Report card
on the environment
TASMANIA’S natural environment is being trashed unmercifully. That’s why — in my report card on the environmental performance of the three major Tasmanian parties during the Liberals’ seven years in power — Premier Peter Gutwein’s team scores a miserable D-minus. Yes, a dismal fail.
The Liberals cynically tried to reignite the woodchip wars by reneging on a peace deal forged between government, industry, environmentalists and unions, and encouraging the burning and felling of large tracts of land previously protected from logging. Ripping up the peace deal was one of the first acts of the Liberals under premier Will Hodgman.
However, the deeper tragedy is that tearing up the deal was about polarising debate and politically wedging Labor and the Greens more than business or job concerns.
The Liberals’ fervent assault on forests effectively hit the mute button on Labor, which found itself wedged because if it dared raise environmental concerns, it risked losing traditional working-class voters, especially in Bass, Braddon and Lyons.
There are those in Labor who see the forest carnage for what it is, plenty do, but feel they have to stay quiet on behalf of the political team because speaking out would be political suicide. As such, disenchanted traditional Labor voters will at the May 1 state election leak to the
Greens and independents, especially in Clark, but also in Franklin and Lyons.
That’s why Labor also cops a D-minus for its performance on the environment. Labor, which struggled valiantly for the peace deal, has since gone quiet when it knows it should speak up in defence of this island’s natural landscape.
There are Liberals, too, who can see the wood for the trees. The Premier, early in his political career, dared question old-growth logging before being brought to heel by party powerbrokers who discreetly pointed out the line in the sand on the environment.
It’s not that our MPs are stupid or poorly educated or blind, in fact many of them are very well educated, intelligent and impressive individuals.
Sadly, that intelligence is surrendered by Liberal and Labor MPs when they join the political cut and thrust, and enter the fray of a “divide and conquer” game that has been played for five or six decades.
The keepers of the rules of this game are faceless advisers.
Tasmanians have been played like pawns for more than 50 years in a political game that unceasingly pits environmental concerns against jobs, and demonises any with concerns as greenies, dole bludgers, no-hopers, blowins, NIMBYs and outsiders.
As a cub reporter, one of the first things you notice covering green protest rallies in Tasmania is the protesters are, in the main, everyday Tasmanians, and in no sense radical or extreme: gentle little old ladies, retiree librarians and newsagents, teens, mums and dads, aunts and uncles.
Tasmanian bankers, real estate agents and car salesmen can, and do, have concerns — anything from why it’s so hard to catch a decent flathead to worries about cliffs collapsing from coastal erosion and the threat of bushfires and floods.
The call for expressions of interest to develop projects in national parks and reserves by Liberals is a sickening example of the cynical use of social division for political gain.
The premise the expressions of interest process is based on — that a project has to be in a park or reserve to be considered — is perverted. The land is in the reserve to be protected.
This wedge game is a proven tactic to deliver power to one or other major party.
And, as long as those playing the game surround themselves with sycophants who don’t question the glaring ethical duplicity, they seem to be able to live with themselves. Chauffeur-driven cars, perks and privileges must help too.
WHAT’S happened in plain sight in Tasmania’s forests in the past seven years is a big concern, but it pales compared to the ruin going on under the waves off our coast.
Giant kelp forests once spread luxuriantly down the East Coast, with plants as tall as 40m and canopies to filter sunlight to create havens for myriad sea creatures.
The East Coast, however, is a global warming hotspot, with sea temperatures rising at four times the global average. As a result kelp is dying. Less than 5 per cent of the East Coast forest remains. It’s carnage.
The Liberals, at state and federal level, have failed on climate change. They have done little to cut greenhouse gases or to prepare for when ecosystems like giant kelp forests collapse. This mother of all issues has seen off a handful of prime ministers and divided both major parties.
Last month, the Australian Academy of Science released The Risks to Australia of a 3C Warmer World report. It says that “if Australia is to avoid potentially insurmountable challenges to its cities, ecosystems, industries and food and health systems” the world must reach net zero emissions by 2050 at an “absolute minimum”.
Pro Vice-Chancellor at Macquarie University Lesley Hughes said most species can’t evolve fast enough to cope with the rising temperature or frequency of storms and fires.
“The unprecedented bushfire season in 2019–20 and the mass dying of corals on the Great Barrier Reef demonstrate how rapidly and fundamentally our global environment is changing with only 1.1C of global warming,” said Prof Hughes.
“It’s not too late to avoid 3C. We should still be aiming for a stable global temperature below 2C but to get to that point, we must reduce emissions very rapidly, in particular accelerating the energy transition in the next decade.”
Mr Gutwein, to his credit, created a climate portfolio and took it on himself, but he has said little other than to spruik Bell Bay as a hub for hydrogen made with renewable energy for use in manufacturing green steel. This is a bright light for the Liberals’ environmental performance because the Australian steel industry is set to go green, and converting the diesel engines of freight ships to hydrogen could be one of the most significant and straightforward steps to cut emissions at a global level.
Beyond green hydrogen, the Gutwein government has brushed off environmental concerns, including the continual complaints about the dramatic expansion of salmon farming. And Labor has virtually fallen in with the Liberals’ almost unconditional support for the industry.
The farms have grown rapidly under the Liberals and so too has local outcry. The release this week of Richard Flanagan’s Toxic: The Rotting Underbelly of the Tasmanian Salmon Industry underlines some of those concerns.
The Greens advocate loudly on behalf of the environment, and for that they deserve credit, but when it comes to achieving anything as a negotiating minor party in parliament they tend to do better in areas other than the environment, where Labor can come to the party without losing face.
For that reason, I give the Greens a C for performance on the environment, with the comment “tries hard, but ineffective on urgent issues that deserve to be at the front of parliament’s consideration and government policies”.
The Greens advocacy is admirable, but the existence of a greens party contributes to the party politicalisation of our natural environment, where it is actually a concern for all political leanings, Left, Right or Centre. If you are conservative in your beliefs about marriage and gender, but feel more needs to be done for our environment, you have nowhere to go.
The Greens party has also, through no fault of its own, become a prerequisite for the cynical 50-year “divide and conquer” power game played between Labor and the Liberals.
There was widespread hope the pandemic lockdown had renewed Tasmanians’ appreciation of their island. While the rest of world raged, our blissful state provided all we required, and more, for meaningful contented lives.
Stuffed full of Christmas crayfish that the Chinese government market had shunned, we saw life again without the flow of visitors from airports and cruise ships.
There was a shared sense that we needed to care for our home a little more and not rip out its guts for a quick buck.
There were calls for a reset and a re-evaluation, and at the heart of it was love and care for our bountiful island home and the Tasmanian way of life.