Wooley: Could the age of the Laborials finally be over?
Tassie voters are waiting to see if the political eclipse will plunge us into darkness or into a brighter, hopeful world, writes Charles Wooley.
Opinion
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This week while millions of Earthlings across North America watched as the Moon completely covered the Sun, in some locations for more than four minutes, down in Tasmania we were watching a different eclipse; the partial eclipse of party politics.
A solar eclipse is totally predictable. A political eclipse might be totally deserved but until it happens it cannot be reliably predicted.
And the question now to be answered in our tiny spot on the planet is have we been plunged into political darkness, or have we emerged into a brighter and more hopeful world?
Experience warns me against optimism, but could we be emerging from a political Dark Age into a world of negotiated reasonability?
Could the age of despotic power sharing by the so-called “Laborials” be over? A third of you rejected the two-party tyranny for something quite different.
All my reporting life the major parties have threatened voters that the sun would never shine again if they had the temerity to vote for anyone but one of them.
How much things have altered can be measured by the change of language from Premier Jeremy Rockliff at the declaration of the polls this week.
Before you voted, he warned of the vital need for “strong stable majority government”. But with the political cards having been dealt, he is now talking about forming a “co-operative and collaborative” government.
And let’s discard that divisive adjective “minority’.
Now it’s as if the sun has re-emerged from behind the moon and the world is bathed in the warm light of reasonability, co-operation and collaboration.
So far, the three independents seem well motivated and measured folk.
However, the three Jacqui Lambie networkers on the other hand, seem a bit naive and inexperienced. Of course, we don’t really know them yet but so long as they refrain from drinking the Kool Aid from the parliamentary fountain, there was absolutely no reason for
Governor Barbara Baker not to allow Jeremy to form a new government on Thursday.
Since the days of John Kerr, vice-regal figures in Australia follow custom. They haven’t much exercised their own discretionary powers.
And just as well.
Governors in their castles do best when they stick quietly to pouring out champagne and serving canapes rather than rocking the boat.
Some interesting boat rocking this week came from that enduring and most mild mannered of political commentators, Dr Richard Herr from UTAS. He opined that perhaps the Liberals would do better in a coalition with the five Greens.
No, he wasn’t joking. The professor said he was “surprised by the rage” shown by the voters in breaking all precedents to elect 11 crossbenchers to the new parliament. It was as he noted, “more than double any historic levels in the past”.
He didn’t mention the eclipse but obviously he was able to read something dramatic in the political stars. “The only stable arrangement will be with the Greens,” he pronounced.
“As unpalatable as that might appear, the Greens can bring five disciplined members to the table.” Herr further noted that we don’t really know the remainder of the crossbench, which he reckons, “is raw, inexperienced and not necessarily disciplined”.
He was too kind to countenance the possibility that the Jacqui Lambie networkers might become the “Jacqui Jumpers”. That was a joke some Labor members were making this week.
In a way of course the sour joke is on Labor. Having immediately conceded defeat even before they knew the Liberals would achieve only 14 seats, they just didn’t sound like a party that wanted to grasp the responsibility of leadership.
Now that Jeremy Rockliff has signed up the three new JLN members, possibly in blood, a deal to guarantee supply and revenue bills and some stability has been assured.
At least in the short term the public servants will get paid, and governance will bumble along as usual.
The Premier says: “I am confident that this agreement will provide the long-term certainty and stability the Tasmanian people expect.”
In the immortal words of Mandy Rice-Davies (look her up kiddies) who came from a profession as old but not as dishonourable as politics: “Well he would say that wouldn’t he?”
There is a more sanguine Labor view of their apparent too-ready-embrace of defeat on election night.
Labor hopes that this cobbled together Liberal minority government will not last. The party wishes for political chaos followed by the election of a Labor majority and a 12-year rule. It’s that simple. Quite an aspiration for a party that has lost three in a row. That isn’t yet a state record but is well on the way.
But Labor now has a hungry-looking young wolf-warrior prowling the corridors of power. A leader who wants power and, more importantly, really looks like he wants it. That can make all the difference.
I’ll spare you any cliches about a ‘winter of discontent’ but I will stick again with Shakespeare who knew politics better than any writer ever. This quote from the play Julius Caesar might be apposite.
Let me have about me
men that are fat,
Sleek-headed men
and such as sleep o’-nights;
Yond’ Cassius has a lean
and hungry look,
He thinks too much;
such men are dangerous
Charles Wooley is a Tasmania-based journalist
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