On the face of it Tasmania’s new parliament looks like the one it replaced, with Liberal, Labor and Green numbers unchanged. But a new reality is now staring the major parties in the face: they are no longer the centres of political power they once were.
The need to lock in support from independents and minor parties to keep the parliament together for its presumed four year term means that even shared Liberal and Labor policies have no guarantee of success.
Take the proposed roofed stadium in Hobart. Only one of the 11 cross-benchers, David O’Byrne (Franklin), supports the project. Most of the rest are adamantly against it, including the two elected at the weekend, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party’s Carlo di Falco (Lyons) and independent George Razay (Bass).
As for the proposed $6.5 billion Marinus cable, supported by both Liberal and Labor, most sitting independents saw Premier Jeremy Rockliff’s restricted release of the business case for the scheme as out of order. On the back of a budget and financial plan that have been universally condemned, Craig Garland (Braddon) was so incensed that he ruled out supporting a Rockliff-led government.
Much the same can be said about salmon farming. Both major parties strongly support the industry as it is, relying heavily on liberal access to sheltered coastal waters exceptionally vulnerable to damage from salmon farm waste, but the Greens and independents Garland and Peter George (Franklin) campaigned strongly for far more stringent environmental controls.
Premier Jeremy Rockliff needs the votes of four cross-benchers to secure his government for another term. If he fails, Labor leader Dean Winter needs the five Greens plus three independents. The incumbent premier keeps sounding the alarm on Winter’s “broken promise” to do no deals with the Greens – even before any such deal has surfaced.
That suggests he sees support for the Liberals as weak, which doesn’t sound like the language of a winner. In fact, it’s the language of put-down, as if the Greens are somehow unfit to be in parliament. Dean Winter plays into that narrative by repeatedly pledging no deal with the Greens.
The Greens are not murderers, or disease-carriers, or even revolutionaries, as all this seems to imply. They’re serious, rational politicians with much of value to say about unquestionably important things. Their electors and democracy at large do not deserve to be treated with such contempt.
One thing the Greens care about deeply, as do many other Tasmanians, more than either Jeremy Rockliff or Dean Winter would acknowledge, is the state of the climate and the natural environment, evidenced by the strong vote for independents with platforms reflecting this.
It was disconcerting to hear a just-elected Carlo di Falco tell an ABC interviewer last week that farmers would benefit from a warmer world and that the “little ice age” (a pre-industrial regional cooling in Europe and North America) indicated global cooling. Here’s me thinking that Tasmanians had put all that behind them, but clearly not.
Things needn’t end there. In his interview di Falco came across as a decent man, humble and open to new insights – “on a steep learning curve”, as he put it. It may be that during his parliamentary career he will discover real science as opposed to wishful narratives. He can count on plenty of help from the new cross-bench to get his head around this.
Just as crucial is that he and all other MPs – especially government ones, given the record of near-total inaction by past Tasmanian governments – understand why we’re finding it so darned difficult to break fossil fuel habits that are taking us along a freeway to climate catastrophe.
One of the ways the Rockliff government has looked busy while doing little has been to hold reviews of the state’s venerable 2008 Climate Change (State Action) Act. Now there’s a new one, and the consultants have invited public comment on what is needed to make the legislation work better. Have your say on that by going to www.engage.stategrowth.tas.gov.au.
On the subject of having our say, Tasmania’s three successive early elections have happened on the say-so of major party leaders unprepared to step outside their party boundaries to discuss sharing power or even changing course on contentious issues. The sticking point for both Labor and Liberal has been the Greens.
But the Greens keep getting elected, and the number of independents broadly sharing their concern for Tasmania’s natural environment is now greater than ever. That irritant isn’t going away, and Jeremy Rockliff and Dean Winter must find a way to accommodate it. Quickly.