Four days out from an election, the two self-styled “parties of government” remain absent from the important debates about our land and its people. In a world that’s passing them by, they can’t seem to convince anyone that they have something useful to contribute to our future.
On the doorstep of our capital city is the preeminent symbol of this befuddlement, a neglected bit of real estate that used be a freight-handling hub for the port of Hobart – Nipaluna to its original inhabitants.
For years politicians struggled to work out a future for Macquarie Point, toying with a variety of suggestions including a hospital and social housing. Then in 2016, Will Hodgman’s Liberal government asked the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) to help.
Mona and historian Greg Lehman came up with the best idea of all: a “Truth And Reconciliation Art Park” recognising pre-colonial Tasmania (Lutruwita) and supporting the process of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.
Offering a place for peaceful contemplation of our island and its people, the proposal ticked all the boxes. It complemented other interests, notably natural Lutruwita, celebrating unique pre-colonial ecosystems, and the Cenotaph war memorial. Its completion could mark the bicentenary of the 1830 Black Line, the military operation against Aboriginal Tasmanians. Importantly, it would cost relatively little.
But all that got derailed by the adrenalin rush of a stadium. Ignoring planning advice put to various authorities that was weighted heavily against building it on Macquarie Point, both premier Jeremy Rockliff and Labor leader Dean Winter refuse to countenance re-negotiating the AFL mandate.
Having played Australian football as a youngster, I support a Tasmanian AFL team with appropriate professional facilities. But I draw the line at a Macquarie Point stadium, especially at a cost of $1 billion or more. The AFL must understand this: we can’t afford it and this is the wrong place for it.
The massive state debt is another huge issue. Jeremy Rockliff’s Liberals have put the case that economic growth will set things to rights, but Treasury’s Pre-election Financial Outlook report makes clear this is a structural problem requiring policy adjustments. Every promise of every candidate has to be seen in that light.
Campaign promises so far have offered no solution to our fiscal plight. Labor leader Dean Winter opts for federal help. He likes to be seen alongside party colleague and prime minister Anthony Albanese, but that affiliation won’t favour him over the Liberals. Government isn’t the same as party.
But the biggest issue of this election by far is neglect by both the major parties of environmental degradation brought on by human activity, including the big one, fossil fuel use driving global warming and a destabilised climate.
To appreciate why leaders should not ignore environmental warnings, you only had to hear the voice of Kangaroo Island fisherman Robert Barrett in an ABC morning radio interview last week, expressing his abject despair at a vast and deadly algal bloom in the seas around his island.
Barrett was lost for words trying to express the emptiness and shock he was feeling after months of the bloom, fuelled by a persistent marine heatwave, that has turned coasts from Port Lincoln to the Coorong into killing fields. Thanks to an event traceable directly to human environmental negligence, he faces the end of his lifelong vocation.
South Australia’s experience is a microcosm of what’s happening in a multitude of forms all over the world as a result of humanity’s failure to break its fossil fuel habit. Meanwhile Tasmania sits on imagined laurels, taking pride in clean hydro while doing nothing to cut fossil fuel use.
Our 2024 State of the Environment report showed most of the state’s environmental indicators deteriorating and some lacking the data to know what’s happening, making us ill-prepared to deal with worsening threats to species and ecosystems.
The choice to be made on Saturday must address our own version of an accelerating global threat. We can elect Green and independent candidates who understand the challenges and opportunities in decisive action to end fossil fuel use and mitigate environmental damage. Otherwise nature will make the decisions for us, as it did for Robert Barrett.
All that seems lost on the two main contenders for government, who have spent much of their campaign putting the boot into the Greens. The Liberals say a Labor vote will only bring the disaster of another Labor-Green coalition. Dean Winter says he’ll never side with the Greens but might join with independents.
Yet the Greens are the only party that gives nature the attention it so desperately needs. What kind of a choice is this?