WHAT a bag of post-election political wonders turned up in The Mercury on April Fool’s Day!

Tony Cutcliffe of the Melbourne based forum, Eureka Project, saw Paul Lennon’s victory as a role model for other states. Here was, said Tony, a “conviction” politician who stood his ground on forestry management, community development (huh? I missed that one) and meaningful Aboriginal reconciliation (ah yes, Paul did mention that).

Lennon’s victory, Tony claims, was “a sure sign that voters will respond intelligently to priorities other than wealth accumulation.” (Inside Story, p. 5).

How odd. I saw something completely different from where I stood in Hobart while Tony was observing from Melbourne. I saw that Lennon’s strategy had an awful lot to do with wealth accumulation.

It was in outline identical to Howard’s strategy in the last Federal election. Beat the fear drum (in Lennon’s case it was the fear that if the Greens held the balance of power your house would lose 25% of its value); throw money at all the targets that might influence voters; and “Look how well the economy is doing. Trust me!” For a cashed-up incumbent government, it’s a strategy that never seems to fail.

Conspiracies everywhere

There was a lot of talk in Wayne Crawford’s article (p. 32) about how the Greens saw “conspiracies” everywhere. Well, I suppose it depends on how you define “conspiracy”. Am I seeing a conspiracy between the Bacon-Lennon Government and big business if I note the following?

• Federal Hotel’s monopoly on gaming machines was extended for another twenty years — and the appropriate fees, said to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, were waived.
• Federal Hotels now hold a virtual monopoly in the tourism business.
• Sunday trading was rammed through because Woolworths in particular wanted it, thereby sending many local small businesses to the wall.
• PBL was allowed to give us Betfair, the last thing this gambling obsessed State needs.
• private development is allowed inside National Parks, contrary to legislation.
• Walker Corporation was given open slather on the absurd Ralphs Bay development. It was Walker who withdrew in the face of huge public opposition, not the Government.
• Gunns seems to get whatever it wants. Publicly owned timber is sold for less than its value (compare Gunns’ profits with Forestry Tasmania’s); FOI and environmental and species protection legislation is waived; access roads to forests Gunns wants to log are constructed with public money, and public money funds propaganda for Gunns’ new pulp mill.

When ‘mistakes’ are made, such as spraying the Carpenter’s water supply in October 2004, the Minister responsible, Steve Kons, instead of investigating what happened and apologising, publicly jeered at the Carpenters on the front page of The Mercury, drinking from a glass said to contain contaminated water from the Carpenter’s water tank. Has Ministerial behaviour ever sunk quite as low as that before?

These are facts, not conspiracies

These are facts that can be verified, they are not conspiracies. In each case we see large corporations being favoured against the interests of ordinary Tasmanians.

And the so-called house of accountability, the Legislative Council, lets it all happen. There had been a lively debate a few days earlier in The Mercury about whether the Legislative Council should be abolished. Many pointed out — especially prospective Legislative Councillors — that the upper house was a necessary place of review, it held the lower house accountable, it protected us from legislation that was not in the public interest or that was made by a majority government ramming legislation through with minimal debate, as had happened time and time again on issues such as those I’ve listed above.

Why waste time debating an issue if you have the numbers anyway? So the Lennon Government stifles debate, preferring to hurl insults at those who seek it. And what does our watchdog the Legislative Council do? Wag its tail. Some token debate on Betfair, but sure Paul, we’ll let it through for you, no worries, mate. Now give us a pat.

Here was a situation just made for the Greens. Call it conspiracy theory or not, the fact remains that things that shouldn’t have been passed were being passed through Parliament, and with minimal debate. The initial support for the Greens, in Denison reaching 30% (more than the Liberals), showed that people were concerned about this state of affairs. The Greens should have got their six seats easily.

Given our lack of legislation on electoral funding, it should have been entirely expected that the mega-wealthy would mount a whatever-it-takes campaign to prevent the Greens from spoiling their cosy relationship with the Government. While the Greens could have had a properly worked out reply at the ready, pointing out where their position was being misrepresented, that isn’t the only reason why the Greens didn’t do as well as earlier indicated.

An extraordinary miscalculation

Sue Neales reports that “Labor crowed with delight when she (Peg Putt) refused to rule out ever blocking supply” (p. 32). That was one of several serious tactical errors in the campaign outlined in Sue’s article. She also explains what those mistakes were and why they harmed the Greens. An extraordinary miscalculation was that they saved their very well worked out forestry policy until the very end — repeating exactly the same mistake that Latham had made in the Federal election.

But “Peg Putt will not countenance that any tactical mistakes she made during the campaign nearly cost the Greens half their political representation” (p. 32). Sadly, that means that those and similar errors of judgment are likely to be repeated next time round. The Greens need to do some serious soul-searching.

So with Labor claiming that its cosy relationships with the big corporations have been endorsed, the Greens shooting themselves in the foot and pretending it doesn’t hurt, and the Liberals struggling to rebuild after two train wrecks, it’s going to be status quo for a long time yet.

And the Melbourne-based Tony Cutcliffe sees Tasmanian politics, and Paul Lennon’s in particular, as a role model for other states! He should come over here and see what’s really going on.

John Biggs is a writer based in Hobart.