The sorry state of politics in Tasmania

In the wake of the Allison Ritchie Affair, first raised by Tasmanian Times Here: Keeping it in the Family?, TT republishes eminent political commentator WAYNE CRAWFORD’s lament on the state of Tasmanian democracy, first published in Mercury on June 6, 2009.

IT is with a sense of sorrow rather than anger that I report on the sorry state of politics in Tasmania.

The reform we were promised a year ago at the changing of the guard – with the appointment of the new generation-X premier – has not eventuated.

Instead of the fresh and vibrant politics of a “clever, kind and connected” new administration, there has been little change from the old, stale style which, during the previous decade, had generated cynicism in an increasingly wary electorate.

While this is not to say Tasmanian Labor erred in choosing David Bartlett as the fresh-faced successor to Paul Lennon, it is still true that his transition – some would say blooding, or baptism of fire – has been rather an anti-climax since the early days when we first learned of his proclivity for IT gadgets and a thumb-ring.

In some ways it was inevitable. Just as Barack Obama is finding it impossible to live up to the unrealistic expectations placed on him by a world which had grown weary of the era of George W. Bush, David Bartlett was never going to entirely meet the challenges thrown up when the crisis-prone Paul Lennon quit suddenly in May last year.

At the time, critics of Lennon – who were and many and vocal – were comparing the transition to the “fall of the Berlin Wall … the dawn of a new Tasmania,” and to “the events of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution where people had had enough.”

And just as the likes of Obama and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd have had to rethink their grand plans in the light of an unexpected global financial crisis, so – on a smaller scale – has Bartlett.

For instance, in his first extended interview, with the Mercury, on becoming Premier, Bartlett recommitted to building a new Royal Hobart Hospital on the dockside rail yards on Macquarie Point. That plan, of course, has been abandoned, victim of the global financial meltdown, we are told (although it was never adequately explained why Tasmania did not manage to get a share of the Rudd nation-building cash-splash to put towards the hospital and a host of other infrastructure projects).

In other senses Bartlett seems to have discovered that the wheels of government grind exceedingly slow – or at least much slower than he had bargained for. We are still awaiting implementation of his 10-point plan to restore “trust in democracy” – specifically, there is the political ethics commission which was to be the subject of legislation by early this year but is still going through the processes of a parliamentary inquiry.

There are the year-to-year budgetary restraints which he may not have expected when he took over from Lennon, who boasted that one of his proudest achievements had been to eradicate state debt and get Tasmania’s finances in order. (That was only a year ago, but under the changed circumstances, Tasmania now faces deficit budgets as far as the eye can see.)

There has been a start on the much-vaunted transport hub at Brighton – but as of a couple of weeks ago when a derailment on ill-maintained tracks sent a train toppling into a Colebrook paddock, Tasmania no longer even has a rail line through Brighton. While that is supposed to be only a temporary setback, the condition of the tracks and the uncertain future of the rail network make it an indefinite proposition.

Much has been made of government attempts to cut back the disastrous road toll, which has gone through the roof this year. One measure announced last weekend was to increase penalties for failure to wear seat belts – but if Police Association predictions are correct that there will be far less police cars on the roads because of Budget cuts, it’s a moot point whether there will be anywhere near enough police out there to enforce the laws on seatbelts or anything else.

Then there is the $23 million proposed for a road through the Tarkine rainforest. All indications are that only Forestry Tasmania wants the road – which is criticised locally as potentially destructive and a waste of money – but the Government seems determined to press ahead regardless. And this from a Premier who, early in his term, was giving every indication that the era of being beholden to forestry interests was over.

A central plank to the new age was to have been a Bartlett Government which was “kind” in looking after the interests of the elderly and the least advantaged in the community. Yet among its earliest initiatives has been to effectively impose a new tax on water (by hiving off water and sewerage from council rates to a new layer of bureaucracy but giving pensioners and renters no guarantee they will get rebates); and permitting increases in power charges to a level which industry says will inevitably cause more unemployment.

Not that there is any reason to suggest that Bartlett’s intentions are not good and his motives other than high-minded and altruistic. But with then best intentions in the world, it is impossible to do much in government without taking the public service with you. And on that score his tactics, at least, have to be questioned – when he can in one breath tell 28,000 public servants he will legislate to over-ride their security of tenure; but in the next breath, renew the contract of a departmental head who no longer has a department, saying there is a moral and legal obligation to keep faith with him.

And thereby hangs one of Bartlett’s biggest problems. The contracting – some would say politicisation – of the senior public service has meant that many departmental heads’ terms in the job are far shorter than in the days of “permanent public servants” who would serve under successive governments.

These officers would take with them immense corporate history and memory which would prove invaluable to the political masters they served. Much of that that corporate knowledge has been lost.

Bartlett also lacks the challenge of some of his predecessors which came with more active parties and a bigger parliament. Earlier leaders were “blooded” by having to contest their ideas in parties which held them to account at conferences which were far more robust than those of today; and in caucuses which included backbench MPs hungry to make their mark and not so impotent as today’s excuses for backbenches in the downsized “pretend parliament.”