John Biggs
RECENT articles on TT have drawn attention to the fact that both major parties put in place policies that the majority of the electorate do not want, and often the more the protest, the more rigidly those policies are enforced – and yet the offending party gets re-elected time and time again. As Peter Henning Tasmania: Time for a new way (TT, 16 Feb 09) puts it, democratic government involves a balance between economic, social and environmental issues but the major parties, the Lib-Lab Accord (LLA), deliberately focus on short term economic issues that benefit a favoured few, not on the social or environmental issues that make much of life worthwhile for ordinary people.
In the 2008 election, the Government under Paul Lennon’s inherited leadership was up to its neck in scandal after scandal, mostly on the pulp mill fiasco and on social issues such as gambling and rundown health infrastructure, yet Lennon was re-elected Premier in his own right.
He took that as a ringing endorsement of his “whatever it takes” style, which only made a bad situation worse. Lennon’s departure on 26 May 2008 was widely seen as the dawn of a new era. The clumsy oaf had simply got things wrong, the thinking went, and now he was gone, all would be well in this State of Tasmania. How could this be? All but one of the Labor Party, and all the Liberal party in Lower and Upper Houses, had endorsed the outcome of Lennon’s mishandling of the pulp mill project, however critical they might have been of his way of going about it. Thus the problems may not be due to a runaway maverick but to a culture that accepts that the role of parliament is to further certain private interests at the expense of the public interest.
Yet when David Bartlett was sworn in as the new Premier, he quickly distanced himself from the Lennon era. Young, educated, with a non-union background, bicycle-riding Gen X Bartlett talked up a “clever and kind” Tasmania. Education was dearest to his heart. He even drew “a line in the sand” for Gunns. Tasmania was at last entering the 21st century!
Alas not. Probably the most telling sign that it was business as usual was only weeks later in October, 2008, with the publication of a report from the Australian National University concluding that that old growth forests sequestered carbon at three times the extent of plantation wood. This conclusion thoroughly demolished implausible assertions by Forestry Tasmania that their forestry practices were better than carbon neutral. The Premier publicly deemed the ANU report to be “bullshit”. The report had in part been financed by the Wilderness Society, you see, thus earning Premier Bartlett’s learned dismissal of it.
The scales finally fell from our eyes. This was anti-environmentalism in vintage Lennon style. Indeed, Bartlett has “held no direct discussions with conservation organisations over any significant environmental issue that concerns the state. The so-called open and consultative Premier deals with us in pretty much the same way as his famously non-consultative predecessor.” (Tasmanian Conservationist, December, 2008, p. 6).
As the problem of a reduced Parliament worsened as minister after minister resigned, the ensuing poor decision-making made it obvious that too few were handling too many portfolios. Bartlett originally acknowledged the problem and announced he was prepared to discuss increasing the size of Parliament back to the original 35 members.
But within days, he smartly withdrew – no doubt following a friendly chat with the real powerbrokers.
Even the Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry now deplores the diminished Parliament but they are “at odds with reality” the Premier claims. “Reality” evidently means caucus and who dominates them. Of course caucus wants a reduced Parliament for it distils more power into fewer hands – theirs.
As his term as Premier unrolls, Bartlett is showing a familiar pattern: caucus decisions will go ahead whatever the evidence, whatever the public thinks.
Bartlett’s merger of TAFE and senior high school into three streams, implemented instantly against overwhelming opposition and with no consultation with those most affected, is one serious example. Only weeks into implementation, the system was in chaos. The $23 million “Tourist” Road through the Tarkine has been thoroughly condemned by expert opinion as irresponsible and likely to drive wild populations of the devil to extinction and even the tourist industry itself is strongly opposed to the Road, but to no avail.
But undoubtedly the worst and most dangerous move, shortly to be rushed through Parliament, is the plan to side-step RPDC so that development proposals anywhere in the State are in the hands of the Minister for Planning, the ubiquitous and accident prone David Llewellyn, and an ad hoc Government appointed committee of bureaucrats whose decisions on Projects of Regional Significance may not be appealed.
This proposal would give the Government total power over what local developments can proceed without any cost-benefits analysis or base-line studies whatever local council policies exist. It opens government to corruption of the most obvious kind. The new centralised Water and Sewage Corporation also marginalises local councils; it also looks awfully like a restructuring prior to privatisation. Under these arrangements, projects like Walker’s canal development at Ralphs Bay, overwhelmingly opposed by locals and expert judgment, would be approved; landholders who don’t want a pipeline supplying much of Launceston’s water supply to the pulp mill on their property would be over-ridden.
These planning proposals avoid the inconvenience caused by Lennon’s crass handling of the pulp mill precisely by making such handling standard practice.
But this is even worse than Lennon’s ad hocery; it is a totalitarian system that gives the Government power to cut deals with whoever it likes, without any costs-analysis of likely effects on individuals, on the environment, on health, and without any appeal. Is this any different from fascism?
I don’t think this can be put down to Bartlett’s own personal megalomania – although a competition for school students’ best portrait of the Premier gives one pause – but to an arrogance of a Government that has been so long in power it has lost any conception of what a representative democracy is.
Lennon himself publicly stated that he had a mandate to do whatever he thought best for Tasmania and if Tasmanians didn’t like it, they could chuck him out next election and give someone else open slather. He had confused democracy with serial autocracy. And now so have they all, including David Bartlett.
Despite the clever and kind rhetoric, Bartlett has made his position absolutely clear on the litmus test of Tasmanian politics – where you stand on environmental issues. That is the issue that crucially divides this State and that a genuinely clever and kind leader must resolve. Division is poison to a community, and backing one side of the divide against the other is almost to sanction civil war, which is nearly what happened with the recent disgusting violence in the Styx and Florentine valleys.
