TAS: Beauty and the political beast in Tasmania

AAP General News (Australia)
12-18-2001
TAS: Beauty and the political beast in Tasmania

By Don Woolford

HOBART, AAP - Here's Tasmanian Premier Jim Bacon recently, in one of his cosy weekly
radio talks: "I would like to share with you my optimism about the future."

Or Opposition Leader Bob Cheek, at about the same time: "The Bacon government can't
fool all the people all the time ... Tasmania is going backwards."

The remarks, two of many in the same vein, underscore one of Tasmania's problems as
it moves into an election year - a government that relentlessly purveys increasingly thin
good news and visions of a rosy future; an opposition that choruses economic gloom while
offering few ideas for change.

The truth about Australia's most beautiful and poorest state, of course, lies between
these politics-driven extremes.

Tasmania's twin and related scourges are high unemployment and population decline.

Unemployment has edged down, although Mr Bacon's 1998 election campaign target of reaching
the national average by the end of his first term has gone from heroic to impossible.

In the northwest, particularly, it's still awful.

Population decline has lessened, but not stopped.

Worse, it's likely that many who leave are the young and energetic, chasing a brighter
future on the mainland, while those who replace them are older, lured by the beauty and
affordable housing.

Unemployment and ageing have made Tasmania Australia's most welfare dependent state.

Almost everyone has the begging bowl out.

The government, though well enough treated by Canberra, is constantly chasing more
federal money. Mr Bacon's theme is that the island needs a hand-up, not a hand-out, a
distinction that may be lost on Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello.

The hands are out around Tasmania, too. Everyone from organisers of the state's only
international tennis tournament to women's shelters wants help.

When the government does cough up, the opposition complains it's throwing away taxpayers'
money; when the government refuses, it's accused of being mean.

The government rightly insists that an improving economy will create more jobs and
that will automatically stop the population exodus.

But it's happening so slowly. For every little success story there's a failure. The
call centre bonanza has proved largely illusory and Tasmania's biggest private employer,
the Hobart shipbuilder Incat, has had to lay off staff. The mining industry is struggling
with poor world prices.

Mr Bacon, after once saying that Tasmania's future lay in a multitude of little projects
rather than one big bang, is now pinning most of the state's hopes on two huge energy
developments - Basslink, which will link the state to the mainland electricity grid, and
the natural gas pipeline.

These, if they go ahead, as they probably will, will boost jobs during their construction phases.

However, Basslink already is facing growing and potentially costly environmental problems.

But whether, as the government hopes, they will usher in a new industrial age is uncertain.

Mr Bacon likes to compare what's coming to Tasmania's last so-called golden age, the
era of hydro-industrialisation, that transformed the Tasmanian economy in the 1960s. But
it failed to survive the rigours of deregulation and globalisation.

However, it's not all bad. The budget is balanced and debt is being reduced. Exports
are holding up well in a difficult international environment and business confidence remains
reasonable.

Less tangibly, the spirit of the people seems less gloomy than when Labor came to power
in October 1998.

The election doesn't have to be held until the end of 2002, though there is speculation
that Mr Bacon may go in late summer or early autumn.

He will probably be returned, or at the least win more seats than any other party.

After a long period of tension, the Liberals dumped Sue Napier as leader last August
and installed Mr Cheek.

He's brought greater aggression, though of a largely negative kind, to the job. What
he brings to policy is yet to be seen.

The big unknowns are the Greens, who were reduced to a single member, the redoubtable
Peg Putt, after the major parties agreed before the last election to cut the size of the
house to 25 members.

That was intended to cripple the Greens and ensure one of the main players had an outright
majority and it worked, though perhaps at the cost of a parliament so small that it lacks
the critical mass to do its job properly.

The Greens are probably stronger now than in 1998. Bob Brown held his Senate seat with
ease in the last federal election and there's growing anger about a range of forestry
issues, particularly the continued logging of native forests for the doubtful economic
benefit of woodchips.

The Greens could regain the balance of power. Both big parties would hate it and Labor
- after the experience of its accord with the Greens in the early 1990s - might prefer
opposition.

Business, whose confidence soared when a majority government was elected, would hate it too.

But logging is bringing the environment back as a major issue in the state where mainstream
green politics started and with little separating the big parties on the issue, there's
a growing vacuum that only the Greens are likely to fill.

AAP dw/jc/las/br r

KEYWORD: YEARENDER TAS

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