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Tasmania

Environmentalism, Lies and Minority Government

John Biggs, March 2010

Around the turn of the twentieth century, writers and photographers such as J.W. Beattie and Frank Hurley celebrated Tasmania’s natural beauty, seeing it as there to be experienced and treated with respect, not to be exploited and destroyed for economic return. The flooding of Lake Pedder transformed a general concern over the environment to environmentalism, a political movement that supported a view of man’s relationship to the environment that was different to the exploitative view of nature that was then held by the major parties (and still is).

Pedder was also where the Tasmanian propensity for violence became the powerful electric surge that crackled dangerously across the political gap created by environmentalism, resulting in the death of Brenda Hean. It surged again during the Franklin campaign, at Farmhouse Creek in the South West when a logging contractor produced a shot gun and fired at Bob Brown. At that same demonstration, Brown was set upon by a group of timber workers who beat him into the ground, while police stood by watching, under orders not to intervene in the event of violence. And most recently, in the Upper Florentine, logging contractors, screaming obscenities, attacked a car with a sledgehammer while two protestors clung on inside. The car was trashed, one protestor dragged out and kicked, as recorded in a terrifying video that was placed on the Mercury website.[1] Forestry Tasmanian’s response was for more police to stop the demonstrators, a plea echoed by Premier Bartlett. He deplored violence, he said, but he blamed the protestors for preventing workers from going about their legitimate business. As Peter Timms wrote, this is “the same argument put by the rapist: ‘It’s all her fault, your honour. She provoked me.’” (Letters, Mercury, 28th October, 2008).

he timber contractors, having been locked into massive debt for their expensive equipment, are passionate about their right to go about their living. Others are passionate about the irreversible damage being done to Tasmania’s most precious asset, our old growth forests. Both have reason to be angry; the blame lies not in the loggers, or in the protesters, but in government. Neither major party sees, or will admit, that the violence they affect to deplore is the direct result of their policies.

Both major parties support plundering our old-growth forests because their thinking is in a rut. As Greg Buckman put it, “the state needs to replace a twentieth century factory-led, development mindset with a twenty first century mindset that focuses on the development of small businesses and services. (Tasmania’s Wilderness Battles, A & U, 2008, p.226).

Unfortunately, the “factory-led” mindset has become entrenched in our culture through vested interests, greed, stubbornness and puerile whatever-it-takes macho-politics. No influential politician in the major parties has either the wit or the inclination to see that clever development in the twenty first century needs a new political paradigm, a rethink that embraces the needs of all, not just the wishes of the rich and powerful, and advocates a sustainable economic model in a world of diminishing non-renewable resources.

It needn’t be a matter of development versus the environment. It has been structured that way precisely to create confrontational politics in which the most powerful will win. Division is poison to a community, and backing one side of the divide against the other is virtually to sanction civil war. Unfortunately, creating division has become one of the mechanisms of political survival for the two major parties.

Antonio Gramsci used the term “cultural hegemony” to describe how people allow themselves to vote in, and then allow themselves to be exploited by, politicians. [2] It depends on the distinction between “common” sense and “good” sense. It might seem like common sense that the stock market should grow each year. If it didn’t, all sorts of terrible things would happen, not only for society as a whole but, closer to home, for retirees’ superannuation and pension funds. However, untrammelled growth, particularly when based on the extraction of nonrenewable resources, cannot in the long term be good sense – even if my generations escapes the consequences, it would be catastrophic for our grandchildren to live in a society that has been drained of all those commodities that make society run. I’m not referring here to climate change, which makes matters considerably worse, but to the simple fact that nonrenewables are by definition no magic pudding that recreates itself as you cut slices off it. Currently both major parties are legislating for the benefit of quick returns to already immensely rich companies at the expense of irreparable damage to the environment and against the wishes and the long term interests of ordinary people. Labor and Liberal governments can’t be doing this only because of corporate contributions to party funds, although that no doubt is a tasty incentive.

A deeper reason must be because either they cannot or will not entertain more sensible alternatives. Too much is at stake – and not only for the super funds that various governments have forced people to commit to. Shifting from an extractive, factory-led model to a sustainable model of production is easily possible but government and industrial infrastructure is tied to the extractive model – witness the coal industry’s hysteria at the thought of shifting to renewable energy sources, and the Rudd government’s response by rewarding the worst polluters.

An environmentally sustainable economic and industrial model is anathema to the status quo, to which both parties are committed. We see this very clearly here in Tasmania where the message is hammered home that the status quo is common sense, with which all clear-thinking citizens would agree. Those who don’t agree are the lunatic fringe, the far left crazies – never mind that what they are saying may well be good sense. A case made against forestry practices is “a Green stunt”, code for “no sensible person should give it a moment’s consideration.” Greens are slapped with emotive labels such as “eco-terrorists”, as used by Minister David Llewellyn to refer to a small group of protesters who closed Gunns’ Triabunna wood-chipping operation for a day. This was thoughtless and irresponsible of Llewellyn, given the draconian Federal anti-terrorist legislation.

