In the week the parliament humanely terminated Labor’s dreams of glory, a couple of news items clarified why that happened – and why in these testing times Tasmanian governance remains at risk of collapsing in a heap of ignorance and incompetence.
Beneath all the election noise was a deep but often-unstated concern felt by all Tasmanians, including those who out of habit or loyalty – I can’t think of any other reason – voted for a major party.
That concern is about nature – the part of our planet which, contrary to all the illusions pushed by vested interests, we cannot ultimately control. It’s about what a steadily warming world might bring, even apart from unbearable heat. Like fierce wildfires in dehydrated landscapes. Rain falling like rivers and towns inundated. Flooded and eroding coasts. Species vanishing at a ever-rising rate.
Two current news items highlight the failure of either major party to move voters. One was about a heartening collaborative study involving the Hobart City Council’s fire and biodiversity team and the University of Tasmania’s Fire Centre led by veteran botanist and wildfire specialist David Bowman. The ultimate aim of the project is to improve our capital’s fire shield.
Every spring we find ourselves wondering if this summer will be the big one. Hobart is right in the firing line, but so is most of the country. Everywhere, a drying, heating climate is bringing fire to places not prepared for it. Massive environmental change is in the back of all electors’ minds, and local government is being forced to act. But from our major party leaders, not a peep.
The second item was a new study by Transparency International which found both Tasmania and the Commonwealth are abject failures in that essential component of democracy, open government. The report highlighted an exceptional and troubling flow of former MPs including ministers into well-paid jobs out in the big wide world, notably in the resources sector.
Like climate change, the erosion of political integrity has been gradual, happening over decades. Lines between politics and business have become increasingly blurred as the interests of the two become as one.
Which explains a lot about the debate in the Tasmanian parliament last Tuesday on (now former) Labor leader Dean Winter’s confidence motion against the Liberal government under Jeremy Rockliff.
Ostensibly this debate was about who should govern Tasmania for the next four years, but despite failing dismally on fundamental measures of government competence, the Liberals held on to government. In the final vote between Rockliff’s leadership and that of Winter, the Liberals won by a remarkable 24 votes to 10, which speaks volumes about the two individuals concerned.
Incidentally, that losing vote of 10 would have been even lower but for an unexpected twist in the election count. Primary vote totals in Bass indicated Labor missing out on the final seat in that electorate, but preference flows delivered a rare lucky break which secured for the party, in the words of election analyst Kevin Bonham, “one more seat than they are proportionally entitled to”.
Dean Winter’s personal dealings with Green and independent MPs were so inept that his colleagues felt compelled to dump him after the vote. But the real story behind that debate was in what neither of the major party leaders could bring themselves to mention: the damage done by unregulated industry to the natural environment.
Re-elected Braddon independent Craig Garland lamented the major parties’ failure to recognise the urgent need for marine protection. Kristy Johnston, who topped the Clark poll, pledged to test all government decisions against whether they helped or hindered protection of the environment for future generations.
The new force in Franklin, Peter George, who topped the poll well ahead of Dean Winter, criticised compromising and contradictory Liberal positions on salmon, but reserved his harshest words for Winter for his refusal to recognise the popular wish to rein in powerful business interests.
He went on: “Labor is blindly obsequious to the multinational fish farms that will turn their backs on Tasmanian workers and on Tasmanian communities as waters warm, diseases soar, mortalities multiply, and profits dry up.… Both [sides of the house] have become so corporatised that they more closely represent the big end of town than they do ordinary Tasmanians.”
In Brazil , home turf of Huon Aquaculture owner JBL, they know a lot about blending business and government. For decades that corrupt practice has been a feature of the unregulated clearing of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, the world’s greatest biodiversity reservoir and natural carbon store. That clearing is justified on the basis of delivering jobs and lifting living standards.
What price are we prepared to pay for a job?