“There is no such thing as ‘the government’,” says Project 2025, that US blueprint for rule by corporation in the United States – and for that matter, the world. “There are just people who work for the government and wield its power … to serve themselves first and everyone else a distant second.”
As a former government employee I have issues with that, but for now I’ll just add the words that seem to have been overlooked: “…just like people who run big business and wield its power.”
Tasmania has a centuries-long history of blurred lines between private and public, never more so than over control of land. It started with the colonial government granting huge acreages (completely disregarding those who already lived there) to “suitable” settlers.
Last month planning minister Felix Ellis introduced a bill enabling him to remove individual planning decisions from local government and have them assessed by what he described as “independent” development assessment panels (DAPs).
This will deny elected councillors a say on certain selected land projects, removing community rights to appeal decisions and empowering the minister to remove high-profile proposals from normal council processes – even after councils have begun their assessment. These could include a cable car on kunanyi/Mt Wellington, big subdivisions and high-rise CBD buildings.
And DAPs will be anything but independent. Members will be hand-picked behind closed doors, won’t hear evidence in public and won’t have to explain decisions in writing. Community input will only happen after developers and government agencies have had their say, in private.
The minister disguises this radical power shift, removing local councils from the approvals process, by describing it as a home-building measure. “Importantly, the Bill streamlines the delivery of homes for Tasmania’s most vulnerable,” he said in announcing the legislation.
Addressing the housing crisis by subverting the assessment process might seem acceptable to your average political fixer, but it’s a breach of the time-honoured rule that local communities have a place at the table when final decisions are being taken on matters directly affecting them.
Next week, a meeting of the Local Government Association of Tasmania will debate a two-pronged motion to support the DAP Bill, but subject to amendment. Many in local government are unhappy with the minister’s claim last month that “critical housing or job-creating projects are being blocked by ideologically motivated councillors”.
Deregulation and outsourcing have long been buzzwords in Australia, where big slices of public sector work have been outsourced to unsupervised, poorly regulated private suppliers. It’s safe to assume the Trump resurgence is a portent of more job-cutting to come here – a seductive message in frontier societies like ours (and the US), where for some “the government” is less an essential service than an intolerable burden.
Populist slogans around the concept of “small government” resonated strongly in the US election. Trump disavowed Project 2025 but no-one takes that seriously. He plans to cut staff in key environmental, climate, health, scientific and other agencies, and appears likely to dismantle some of them altogether.
Along with the political party that he now owns, Trump is a principle-free zone. The most troubling outcome of his emphatic win is the licence it will give to others to follow his lead, here in Australia as much as anywhere. Political, economic, social and environmental implications are historic.
Politically, he won despite fomenting a violent insurrection to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate election. His social policies are already fostering division, distrust and fear by scapegoating migrants and other minorities, notably transgender people.
His policy on the environment is to ignore it. The environment is not a skyscraper, a golf course, a private jet or a seaside mansion, so why should he bother? In his eyes the planet’s just fine; hence his “drill, baby, drill” policy to ramp up fossil fuel extraction. The door is now open for a re-elected Trump to do incalculable damage, in his own country and globally.
Last week two Launceston climate action stalwarts stood up for the planet. Police were called to the main city branch of the ANZ bank to remove veteran protesters Rev Jeff McKinnon and Dr Scott Bell, who had presented customers with an uncomfortable truth: that since the 2015 Paris Agreement the bank has lent over $20 billion to the fossil fuel industry. The two face court in December.
I salute them for their courage, but feel dispirited too. After the Right’s greatest triumph of the modern era, bankrolled by billionaires keen to share the spoils, it’s hard to escape the feeling that I’m just going through the motions here. But it’s an old habit, hard to shake off.