Unlike America, Australia doesn’t have a revolutionary tradition, and Tasmania least of all. We used to be known for casting all options aside and sticking grimly to the government we have. But there’s a whiff of revolt in the air this election.
In the middle of last century one premier, Robert Cosgrove, held office for more than 18 years. His Labor party barely missed a beat when he was charged with bribery halfway through that time. He promptly stood aside for his deputy, beat the rap and was back in his job after just two months. His successor, Eric Reece, completed an amazing 35 straight years of Labor government.
Political leaders tend to be across their antecedents. Today’s premier, Jeremy Rockliff, and his Labor opponent Dean Winter would both be well aware of those heady days when one-party government was all the rage. They must wish desperately for their return but alas, the Liberals are four seats shy of a majority and Labor eight. Odds of either getting there are vanishingly small.
Since Rockliff refused to resign on losing Winter’s no-confidence motion, Winter – with the declared support of the five Greens and three independents – could have formed government. But he chose not to. Similarly, after the 2010 election Will Hodgman refused to meet the Greens, leaving his Liberals in stolid opposition for four more years.
Yet Greens and independents have been serviceable coalition partners in past governments. Each of two Labor-Green alliances formed in 2010 in Canberra and Hobart survived a full term and a busy legislative agenda before both ended in acrimony, for reasons never explained at the time.
Why do the Greens attract such hostility? One theory is that they take their beliefs more seriously than established parties. For most Australians, our resource-based economy is the only thing going. For the Greens this economic mindset is destroying our most fundamental life support: the ecology from which we came, which feeds, clothes and shelters us. That’s serious.
Most previous alliances would suggest Labor is closest in ideology to the Greens, but it’s an awkward fit. Years of confrontation at hydro and forestry sites that gave rise to the Green movement testify to that. People blocking access to one’s workplace is confronting, but so is damage done to treasured natural values.
Labor sees itself as a party of ideas, covering many values including but not only environment. In the Labor scheme of things perfect environmental health sometimes has to be compromised for the sake of jobs and social equity. The Greens also believe they’re an ideas party, but with that sharp and unavoidable distinction that all things flow from a healthy environment.
The Greens have shown they are prepared to stand and fight for social justice just as much as Labor ever did – on occasions arguably more. Their stubborn stand for a freeze on home rental prices saw years of delay in federal Labor’s Housing Australia Future Fund to build tens of thousands of low-cost homes. They only gave ground in the wake of the last election.
In the end this comes down to party identity: Liberals supporting the freedom to make money, Labor protecting social standards, Greens protecting the natural environment. These are core beliefs.
Some party differences are declared non-negotiable, and the most vexing of these is the refusal of both Liberal and Labor to support robust environmental standards in party platforms and apply them in government. They say it’s because the economy must come first.
Neither Jeremy Rockliff nor Dean Winter have seen fit to properly regulate a salmon industry plainly inflicting damage on coastal waters, while for decades both Liberal and Labor governments have quarantined logging and mining from rigorous independent environmental oversight.
While opening doors to industrial activity affecting irreplaceable natural values, for decades they have refused to acknowledge genuine motive behind environmental protest, imposing prohibitive penalties for dissent. That’s no way to run a democracy.
Conserving natural land- and seascape is not a second order political issue. As Andrew Darby’s profound new book about our iconic trees, The Ancients, makes crystal clear it is a matter of the highest order – even apart from the benefit it brings to state carbon accounts. The refusal of Liberal and Labor to accept this is a pox on both their houses.
The stadium furore – yet another “me too” policy contortion by Tasmania’s major parties – is exposing neglected policy gaps in government services that are being filled by street-smart independents and Greens. With single-party government becoming an impossible dream, Liberal and Labor might do us all a favour by working towards coalition with each other.