DURING the last Tasmanian state election, a grotesquely grinning Paul Lennon promised that the ALP would deliver “stable”, “majority” government for Tasmania. Since that empty promise left the lips of the fated premier we have witnessed the sacking of his deputy, the depressed departure of Paula Wreidt, the criminal prosecution of his police commissioner, the dissolution of an entire government department, violent and idiotic outbursts from Lennon’s head kicker Graham Sturges, not to mention the spectacular departure of the Premier himself amid deplorable public approval ratings (and that’s just the tip of the iceberg). So why exactly did Tasmanians vote for Labor again? Did they get what they voted for? Can they remember what they voted for?

Did they vote for Labor’s grand vision? Not likely when this consists of a single giant pulp mill. Was it for their finesse and charisma?

Almost impossible when one considers the tired array of moustaches, potbellies and meaningless platitudes that flow from the executive building. Was it because Tasmanians fundamentally believed in a positive vision, a constructive, community minded agenda put forward by the Labor Government?

No, they voted for Labor because Labor sold them pre-packed, easily digestible electoral junk food. For it was the simple empty offering of a “stable majority government” that deluded voters and delivered Labor a four-year extension of their already overdrawn dynasty. It was the nauseating mantra of fear directed at “minority Government” (and the shadowy miasma of greenies, trannies and ferals who are its courtiers) accompanied by mass advertising, letter drops and hate campaigns orchestrated by men wearing pig masks that galvanised a tired constituency around there empty promise. Alternately it was happy visions of families on beaches, pumped on primetime TV and funded by the dynasties big business buddies that drove home the message (as if happy family times on beaches ever had anything to do with politicians).

All this carefully orchestrated, but essentially empty and disingenuous, propaganda brought Labor four more years of power, during which they reigned (supremely and “stably”) over the worst phase of political uncertainty, sheer public embarrassment and plain stupidity in decades.

To put it simply, if you voted Labor at the last election, you got duped, you got fooled, hoodwinked, scammed, ripped off…so what are you gonna do about it?

Tasmanians make a perennial pastime of bemoaning, condemning and protesting our rulers and politicians. Our political history is punctuated by powerful and dynamic campaigns and movements for change: from the moral conviction of the anti-transportation movement, to the mass people power of the no-dams campaign. This tradition of resistance has flourished as the ALP’s grip on our political culture has tightened; with localised disquiet over hospital closures, frustration over railways, water and infrastructure, fury at the organised manipulation of public confidence and due-process over the pulp mill, ingrained resentment over the management of native forests and now open rebellion in the education system. The dismal failure of the Lennon-Bartlett ALP to sustain public confidence, and the barrage of criticism levelled at our political leaders, tame bureaucrats and business barons from a dissatisfied public and even the local corporate media are testament to Tasmanian’s unsettledness, their anxiety about the state of affairs on this island.

But while books, blogs and websites are chock full of articulate anti-government sentiment, the same old sagging bums are quietly returned to sit on the same old seats (albeit tastefully renovated) in a house of assembly that now conveniently and tellingly boasts a glass screen to invisibly block out the yells and taunts of an enraged populace. And while, on talk back radio and letters to the editor, droves of clever, perceptive people deride the shame and embarrassment of being led by a cabal of talentless, uninspiring goons, the same goons fool a majority of Tasmanians, again and again, to let them have another crack at running the state.

So why do we, the Tasmanian people, who are not stupid, not blind and really quite sick and tired of being ignored, manipulated or persecuted, keep handing the reigns back over to the same political string pullers? The ALP has infiltrated and infected our political, economic and cultural landscape so comprehensively (installing tame bureaucrats and cementing convenient friendships with selected big
business) that a bland but dangerous political monoculture has been cultivated. Political monocultures, like their equivalent in the natural world, are risky. When one party has such a stranglehold, there is no diversity, no fresh ideas, no adaptability to change. When leaders, and their business buddies, get so cosy and so cocky, they get lazy, and so do voters. Political debate reverts to discourses of fear and smear. Those in power raise the spectre of “instability”, the horror of change. Unknown backbenchers and parliamentary wannabes are sent to run smear campaigns. Premiers drop lofty ideals and grand visions for dirty mudslinging. Things go downhill rapidly. For, clearly, after so many years of Labor Governments, it is not the lack of stability that is Tasmania’s problem; it is the very social straightjacket of “majority” government that is at the heart of our woes.

Paul Lennon fell very ungraciously on his sword because the community had sensed a rot setting in. They had heard about the backroom deals, the waterfront restaurant deals, the hot-tub deals; they had sensed the urgent, worried arrogance; they had seen the over-confident and aggressive attitude of an emperor rapidly loosing his pin stripes and designer ties. They had turned against their leader and plucked the bad apple from the cart. But perhaps they did not sense that after years in power the whole cart had become irreparably infected.

David Bartlett was meant to restore confidence, to clean up the shop, usher in fresh ideas, shake things up, change the guard- all those metaphors. His public sacking of Svengali-like Evan Rolley was a political masterstroke, if not an unavoidable necessity. But then the momentum died. He wasn’t going to give Government support for the pulp-mill, he told us. Then we hear his treasurer is off on a taxpayer-funded trip to hustle potential investors for the pulp mill.

He was going to consider all the facts and scientific information about forest management, he told us, before dismissing such facts and information as “bullshit”! He was going to be “clever, kind and connected”, he told us, before liquidating a crucial government department, going in to war with teachers and all but condoning red-neck vigilantes who attack, beat and firebomb environmentalists in the dead of night. Its funny, if you spell “Clever, Kind and Connected” with a “K” you get “KKK”. I’m just pointing that out.

In Bartlett’s KKK Tasmania, a perverse and dangerous redneck nationalism is emerging. Websites such as “save Tasmania, shoot a greenie” implore people to bash the brains out of “feral protesting scum”, maybe to take to them with iron bars or run over them with bulldozers. Its really clever, kind and connected stuff.

But this childish and aggressive fear of the unknown, of the dark-green forces that are poised in the forest ready to take our jobs, spoil our barbeques and ruin our happy family times on the beach, is a political parachute for under performing and unpopular governments. When people have nothing left to believe in, no faith in their leaders, no passion for their vision (because there is none); when there’s nothing positive left to vote for, Governments, like Tasmania’s, just have to give people something to vote against. In the coming months we will be told repeatedly, as we have already on numerous occasions, that we have to vote for Labor, because we can’t vote for Greenies, anti-development hooligans, ferals, eco-terrorists and dole bludgers. We will be reminded again and again that the abovementioned evildoers want to destroy our jobs, “lock up” our forests, ruin our families and promote promiscuous sex and drug addiction.

This is a formula played out time and time again and it’s a sad sign that political culture is dead, stagnating; that civil society is browbeaten, broken and bored. So will this election be any different?