Coroner & Legal
Premier Hodgman Starts A War He Will Not Win
Newly-elect Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman wants two opposite and irreconcilable things at once. In his election night victory speech, he made a point of saying that he intends to govern ‘for all Tasmanians’. And yet in almost every press conference and media opportunity since, he has repeatedly and confidently asserted that because of the Liberals’ election win he now ‘has a mandate’ to rip up the Tasmanian Forests Agreement that the forestry industry and environmentalists had painstakingly negotiated to end decades of conflict in Tasmania’s forests.
As I wrote previously ( The Wacky World of Tasmanian Liberal Forest Policy ), Hodgman has never wanted the peace agreement to work. During the three years in which TFA roundtable members worked so hard to find common ground after decades of mutual antagonism, Hodgman heckled from the sidelines, repeating his mantra that it was the ‘disastrous, so-called forestry peace deal’ at every opportunity.
Now, Mr Hodgman has got what he wanted, and the Liberals have the majority government they insisted they needed in order to govern. No-one questions that the Liberals’ election win was anything but decisive in electoral terms. But it has been disturbing to see how quickly that electoral win has, in the minds of Mr Hodgman and his party, translated into a self-proclaimed ‘mandate’ to destroy the years of work under the TFA and replace it with their own, apparently far superior, plan to grow the forestry industry.
For a Premier who made a point of saying he wants to govern for all Tasmanians, it seems Will Hodgman can’t wait to ride roughshod over the wishes of a great many of them. Let’s start with the election result itself. At the time of writing, with around 93% ballot papers counted, the Liberals are sitting on 51.3% of the vote. Electorally, that’s a significant win, which has led to the Liberals gaining many seats in Parliament. In terms of actual numbers of people, though, what is a large victory electorally does not necessarily translate to a significant majority of the population.
At the time of my calculations, out of 324,570 votes counted, 166,461 voted Liberal. The number of votes to achieve a straight 50% of the vote would be 162,285, therefore the Liberals’ decisive electoral victory actually only hinged on 4,176 votes. If we extrapolate the remaining uncounted 7% of votes out along the same lines, the number of people who will have secured majority government for the Liberals is just 4,490 (1). To put that in perspective, that’s about a quarter of the number of informal votes placed in the election, and less than 1% of the total Tasmanian population.
But primary school maths isn’t the only thing challenging Will Hodgman’s assertion that he has a ‘mandate’ to destroy the forestry peace deal. The results of a recent EMRS survey (2) indicate that a two-thirds majority of Tasmanians actually support the forestry peace agreement, and an astounding 90% of Tasmanians say they do not want to see the forestry wars restarted. These figures strongly suggest that there are many who voted Liberal in the election who support the agreement, and who do not want to see a return to the painfully divisive days of old.
And yet Mr Hodgman remains unmoved. At his first press conference he told Labor and the Greens it was time ‘they recognised the fact they lost’, as if those parties had somehow missed the election results, and castigated them on their ‘poor performance’ in the polls. But he saved his biggest disdain for the environmental groups, the ENGOs, who had spent so many years in tough negotiations to reach the historic peace agreement, barring them from the discussions he held last week that were only open to industry representatives.
Despite saying before the election that environmental groups would be included in the discussions, Hodgman quickly backtracked from that position, saying that he was only interested in talking to parties that supported the Liberals’ plan which ‘means unlocking those forests that have been locked up as a result of this political deal.’ Hodgman’s message to environmentalists was that the Liberal party would not be ‘held to ransom by a minority group’ and that if they weren’t going to ‘resile from their positions of just rampant opposition to seeing the forest industry grow, but worse still threaten increased protest activity … then it’s not worth our time having that meeting’ (3).
It seemed, from Hodgman’s words and actions, that he was determined to see this as a fight along political and ideological lines with his arch enemies Labor and particularly the Greens, despite the fact that the roundtable discussions were explicitly set up not as a political process, but as a negotiation between joint stakeholders. In locking out the ENGOs from discussions, Hodgman painted mainstream environmental groups like the Australian Conservation Foundation and The Wilderness Society as political green extremists who wanted to hold the Liberal Party to ransom.