In May, 2009, under heavy questioning from the Greens, Llewellyn finally admitted in Parliament that Hobart’s water supply was contaminated by the carcinogen atrazine – but “just a tiny blip” – at which, on cue, Health Minister Lara Giddings accused the Greens of “blatant scaremongering”. So if anyone is concerned about drinking Hobart’s water, it’s all the fault of those mischievous Greens. This was a message repeated almost verbatim by David Bartlett, who dismissed Alison Bleaney’s concerns about the St Helens water supply as “completely false” and that she was “leading a Green charge” during an election campaign. Such is this government’s commitment to untrammelled forestry operations even though people’s health and even their lives might be at stake.

When in August, 2008, Kim Booth brought a bill before Parliament repealing the Pulp Mill Assessment Act and the appalling Clause 11 that protected Gunns and government from litigation if anything went wrong. Here was the opportunity for the many politicians who had criticised Lennon’s trashing of the RPDC process to rectify matters, to show that they had meant what they had said. Many people urged a conscience vote, but party discipline was imposed by both Labor and Liberals. No breaking of ranks this time – the previously admirable Lisa Singh voted for what she had previously put her career on the line to avoid voting for. Lennon’s critics could have kept themselves honest by repealing the old PMAA, then putting new legislation in place that reinstated due process, for example by referring the mill proposal back to the RPDC. But they didn’t. If they had, and had the mill undergone a proper assessment, it is even possible the mill would be up and running by now but trashing a Green proposal was regarded as more important than good sense, let alone honest dealing.

These examples of cultural hegemony explain a familiar but puzzling feature of Tasmanian politics. A majority of Tasmanians would surely agree that the government should increase spending on health, public education and public transport; support small business and farmers before giant corporations; engage in greater public consultation and transparency; legislate on the grounds of social justice not corporate convenience; fix the forestry industry and make it more environmentally sustainable. Yet many would never vote for the political party that stood for those things because these issues distinguish the Greens from the two major parties. Yet name-calling and assertions about Green policy, no matter how absurd, have their effect. What sensible citizen would vote for loony lefties who would legalise all hard drugs, give the state’s worst criminals the vote, drain Lake Pedder and thereby shut down one third of the state’s electricity supply, and whatever other superfluity of naughtiness?

All lies, but thus do the strategies of cultural hegemony make people vote against their own wishes, their own interests, and their own good sense.
The commonality between the two major parties exists because the major powerbrokers in the timber, hospitality and other industries play the major parties against each other in the same game. The result is that politicians of both sides commit to commercial interests rather than to the general public interest. Even the Mercury agrees:

With an eye to the anti-Green powerbrokers, Mr. Bartlett must woo disgruntled Labor voters upset (that) the party is too cosy with big business … but stray too far from the interests of big business and it is possible he could face similar internal conflicts that saw premier Doug Lowe stabbed in the back by colleagues in 1981. (Editorial, Mercury, 13th September, 2008).

As if to illustrate that very point, I suggested to a senior Liberal at a social function: ‘If the Liberals agreed to halt clear-felling old-growth forests, then come the 2010 election you’ll be in like Flynn.’

‘I hear what you’re saying, John, but sorry. It’s locked in.’ He smiled and waved me on my way.

I took that to mean that the Liberals would still, as in Bob Cheeks’ time, rather lose an election over an issue wanted by a majority of those who voted them in, than get offside with the timber powerbrokers.

The all-but-total policy overlap between the two major parties is not based on brotherly love. Rather, they have both have been bought out by the same powerbrokers, committing them to the same outdated paradigm. When the differences between parties are not based on policy, party preference becomes a personality contest, a bitter competition between the leaders to see which personality appeals most to the electorate and which one the powerbrokers see as the more effective in implementing their interests. Thus the two parties spar for attention like Tasmanian devils snarling over a rotting carcase. However, both hate the Greens even more than they hate each other because the Greens are a threat to the two party system itself – and to the rewards of cutting deals with the world of big business.

Liberal ex-premier Robin Gray proposed in May 2009 that as there was so little difference between the Labor and Liberal parties, they should form a coalition and put paid once and for all to those pesky Greens and any chances of minority government. Gray’s proposition, given his long association with Gunns, suggests that the ploy is all about a clear run for untrammelled forestry operations and any other developments that powerbrokers like Gray want to put in place. And how easy that would be under the new planning system, which in May 2009 the Liberals supported, that in effect makes the fast-tracking of the pulp mill standard procedure! The last thing all this is about is the public interest.

When both major parties stand for much the same thing, it cannot be in the public interest. A Lib-Lab accord after the 2010 election would be a disaster for democracy, with corporate interests completely smothering the public interest. An important way of avoiding this is for more candidates to stand who do represent the public interest; the very thing that Robin Gray – and with him now, Tony Rundle, Michael Field and Paul Lennon [3] – are trying to prevent. At the present time, the only viable candidates who do that are the Greens and Independents such as Andrew Wilkie, the intelligence officer who blew the whistle on the quality of intelligence used to justify Australia’s involvement in Iraq. Minority parties and courageous Independents holding the balance of power in a minority government increase dialogue and negotiation, they force government to take more views into account and thus to encourage thoughtfulness in policy-making.

Thoughtfulness and accommodation is what this state so badly needs, not a caucus serving sectional interest and imposing its will through force of numbers.

[1] http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2008/10/22/34071_tasmania-news.html
[2] Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992.
[3] “Old Foes Unite on Poll Fear: Former premiers’ warning on minority government”, Lead article, The Mercury 13th March, 2010.

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