Unfortunately, division is one of the mechanisms of political survival. That Jim Bacon so enthusiastically supported Tasmanian Together when much of what he did was to create Tasmania Divided is irony indeed. And it kept Labor in power when all indications were that it was corrupt and incompetent and should go. That Graeme Sturges without any evidence has accused environmentalists of trashing $1.2 million’s worth of forestry machinery, thereby dogwhistling the division the Government needs to stay in power, suggests we are entering election mode.
How does it work? How can they get away with it? Some might call it voter masochism. Antonio Gramsci, the philosopher, called it hegemony, which describes how the rulers in society maintain their power and exploit those they rule with the consent of the ruled. Hegemony works here by stressing that the status quo is “commonsense”, with which all clear-thinking citizens would agree.
Those who don’t agree are the lunatic fringe, the far left crazies. A case made against forestry practices is “a Green stunt”, code for “no sensible person should give it a moment’s consideration”; Greens themselves are slapped with emotive nonsense labels, the latest and most dangerous in the light of the Federal draconian anti-terrorist legislation being “eco-terrorists”, as used by Minister David Llewellyn for a small group of protesters who closed Gunns’ Triabunna wood-chipping operation for a day.
A good example of how hegemony works occurred on 27th August, 2008, when Kim Booth brought a bill before Parliament repealing the Pulp Mill Assessment Act and its appalling Clause 11. Remember those Liberal – and one or two Labor – politicians who had criticised Lennon’s trashing of the RPDC process? Here was their chance to show that they meant what they had said. Many urged a conscience vote: I did my bit by emailing all Liberal politicians to that effect. However, party discipline was imposed by both Labor and Liberals. ‘Another Green stunt,’ shouted the previously admirable Lisa Singh as she voted for what she had previously put her career on the line to avoid voting for, when she had absented herself from Parliament on the day of the original vote. No breaking of ranks this time. Lennon’s critics could have kept themselves honest by voting for the Bill, then putting new legislation in place that reinstated due process, for example by referring the mill proposal back to the RPDC. But they didn’t and why I think they didn’t is a familiar but puzzling feature of Tasmanian politics.
A large majority of Tasmanians would surely agree that the Government should:
increase spending on health, public education and public transport,
support small business over giant corporations,
act immediately and firmly against climate change,
engage in greater public consultation and transparency,
adhere to due process,
legislate on the grounds of social justice,
establish a more labour-intensive, diverse and sustainable forestry industry, creating more jobs for specialist craftsmen, and stop clear-felling old growth forests.
However, many who would agree to the above would never in their darkest nightmare vote for the political party that stood for those things. These are all Green policies, which distinguish this party from the two major parties. Name-calling, no matter how absurd, works. What sensible citizen would vote for loony lefties who would legalise all hard drugs and force us all to live in caves? What looked such a puzzle is simply hegemony in action.
It happened again on March 2009. Premier Bartlett had long foreshadowed legislation establishing that elections be held every four years on a fixed date, so that the governing party can’t call an election when it suits them, allowing them to get on with the job instead of being in electioneering mode for the last two years of their term, which is what usually happens. However, when Greens leader Nick McKim moved a motion proposing exactly that, it was voted down by both major parties. ‘Another Green stunt!’ Premier Bartlett proclaimed with startling originality about his own proposal.
The commonality between the two major parties – the Lib-Lab Alliance – exists because the major powerbrokers in the timber, hospitality and other industries play the major parties against each other. The result is that politicians of both sides commit to commercial interests rather than to the general public interest. Even the Mercury agrees (Editorial, 13 Sep 08):
those who fear environmental reform in the woodchip, gambling and fishing industries must be nervous … With an eye to the anti-Green powerbrokers, Mr. Bartlett must woo disgruntled Labor voters upset the party is too cosy with big business … but stray too far from the interests of big business and it is possible he could face similar internal conflicts that saw premier Doug Lowe stabbed in the back by colleagues in 1981.
And just to illustrate that very point, I suggested to a senior Liberal at a social function: “If the Liberals agreed to halt clear-felling old-growth forests, then come the 2010 election you’ll be in like Flynn.”
“I hear what you’re saying, John, but sorry. It’s locked in.” He smiled and waved me on my way.
I took that to mean that the Liberals would rather lose an election over an issue wanted by a majority of those who voted them in, than get offside with the timber powerbrokers.
Is Tasmania’s polity worse than that of other states? Looking at contemporary NSW, for example, it would seem not, but there is a difference in the nature of the corruption. Tasmanian corruption is situated in a small population, where local issues dominate and where anyone who is anyone knows everyone else in the same club. You don’t worry about an abstract idea called “due process”, you fix things up for your mates and they’ll do the right thing by you. Corruption in the big states is in many senses worse, because it is on a larger scale, more organised and often involving a criminal underworld. But then you could argue that the Tasmanian version is worse because it is more entrenched, more part of a cosy system in which due process is for mugs.
Whereas Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland, say, quickly straightened itself out under fresh leadership, Tasmania has had a string of very different leaders from Reece onwards, from both major parties, yet policies and procedures on major issues have remained the same. And they get away with it by using the mechanisms of hegemony and the deliberately divided community that that entails.
I would like to think that the Labor Party has over-reached itself with the latest planning proposal. To control all significant planning across the whole State against any social and environmental counter-evidence is hubris worthy of a Greek tragedy. Except these guys aren’t heroes, and their political self-destruction would be no tragedy.
