Environment
Canal project lesson
Peter Tucker
If there ever was a day in Tasmania when big environmental issues polarised the population, my observation is that those days are over. Now I think Tasmanians want to find ways to cautiously support development proposals and are prepared to at least hear proponents out.
This political reality, as much as anything else, is why premier Paul Lennon has allowed Walker Corporation to resurrect the Ralphs Bay canal development.
The eighties was the decade of the big developer versus the environment movement. Then proposals to dam the Gordon River and the Wesley Vale pulp mill galvanised community opinion one way or the other. No one who was around at the time could forget the “no dams” marches through Hobart city streets that punctuated Doug Lowe’s Labor premiership.
But I detect a change in the broader Tasmanian community at the beginning of this century. Perhaps it is weariness with the perennial forestry debate or maybe recent economic good times have fostered a new pragmatism in voters, but I sense implacable opposition to Ralphs Bay — the type which brings people with placards out on the streets — is limited to three relatively narrow groups: some local residents, those who identify with Labor left values and Green voters.
My views above make no judgement on the rights or wrongs of the project; I simply wish to state what I believe to be political reality. I make my case on a number of observations about the way politics is being played out in this state.
First, there is the fact that the majority of Tasmanian voters are socially and politically conservative, tending to the centre-right in their beliefs.
This median group tends to consider issues from a self-interested perspective, preferring to focus on economic outcomes. I think Mr Lennon knows that many in this broad swath of the community hold, to varying degrees of intensity, doubts about the environmental impacts of the canal development, but are at least prepared to let the planning approval process run its course.
Lessons from the pulp mill
Second, there are political lessons to be learned from the Tamar pulp mill proposal.
Opposition to the pulp mill was cited as a major issue in the lead up to the March 2006 election. A community opposition group ran a candidate in Bass, Les Rochester, and most commentators, me included, believed that the pulp mill would whip up enough local Green support to make Kim Booth’s re-election a certainty. Well, that is what experiences in the 1980s taught us to believe.
But we were wrong. The anti-mill lobby filled community halls, got plenty of front-page coverage in the local press, and generally made a lot of noise, but as an election issue the pulp mill was a fizzer. It just did not resonate in the wider Bass electorate. Mr Rochester scarcely polled two per cent of the primary vote, and Mr Booth recorded a drop in support from the 2002 election, only just managing to hang on in the preference cut up.
The lesson I believe Mr Lennon and his advisers have heeded from this is that major development proposals no longer result in a polarised “them” versus “us” debate in the wider population. Voters have moved on. They perhaps have more faith than they used to in the Gordon-below-Franklin days that the appraisal process will properly consider the environmental and social outcomes of a development proposal.
Emotional, absolutist language
Whatever the reasons, voters are not flocking to environmental causes and prefer to let due-process run its course.
Finally, I think Mr Lennon appreciates that the average voter does not respond well to the emotional, absolutist language that tends to be used by the anti-development lobby.
If you accept my position that the median voter is generally conservative in nature, then you would understand that this group prefers calm, reasoned argument to highly charged rhetoric. Nothing turns a conservative voter off faster than a banner waving, chanting, slogan driven crowd.
This is a pity, really, because the views of the anti-Ralphs Bay lobby are passionately held, real and worth listening to. But old-fashioned protest action is never going to work on the wider, less directly involved, and more cautious population.
There is no doubt that Walker’s canal proposal for Ralphs Bay will occupy many more newspaper column centimetres before it is finally resolved. If the mission of the opponents is to bring the rest of the community around to their point of view then they will have to start learning some political realities.
Impassioned pleas won’t work, either will catchy slogans or mass rallies. If you want to change the minds of the people you must first learn to speak their language.
Peter Tucker has worked in Tasmania as an advisor for the Liberals in opposition and in ministerial offices for both Labor and Liberal governments. He is currently a free-lance political commentator and writer, and PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania’s School of Government. peter.tucker@tdctasmania.com
This is the original text of an item that appeared in The Mercury newspaper, Thursday 27 July 2006, p. 20.