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February 15, 2010
I came out of walking in the Franklin-Gordon National Park in South West Tasmania to find the newspapers in the Queenstown IGA supermarket saying that the Tasmanian state election had been called for March 20. The commentary said that the contest will be close, bitter and dirty---"tight and brusing" they called it. As is to be expected, there was no mention of the policy issues that divide the Labor and Liberal parties in the local media. Are there any for a state whose economy has been based on its natural resource development and hydro industrialization?
Bartlett-led Labor is carrying old baggage from the 10 years of Labor rule in the state and particularly the four years of sleaze under Paul Lennon, who so corrupted the democratic process of governance in order to fast track the Gunns pulp mill in the Tamar valley. The Gunn's pulp mill continues to cause grief, with Labor under Bartlett still unsure whether to back or back away from it. To counter the "It's Time for change" mood, and the dislike of the corrupt culture of old Labor, they are reinventing themselves as the right part party for a more modern, positive Tasmania in a global economy to prevent the loses blowing out to 5 seats.
What do the policy-lite Hodgman-led Liberals stand for, as they try to end a 12-year political wilderness? They promise a new government of openness and honesty, but they are slippery when dragged off script onto tricky, controversial subjects. More environmentally unfriendly pulp mills? More logging of the old growth forests? More mining indifferent to the environmental consequences? It's hard to say. They talk about "two futures" for Tasmania, but as policy doesn't seem to be their thing, the "Two futures" scenario simply refers to Liberal and Labor. Is there much of a difference between Labor and Liberal around the development of Tasmania?
Labor need lose just two seats to lose its majority (14 seats in 25), and, as it is highly unlikely that the Liberals will increase the 7 to gain a majority (13 seats), it is more likely that Labor will be a minority government forming a formal power-sharing deal with the Greens. The issue of minority government is ever-present and old Labor will not like that prospect. Their scare campaign is that the basket-case economy of the late 1980s to mid-90s was caused by minority government.
One scenario is that the protest vote will be parked with the Greens, denying the Liberals enough seats to steal government and allowing Labor to govern in minority. However, both Hodgman and Bartlett have ruled out forming a coalition or formal power-sharing deal with the Greens, as Labor did in 1989, should they fail to win a majority. If they don't win a majority what then?
Tasmania has been at a development cross roads ever since the High Court’s decision to terminate the Franklin Dam project. That meant Tasmania lost its development mainspring---hydro-industrialisation. Since 1983 there have been repeated battles over specific projects, usually with environmental concerns at their centre, with little coherent new direction to create new platforms for innovation that replace that of hydro industrialization. The image of Tasmania as a basket economy is due to the policy failure to develop a new innovation platform that can build a diverse export-oriented economy by generating value-added growth.
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It's struck me how parallel the situation is SA is to other states.
Tasmania, NSW, Victoria, Queensland, WA, NT: all are encumbered with the same dysfunctional politics.
The Liberals still remain distrusted and rightly so, and electors instead put back in governments as contemptible as those of Iemma and Lennon.
To show that the trend is no acident, then Bligh Labor gets back in on a solemn promise of no more privatisation and neoliberalism, and promptly embarks on a grotesque fire sale of assets that some economists (eg Quiggin) regard as being totally uneccessary and unproductive.
Who can you trust?