Labor-Liberal amalgamation: Tasmania’s future?

That is the political context in Tasmania (and elsewhere in Australia, as exemplified by the Greens’ success in the single-member seat of Fremantle - a Labor stronghold since 1924) of Robin Gray’s call for a joining of the Labor-Liberal accord in a more formal arrangement, and it is a call to push all social-environmental-economic considerations away in the interests of one predominant driver in the way our land, water and air are used and abused, and the one predominant driver in the way huge amounts of public funds are misdirected, misused and wasted.

This is no way for Tasmania to move into the future, whether urged by Robin Gray or Michael Field. This is the way to create the next exodus of our youth, large segments of our workforce and those who would seek something better for their families.

It is not a merger of Labor-Liberal that holds the promise for a better Tasmania. It is their transformation or their replacement that is required.

We are living in a time when the ecological and the social are two faces of the same dilemma, and to deny that is to merely strengthen the system of power which has no other objective than to maintain the status quo of its privileges, the inequitable distribution of wealth, social division and a trap of rust-belt decline.

Herve Kempf, a senior journalist with Le Monde, France’s most influential daily newspaper, wrote this in 2007 in relation to the important issues we need to come to grips with in Tasmania if we are to restore proper standards of governance, proper political representation of people, and proper democratic processes as the basis of our future policy development:

The compromise with free-market fundamentalism has led the left to so totally adopt the values of free-market liberalism that it no longer dares - except in the most cautious terms - to deplore social inequality. On top of that the left displays an almost cartoonish refusal to engross itself in environmental issues. The left remains pickled in the idea of progress as it was conceived in the 19th century … and intones the chant of economic growth without the slightest trace of critical thinking. Moreover “social capitalism” rather than “social democracy” is the more apposite term. Nevertheless, can the challenges of the 21st century be addressed by the currents of tradition other than the ones which identified inequality as its primary motive for revolt? This hiatus is at the heart of political life. The left will be reborn by uniting the causes of inequality and the environment …

Robin Gray’s call should serve as a question to Tasmanians to ask what Labor-Liberal means in policy terms, and in the way in which public funds should be distributed in the public interest.

Gray’s call should also serve as a question about the purposes of parliamentary processes in Tasmania under a Labor-Liberal accord, given that under the current administration one of those purposes is a tactical one which has systematically abused and undermined democratic conventions for personal and partisan self interest. This is not even worth a debate. It is a truism.

It is time for all Tasmanians who believe our collective future should hold something better than a progressively weakened democracy, and a political party system that cannot be trusted to respect, value and protect the fundamental social needs of its citizens, to work to ensure that the 2010 election prevents these circumstances being allowed to continue.

Otherwise, as has happened so often in Tasmania’s past, Tasmania will be a good place to leave, and a good place to stay away from.