given the well-established links between vision, literacy and classroom participation.
Optometry Australia will continue working proactively with Government and stakeholders to ensure eye health and Optometry remains part of ongoing health reform discussions and future Budget considerations.
As the State continues to address pressure on hospitals and primary care services, optometrists remain a highly accessible and underutilised part of Tasmania’s health workforce, particularly in regional and community settings.
Future investment in preventive vision care would support:
- Healthier ageing
- Better learning outcomes for children
- Reduced pressure on the broader health system
- Stronger health outcomes for Tasmanians.