However, he didn’t speak for the forestry industry itself. Up until recently, all industry signatories to the TFA were overwhelmingly committed in their support of the peace deal. Forest Industries Association chief Terry Edwards and Ta Ann Director Evan Rolley have both unequivocally said their markets demand conflict-free wood. After the exclusive industry-only talks with the new Liberal Government this week however, Edwards appeared to have drunk the ‘mandate’ kool-aid, telling the media afterwards ‘the TFA itself is no longer relevant because we have a government that was elected to tear it up’ (4).
Tasmanian Sawmillers Association spokesperson Shane Rice also appears to be backtracking on the agreement, saying ‘we’ll take on the protest actions as and when they arise’ (4). Perhaps Rice’s new-found confidence that he can ‘take on’ those who don’t accept the delisting and logging of 70,000 ha of World Heritage forest is due to Hodgman’s plan to introduce 3-month mandatory jail terms and fines of up to $250,000 for protestors (5). It sure does help those who would destroy world-class old growth forests that they’ve got the law on their side, even if the law has to be changed to suit their purposes first.
I don’t accept Mr Hodgman’s claim that he has a mandate to tear up the forest peace agreement. I don’t accept that he has the right to ride roughshod over the wishes of almost half of the Tasmanian population who did not vote for his party, or the 90% of Tasmanians surveyed who do not want a return to the forestry wars. I reject Mr Hodgman’s hypocrisy and doublespeak when he says he will ‘govern for all’ whilst simultaneously refusing to meet with the state’s environmental representatives, arrogantly telling them that because he knows they won’t fall in line with his plan they are worthless to discussions about the future of Tasmanian forests.
I say this to the newly-elect Tasmanian Premier: your threats will not silence me, or any other of the Tasmanians, Australians, or global citizens who watch dismayed as you so aggressively seek to destroy a negotiated agreement that, miraculously, had largely ended 30 years of bitter conflict in this state, only to plunge us back into the division of forestry wars that we all hoped were behind us.
If it’s war with environmentalists you want, you’ll get it, but make sure you first understand that this is a war you cannot and will not win. For with every tall old growth eucalypt you allow industry to fell in a World Heritage Area that you stripped of its listing, with every protestor you throw behind bars and fine their life savings,be assured that the tide of public opinion will turn against you.
There’s something you don’t understand yet Mr Hodgman. You think environmentalists and green groups are a minority that you don’t have to care about and whose input you won’t, out of sheer bloody-mindedness, take into account. Like Prime Minister Tony Abbott, you think we’re some kind of radical fringe group safe to denigrate and attack but what you fail to realise is that in the future we who value the environment will be the majority. Oceans are acidifying, coral reefs are dying. More than 80% of the Earth’s original forests have been destroyed. Dangerous climate change is approaching fast, and on this fragile continent of fire, drought and flood we are ill-prepared for what it will bring.
In the decades to come, we will all be environmentalists. In fact we already are – just try going without air for a few minutes if you think you’re separate from the planetary life support system.
And if we’re all environmentalists, then there’s no one left to wage a war against. Is there, Premier Hodgman?
Refs
1) You can check the latest election results yourself here at the Tasmanian Electoral Commission website: http://www.tec.tas.gov.au/StateElection/Results.html
2) EMRS poll commissioned by the Infrastructure, Energy and Resources Department found that 90 per cent of the 800 Tasmanians polled wanted an end to native forest conflict and two-thirds believed the agreement was the way to do it.
3) Hodgman Tells Green Groups: Back Off – Sydney Morning Herald 18 March 2014; Interview on ABC radio Drive program 18 March 2014
4) ABC Online 21 March 2014 ‘Tasmania’s Forest Talks Dead: Industry Says World Has ‘Moved On’
5) www.tas.liberal.org.au/policy – Rebuilding the Forest Industry – Cracking Down on Illegal Protestors
Miriam Moriarty is a Tasmanian writer with a focus on environmental and social issues.
• Richard Colbeck: World Heritage mockery • Richard Colbeck on The Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area scam
MEANWHILE, • The Tasmanian Electorial Commission Preference Count