Deadlines just don't seem to apply to Gunns

The push is on by the corporate-union alliance to get the project going as part of the federal infrastructure spending program. Rudd has already adopted this kind of approach in relation to the car industry, pumping millions of dollars into the Japanese-owned industry. The mantra of “public private partnerships” will be increasingly used by him and his government as the panacea for Australia in more difficult economic times.

Sooner or later this will expose Rudd to the same sort of electoral distrust which finally characterised Howard’s dismal leadership, for it will fly in the face of all his criticisms of the neo-liberalism of the Howard era, a neo-liberalism where “the legitimacy of altruistic values that go beyond direct self-interest” are rejected. But nevertheless, it is within this context that we should not be unprepared for Bartlett to welcome a “federal initiative” to build the pulp mill in the Tamar Valley, and for him to insist that “the line in the sand” does not apply to the intervention by the federal government as part of a national infrastructure plan to help the Australian economy.

As Kenneth Davidson has argued, the danger for all of us is that the great opportunity provided to the Rudd Government for an expansion in infrastructure spending will be squandered in the interests of corporate welfare rather than being driven by a broader vision of Australia’s needs, such as “a whole range of infrastructure investment associated with global warming”.

Bartlett himself has before him in the next two weeks one of the most significant opportunities ever presented to a Tasmanian Premier in the whole period since the island changed its name from Van Diemen’s Land in 1856. He can stand up for the vision he has espoused for a diverse and more sophisticated social and economic environment, and try to earn a real place as a Tasmanian benefactor, or he can capitulate. Capitulation will almost certainly ensure his political oblivion, and will do nothing to diminish social division, environmental degradation and economic uncertainty.

At the national level, if Rudd joins the pulp mill to his list of PPPs he will not be able to hide from the special scorn reserved for true-believers who betray their political principles. For Rudd has been openly scathing of “unrestrained market capitalism which sweeps all before it”, and most recently has labeled the practice of corporate executives receiving huge bonuses even while their companies are being assisted by subsidies and direct public grants, as “extreme capitalism” at its worst.

If Rudd bows to the pressure within the corporate world, the ALP, his own government and the CFMEU, he will forfeit his claim to the values inherent in the social democratic tradition which he says forms the basis of his political beliefs. He will have abandoned the values which he has said “gives social democrats a rich policy terrain in which to define a role for the state”, functions of the state which “have their origins in the view that the market is designed for human beings, not vice versa”.

The next two weeks will determine the future direction of the Bartlett Government. There is no doubt at all that they will determine whether Tasmania is to begin to move beyond the disastrous Lennon years, or to remain mired there for some time yet.