CHARLES WOOLEY

Ikeep reading opinion polls but no one has ever asked for my opinion, so this week I conducted a poll of my own. I polled myself as an average half-informed, disillusioned and bemused enrolled person in the seat of Denison. In this exclusive TasWeekend poll, I asked myself how I felt about the mood of the Tasmanian electorate. I replied: “I know too well what a fractious and argumentative lot we are, but I don’t remember a time when there were so many issues to dispute. Cable cars. Fish farms. Forest wars. Asian hotel towers. Hospital queues. Traffic jams, Susan Neill-Fraser and TasWater, to name just a few. They all have the potential to undermine the Government – but it has happened on their watch, so fair enough.” How do you feel about the cable car? “Opinion polling shows that the further from kunanyi/Mt Wellington you live, the more in favour of the project you are. Similarly with the Fragrance Tower. They like it in Launceston, mainly – I suspect – because it’s in Hobart.

“The Libs have embraced the cable car. It’s their baby, but I am surprised how much local opposition I am hearing to this aerial version of the Franklin River Dam. I don’t much like it. It is going to be a potent ‘NIMBY’ election issue here in River City because, unlike the Franklin River, it actually is ‘in my backyard’.”

Labor is cagey-neutral about the cable car and other issues. It doesn’t want to be branded “anti-progress”. Premier Will Hodgman loves the cable car but has expressed a lack of enthusiasm for Mr Koh’s monster tower. Yet he will still get the blame if the tower gets approval before the next election. So is that fair, I asked myself?

“No it’s not fair,” I conceded. “Hodgman has governed us in the best economic times we can remember. He has a strong team and probably deserves another term.” Then, because polling is usually so dry, I laid on the metaphors for a better read.

“None of these many political brushfires individually are enough to destroy the Government, but on a combined fire front and fanned by the winds of discontent I think the blaze might do great damage.”

We know governments normally retain or lose power by just a tiny percentage of the votes cast. To lose a few thousand votes on a minority political issue such as the incarceration of Neill-Fraser won’t bring down the Government.

To lose many thousands of votes in a number of electorates over the vexed issue of fish farming won’t bring down the Government. Nor will a few thousand votes against the cable car. Likewise, the ridiculously constricted traffic flow in our tiny town might only cause a couple of thousand frustrated voters to express their annoyance.

Do you prefer the Opposition’s policies on these issues?

“Not really. Like most people, I don’t even know for sure where the Opposition stands on most of these issues. They expressed outrage about long hospital queues, but I missed the bit where they told me how they would fix it. It’s probably my fault for being a dumb uninformed voter.”

How do you feel about the Government taking over TasWater?

“Never touch the stuff, but up at Bronte Park, as in too many Tassie townships, we are on a boil alert. I’m only a ‘shackie’ so my opinion, on the Michael Kent scale, doesn’t count. But maybe they could fix it without beating up the council. It’s never a good idea politically to take on local governments.”

There are 29 local governments in this state and probably thousands of votes in it if you count all the councillors and their families and friends. Thousands more votes if all those local identities decide to campaign against a “bullying” central Government. With five far-flung electorates, each with five members, everything here is parochial. You forget that at your political peril.

Nationally, the tide is running against the Liberals everywhere. Only New South Wales and Tasmania are still blue on the map and, federally, despite Bill Shorten’s personal unpopularity, Labor would have won an election held last weekend.

Apart from calling Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull “weak” and promising to tax the rich, Shorten isn’t too forthcoming about what he stands for. Still, that approach seems to be working – and it might work well here for Labor’s Rebecca White, who is already more popular than the premier.

If an election were held next Saturday, would you vote for her?

“She seems like a nice, decent person and not like a politician,” I told my pollster self. “I can’t really say yet what policies she stands for, but I do like her. She’s an attractive fresh face and maybe that’s what people want in these discordant times.”

Then, because I am exactly the kind of stupid, uninformed, vapid elector in whose fickle hands lies the future of our tiny inbred democracy, I undermined the authority of my own opinion poll with this: “But I do know the Hodgman family. Will is a great bloke. The kids are nice and his wife Nicky is fabulous and really smart. Does that spoil your opinion poll if I say that?”