Gutwein Own-Goal Symbolic of Tasmanian Tribalism

It’s one thing for the Premier to be a card-carrying, tribal bogan in a Best and Less suit, but does he really have to show the rest of the country?

You could be forgiven for thinking this in the previous days as our Leader, faced with the prospect of the Chairman of the Gold Coast Suns coming to Hobart for a match, suggested fans boo him.

All because said Chairman, Tony Cochrane, had commented recently that granting Tasmania an AFL licence would be ‘insanity’ and ‘nuts’.

Apparently unable to come down from high-vis election stunt mode, Gutwein went further and challenged Cochrane to a kicking competition at half time.

Clearly what he has in mind is a pissing competition, but I guess you have to go with what you might get away with in the middle of Bellerive Oval.

Cochrane was having none of it, although relating the potential booing to the treatment of Adam Goodes was a bit over the top.

The ABC described the whole thing as a ‘bizarre feud‘.

Whether you’re a Hatfield or a McCoy, it may not be finished.

The whole thing kicked off when Cochrane told SEN radio in South Australia that if put to a president’s vote, the case for a Tasmanian team would draw no more than three votes in the affirmative.

“At best, there might be someone that moves it as a motion and seconds it,” he said. “It will not get more than three votes out of 18. It will not get up.”

That sounds like an informed insider view to me and one that Peter Gutwein and any Tas-team boosters would do well not to ignore.

Instead of choosing to make a case, to build on the work already done, the Premier has chosen to resort to cheap insults – “I can understand him not being positive on a Tasmanian team…for one, I think we’d flog them.” – and booing.

Now no-one has ever accused the Shiny Gnome of the North of being as fluent a Martin Luther-King or as piercing as Keating, but this was embarrassing even by his and Tasmanian Liberals standards.

Modern professional sporting leagues, of which the AFL is one, are run by overstuffed accountants. In assessing the myriad technical requirements of expansion plans, churlishness and scream-over-the-fence angst are not on the checklist.

Congratulations Peter Gutwein, you just invented the AFL own goal.

Even the paid flogs in the Department of Premier and Cabinet who churn out media releases, sometimes up to fifteen missives a day, seemed embarrassed about how to phrase the Premier’s sentiments on the letterhead of one of the Australian Commonwealth’s founding states. Eventually the statement, word-coded like a Cold War spy message, said:

“This weekend, North Melbourne will play the Gold Coast Suns in Hobart, and today I’m calling on Tasmanians to turn up to send a message loud and clear to the AFL and our detractors that we want our own AFL team.

While there is no doubt the Suns aren’t the most successful team in the AFL, this is a great opportunity to show our passion for the game, and how it’s an integral part of our sporting heritage and lifestyle.

In partnership with the North Melbourne Football Club, who have publicly supported our aspiration to have our own team, and the Mercury Newspaper, there will be a number of incentives to encourage people to turn up and show our support.”

We can leave the Shitboners out of it for now, but the Muckery? Figures. Eager to join in the booing campaign, the newspaper – and one uses that term loosely with regard to any Rupert Murdoch publication – described Cochrane as a ‘party pooper’.

Tasmania has a problem with discourse. Good, healthy, open, sane, adult discourse. Now I’m not suggesting every islander needs to take a degree in philosophy and learn the tao of academic dialogue. I’m suggesting we just generally need to do far better, consistently, in working through differences of opinion.

In many areas of complex and long-running problems we need to explore solutions that work for many, and are implementable and sustainable. Not just dig in, wave the tribal banner and sledge the opposing tribe from across the bog. A fiery William Wallace daubed in woad makes for a decent movie, but it’s not a negotiating strategy for positive and widely-beneficial long-term outcomes. For some reason it’s still a modus operandi in Tasmania, and forever holding us back.

Here consultation is for show only; the real game in town is belting the living daylights out of anyone you don’t agree with. You can do it with flimsy-pretext elections funded by we-don’t-know-who because we don’t have political donations transparency. You can do it with stacked statutory authorities. You can do it with departments cowed into submission, where ‘frank and fearless’ is comic book duo you read about at morning tea for a laugh. You can do it with opaque ‘expression of interest’ processes cloaked in commercial in confidence. You can do it with thugs who harass the voices who speak out against maladministration. You can just ignore evidence and dig in. You can rant and rail across the moat against those who don’t understand us.

But don’t try to help them understand. Don’t explain. Don’t make your case on actual evidence. Just boo, bully and belittle. Be rude, that’s always a great negotiating tactic. Just show everyone how angry you are and that will work.

I wonder where we get it from?

Alan Whykes is Chief Editor of Tasmanian Times.