Although the Governor could be seen as only taking a cautious, legalistic approach in appointing a Labor Government, it could also be seen as an act of much wisdom. For one thing, it put a stop to the likely and extremely nasty Labor strategy of gleefully standing on the sidelines while a completely inexperienced Liberal team tried to cope with economic landmines that Labor knew about and the Liberals did not, with the highly intelligent and slick Green team in opposition eager to trip the uncooperative Will Hodgman. The life of a Liberal government under those conditions would confidently be predicted to be nasty, brutish and short. At which point, Bartlett would enter the ring with: ‘Told you so! Minority government is unstable. The Liberals are incompetent, the Greens are destructive radicals. You must elect Labor!’ Thank God that scenario is no longer a goer.
The Governor’s call probably makes another horror scenario less likely. Towards the end of the 2010 campaign, ex-premiers from both parties – Robin Gray and Tony Rundle for the Liberals and Michael Field and Paul Lennon for Labor – stridently called for voters not to vote Green and thus have a hung parliament. However, by exhorting a Liberal or Labor vote, when the Greens were clearly doing well, seems to guarantee that what they most affected to fear would happen, as it did. But perhaps the call by the four ex-premiers was attempting something quite different: echoing that more sinister call the previous year by Robin Gray for a Labor-Liberal coalition. If Gray’s suggestion was adopted, such a coalition would seize 20 out of 25 seats in Parliament, thus creating an unstoppable steamroller for untrammelled forestry operations and any other developments that powerbrokers like Gray might want to propose. And how easy that would be under the new planning system just put in place by both Labor and Liberals, whereby the Minister for Planning (and how thankful we should be that won’t be David Llewellyn) can call any developer’s large-scale proposal a “Project of Regional Significance” and fast track it via an ad hoc Development Assessment Panel, à la pulp mill. A Lib-Lab coalition – not even a coalition but a tacit agreement would do – would be a disaster for democracy, with corporate interests completely smothering the public interest.
As if to confirm that this was the way the bi-partisan wind was blowing, Bartlett, during the election campaign, with Liberal approval, extended old growth logging for another twenty years, well beyond the existing Regional Forests Agreement. Hodgman’s almost incoherent rage at Labor, when the Governor’s was only doing what he was constitutionally expected to do, seems to make that a tad less likely, for the time being anyway and who knows what will develop more positively. Hodgman’s unstatesmanlike screams that the Governor’s constitutionally correct decision created an “illegitimate” government only goes to show that the Governor’s call was the correct one.
The third post-election scenario is what 72% of Tasmanians want: a negotiated solution to the divided Parliament involving power-sharing and cooperation, not the major parties playing cartel politics to shut out nearly one quarter of the electorate.[1] Thus, instead of caucus ramming predetermined outcomes through with minimum debate, as has happened in the last 12 years, power-sharing would require government to take more views into account and thus increase dialogue and negotiation such that outcomes acceptable to the maximum number of people in the electorate might be achieved. Such thoughtfulness and accommodation is what this state so badly needs and wants. This involves a shift from a power-based to a policy-based system, which is not the way things have been typically been done in this state. Last week, with the two major parties scrambling for majorities – playing two party politics in a three party system – this scenario seemed impossible.
Since yesterday, it seems distinctly more possible. After all the name calling – including automated robocalls – today’s Mercury quotes Bartlett as talking about “putting the past behind us … we have to get away from the old paradigms of parliament”, even not ruling out sharing ministries with the Greens (and if that happens, stick to your promise Michael Aird and resign). David Bartlett is very good at off the cuff rhetoric, but such power-sharing does seem less impossible under new parliament because it has changed qualitatively. A majority of voters gave their primary vote to the Greens in two electorates, Denison and Lyons. It is also significant that there are eleven new faces, nearly half the parliament, while several old stagers lost to younger members of their own party. One new face who missed out was Scott McLean, secretary of the CFMEU, who urged his fellow unionists to vote Liberal in the 2004 Federal elections and was strongly pro pulp mill. Other mill and forestry hardliners, Sturges, Llewellyn and Daniel Hulme also lost their seats – a pointer to public feeling on forestry and on adversarial style that an incoming government surely cannot ignore. Is this result the long-awaited paradigm shift away from the old paradigms Bartlett is referring to?
That the Liberals got only the same number of seats as Labor, after years of Labor mismanagement, deviousness, and bullying, speaks volumes about the lacklustre Liberal campaign. Under a ‘Real Change’ slogan, they came up with a 4-lane Midland Highway (which needed federal funds if it was ever to happen), waiving primary school fees and land tax, a $2,500 incentive to expatriate Tasmanian to return to work in Tasmania, and a cable car to the summit of Mt. Wellington. Oh please. A ragbag of minor chips that do not a forest make: no hint of a vision for Tasmania we could be proud of or aspire to. On election night, with nine seats to Bartlett’s ten, with two seats then in doubt, Hodgman gave a ‘victory’ speech, in which the only substantive point he made for ‘Real Change’ was full support for the pulp mill. Given the problems Gunns is currently facing this was not a reality statement at all, but a testosterone driven challenge to any sort of cooperation with the Greens. Putting all this together with the total inexperience of a Liberal government, the Governor could hardly expect a Liberal team to provide a workable government. So reflect a little, Will, before shocking your father with a curse on Government House.
Although he might have been acting purely legalistically, what the Governor has done could have profound and very positive effects on the Tasmanian polity. There is no doubt that the people wanted a change to more effective government. The original Labor strategy that was going to produce worse governance has been stymied; and a Lib-Lab coalition is now less likely given the make-up of the new government and Saul Eslake’s warning (on TT) that we must change from extractive industries based on unprocessed commodities such as mining and forestry, that can no longer compete on the world stage, to clever new technologies (that Bartlett talked up but did little about) and service-based industries.
So maybe a new chastened Labor, with some Green cooperation (whatever form that might take), will bring us that new governmental and industrial paradigm we so badly need. The context is right for that now, just let us hope we don’t mess it up this time.
John Biggs is a retired academic who returned to his birthplace to write fiction, but what he found after his arrival provided the material and the anger to write much nonfiction, including on Tasmanian Times. His next book, Return to Van Diemen’s Land? Tasmania Over Five Generations, is due to appear later this year.
