You have let me down, dear Premier

Citizens of the world want to be part of the healing, not part of the destruction

DEAR Jeremy Rockliff, I wrote to you back in April this year, when you were just settling into your job, but you never wrote back! I’ll try not to take it personally; I know you’re a busy man.

In my letter, published in this column, I observed that you and I are quite contemporary, born in the early 1970s, and I urged you to move beyond the politics of Boomerism and conduct your premiership as a representative of Generation X.

X-ers, I reminded you, are resourceful, hardworking, openminded. We were never as cushioned as Boomers. Formed as we were at our particular moment in history, we have no excuse for failing to understand how the world’s fortunes are unfolding, and why. ‘X-ers,’ I wrote to you, “shouldn’t be confused about which side of history is the right one”.

In November, you apologised to victims and survivors of child sexual abuse in Tasmanian government institutions. That was a good apology; your speech writers kept the focus on the ongoing pain of those who suffered, and resisted the temptation to offer excuses. You were strong and sincere on that issue. Your words suggested you know what is needed: for the old and damaging ways to stop, for healing to take place. I liked what I saw.

But now you’ve let me down. Big time. In recent days, I read about your meeting with Chris Oldfield of the Mount Wellington Cableway Company, and about the letter you wrote to him in which you hinted – in a move straight out of the bad, old Tasmanian political playbook – that there are ways of getting around the planning laws that have so far prevented a cable car being built on kunanyi.

Your dangled carrot, voiced by Deputy Premier Michael Ferguson, suggested that the MWCC’s unwelcome intrusion could be named a major project, thus bypassing Hobart City Council assessment, is not the move of a contemporary leader of Tasmania.

Rather, it harks back to the bloody-minded politics of ‘Electric’ Eric Reece, who found a way to drown Lake Pedder, even though that natural gem was ‘protected’ within a National Park. It reminds us of damaging, bulldozering, progress-atall-costs attitude of former premier Robin Gray, who famously described the exquisite Franklin River as, “nothing but a brown leech-ridden ditch”.

Jeremy, your signalling to the MWCC is not the sign of a progressive premier of this state. Rather, it’s an indication that you’re not reading the zeitgeist nearly as well as you should.

The zeitgeist is this: we – the people of Tasmania, the people of Australia, the citizens of the world – are sick to death of damage. We have been on the progress-at-all-costs road for long enough to know exactly where it leads, and we don’t want to go there.

Standing here in the 21st century, we look ahead and see massextinctions and catastrophic climate change staring us in the face; if we turn around, we can see how we got here. Colonisation, industrialisation, the exploitation and destruction of peoples and cultures, the exploitation and destruction of place. That’s how.

We can’t rewind. We can’t fix all of the things we’ve broken. But we can try to fix some of them, and we can do our best not to make things worse.

What we need now is healing, restoration and gentleness. We need to take care, of each other, of what we have left of the natural world. We need to find ways to tread more lightly. We do not need major commercial infrastructure on kunanyi; we do not need to be dragged through this divisive issue again; we do not need a premier – just like those of the past – who’s prepared to ride roughshod over the people in order to satisfy ego and greed.

A cable car on kunanyi is just more of the same. A premier who thinks big, flashy, destructive projects are the answer to our problems is just more of the same. For the love of Tasmania, Jeremy, give us something different!

I suggest you go watch Franklin. The documentary by Kasimir Burgess, framed by the story of Oliver Cassidy paddling down the Franklin River as a tribute to his late activist father, is now available via SBS On Demand. You won’t even need to buy a cinema ticket; you can just sit yourself down in front of the telly, and soak in some zeitgeist for free.

Pay attention to Lisa Yeates. You’ll see her both as a young activist on the river, and again as an older

We have been on the progress-at-all-costs road for long enough to know exactly where it leads, and we don’t want to go there.

woman reflecting on the campaign. Can you feel her kindness, her dignity, her empathy, her compassion? That’s the zeitgeist.

And how about Benny Zable, the campaign’s artist-in-residence, with his trickster energy and forthright message? He’s asking you the same question I am: do you want to be part of the healing, or part of the destruction?

Watch and listen as Jim Everett and Patsy Cameron talk about the Franklin, about Kuta Kina Cave, which would have been inundated if the Franklin River had been dammed. Really listen to them, in particular.

Be creative about the future of kunanyi. It doesn’t have to be a cable car or the status quo. There are other, far more low-impact, ways to move forward.

Talk to the Tasmanian Aboriginal community about how its members see the future of the relationship between people and the mountain. How about sitting down for a chat with Tourism Tasmania’s 2022 Young Achiever Nunami SculthorpeGreen and finding out what she can tell you about the future of tourism in this state? Why not take Hobart Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds up on her invitation to meet and talk about the future of kunanyi?

You’re an X-er, Jeremy. You can be resourceful, open-minded, creative.

You can do better than making grubby little entreaties to Chris Oldfield.

I’m sure you can.

I hope you can.