Australia’s National Park sounds good to me

The West Australian Premier (a Liberal, recently installed) lately made a now famous comment that Tasmania is the nation’s national park (On TT HERE). To a lot of Tasmanians, that sounded not so much an insult, as a wonderful promotional slogan.

(Mainland colour supplements have carried for the last three weeks a horrendously expensive set of advertisements for Tasmanian tourism, depicting dysfunctional looking characters in boring or gloomy landscapes, with the catchy slogan “come to where you can feel small and insignificant”. A few pages away, lovely ads for Lord Howe Island show lush landscapes, wildlife, underwater activity, blue skies (which by the way Tasmania has more of than Melbourne ) and happy people. The Tasmanian ads seem designed to remind us they still haven’t found the East Coast murderer. Perhaps gothic menace is the new thing in marketing, but it didn’t work for me.)

But I digress. The nation’s National Park, alongside its foodbowl (we still grow 80% of Australia’s frozen vegetables) and home of the best seafood, fresh produce, wine, cheese,
meat and dairy. An outstandingly lovely place to retire, or raise children, with strong communities and an enviable lack of crowding or pollution, despite FT’s and Gunns efforts to the contrary. It sounds pretty good to me.

Mathew Denholm’s article (On TT HERE) is a thoughtful analysis, but it doesn’t go wide or deep enough.

Of course premiers rubbish each other’s states in the annual slugfest over GST. But little Tassie is hardly as burden to W.A., their premier is just scoring points. And by that criteria, W.A. also props up most of the Eastern States. But a fortunate geology is nothing to be proud of – it’s just good luck.

Moreover, most of the profits from mining and coal go to Japan, China and the US, who own most of the companies that carry it out.

We feel mighty lucky to have our economy propped up by this, but need to be aware, what comes our way are the crumbs. Mice always love burglars.

When Kevin Rudd tried to share some of that mineral wealth for nation building, he was promptly rolled. A more miner-friendly PM was quickly dusted off. It was a hair raising demonstration of where the power lies in this country.

But I digress again! Are we the mendicant state because of lack of development, or is it really maldevelopment that got us to this point. Developers in Tasmania have had open slather, large industries given outrageous secret prices on electricity, licences to pollute, and Hydro and Forestry in turn have spun out of control to become greater powers than the elected government of the day, through their linkages with these resource users creating a triangle that excludes the people or the democratic process.

The Pulp Mill debacle is the latest of a long saga of institutional corruption, as was detailed in a chilling address by Professor Quentin Beresford at the Tailrace earlier this month. Beresford believes Tasmania is the most corrupt state in the Commonwealth, and as a long term expert in the WA Inc. scandals, he knows what he is talking about. A strong case can be made that its because of this – the big-developer bias, that we haven’t shone in the post industrial world; where brains not brawn are the keys to a sound economy.

That the bias in providing infrastructure to powerful mates, and remaining in old-economy endeavours like mills and mines, that has lead to our population being welfare dependent, and uneducated. That its this depressing state of affairs that makes our brighter young people migrate elsewhere. Everything in economics is about product differentiation, about uniqueness, about finding a niche that no-one else can fill. We were born with this, and while half the state are intelligently developing it, our government seems intent on trashing it as fast as they can. Tasmania – home of Pulp ? I don’t think so.

There are many measures of what makes a state great, useful, valuable, and eventually, prosperous. Natural beauty. Water that doesn’t give you breast cancer (oh, sorry, we no longer have that one). Rivers you can fish in. Towns and suburbs that are a delight to live in. Mild weather, miles of quiet clean beaches, awe inspiring skies and autumn light. Ancient and sacred forests. Helpful and supportive communities that take care of their elderly, disabled and young with warm hearts. Places you would want to retire, want to work, raise a family, want to invest in – long term, not for quick profit and run away to Noosa.

I would much rather live in the nation’s National Park than the nation’s Open Cut Mine.

Money matters, but it never rules a meaningful life. We need our leaders to be more than purse watchers, it has to be “for what?” What is life about ? I think Tasmania is closer to this than anywhere else in Australia. But we are dangerously close to losing it all.