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7 February 2013, 6.56am EST

Obstacles to progress: what’s wrong with Tasmania, really?

9swhtsnk-1359516808 — If Tasmania is broken, maybe it’s because Tasmanians have no reason to fix it. Gary Sauer-Thompson

Is Tasmania at a tipping point? Over the next two weeks The Conversation, in conjunction with Griffith REVIEW and the University of Tasmania, is publishing a series of provocations. Our authors ask where does Tasmania’s future lie? Has it reached a “tipping point”, politically, economically and culturally? Thinkers, writers and doers from Tasmania and beyond, including members of its extensive diaspora, challenge how Tasmania is seen by outsiders and illuminate how Tasmanians see themselves, down home and in the wider world.

Tasmania’s underlying problem is simple but intractable: it has developed a way of life, a mode of doing things, a demographic, a culture and associated economy, that reproduces under-achievement generation after generation.

Everyone knows the problems; they are manifest, reported day after day. The reality is that Tasmania has bred a dominant social coalition that blocks most proposals to improve. Problems and challenges are debated endlessly, with no resolution. Most discussion avoids mention of the uncomfortable truths at the source of under-performance.

Ultimately, Tasmania doesn’t change because its people actually don’t really want to. They don’t need to change because their way of life is financed by the mainland. Far from helping overcome this pattern, the nation’s resource-boom prosperity is enabling and cementing Tasmania’s under-achievement. It’s allowing the government to pay an ever-expanding proportion of the population not to work. It’s driving up wages, materials, transport, regulation, exchange rates, and other costs that make Tasmania’s traditional industries uncompetitive. And it’s allowing government to subsidise non-performing industries.

The result is that Tasmanians face little incentive or pressure to change. Unlike New Zealand, which has no rich big brother and must find ways to earn its own living, Tasmania enjoys a permanent and ongoing transfer from mainland cousins that reinforces failure.

The difficulties are most obvious in the economy. Tasmania’s unemployment rate in October 2012 stood at 7.7%, by comparison to the Australian average of 4.9% – a rate of joblessness more than a third greater. In 2012, the poor performance of the Tasmanian economy was a dominant topic in local public discussion. It felt depressed. Traditional industries, particularly forestry and energy-intensive manufacturing based on hydroelectricity were in sharp decline, while tourism and service sectors were sluggish and appeared unable to pick up the slack.

The fate of the forest-products industry was emblematic of Tasmania’s challenges. Plunging global wood chip prices, rising Australian exchange rates, wages set by booming mining industries, tightening environmental regulation, and internationally effective campaigns by environmentalists, combined to lose customers in high-paying markets such as Japan and Europe and make the industry uncompetitive in growth markets such as China. The industry collapsed as revenue dived and costs spiralled.

Clearly the forestry industry had reached a watershed, and would need to change, or perish. But the industry appeared unable, or unwilling, to change, and most Tasmanian politicians’ response was to deny the need, blame the Greens, or delay the inevitable. The industry, strenuously backed by the Liberal Party and key Labor figures in Tasmania, essentially demanded the “right” to endless public subsidies. Any serious discussion of a new future for the industry was ruled out of bounds, for fear of offering succour to the conservation lobby.

It is important to understand what it is about Tasmanian culture and society that permits such an abrogation of responsibility, a refusal to confront reality.

The evidence suggests that opportunities abound in Tasmania. Economically speaking it should be easy to create these jobs. In fact, Tasmania enjoys natural and human-created advantages that offer sufficient potential to exceed these targets. But potential does not equal achievement, of course. Tasmania’s most important development and growth opportunities are not on track to meet these goals.

All Tasmania’s main fields of opportunity are effectively blocked from realising their true potential. Growth has been curtailed so it cannot even compensate for employment losses stemming from forestry. How the blockages develop, and why they are not removed, is the important issue.

But first the opportunities. My colleagues and I at the Australian Innovation Research Centre recently prepared a report for the Commonwealth Department of Regional Development that identified six main areas of opportunity: wine, dairy, aquaculture, horticulture, mining, and tourism, especially “experiential” tourism related to wilderness and the island’s gourmet products.

Conceptually, good opportunities are those in which a community already has a demonstrated strength and path to greater capability, and which combine strong growth prospects with good wages and wealth-creation potential. It is obviously not desirable for any community to deepen reliance on sectors with low wages, low growth, and weak capabilities.

A quick review reveals that even any one of these sectors alone would offer the potential to close Tasmania’s unemployment gap, if sufficiently harnessed. If Tasmania were to increase its share of Australia’s wine production, for example, from its present 0.5% to equal its share of Australia’s population (just over 2%), that increase alone would create more than two thousand jobs. Technically, such an increase should be straightforward. Tasmania enjoys probably the best climate in Australia for high-value wine production and its wine is in strong demand.

Similarly, in the dairy industry – with arguably the nation’s best natural conditions for milk production – and horticulture, and aquaculture, production and employment could easily double.

But while opportunity is abundant, actual growth is retarded. Two obstacles hold back development across all these sectors. First, all these opportunities involve close interaction with the natural environment – demanding better use of land, water, and sunshine. But change in land use in Australia today almost always requires government approval, and in the context of bitter dispute over environmental issues, approval processes in Tasmania have become highly contested, politicised, and complex.

As a result, approvals for new projects in Tasmania are more uncertain, risky, expensive, and lengthy than elsewhere. And uncertainty, risk, expense, and length are all deterrents to new investment.

Second, all the opportunities require mutual co-dependence between growers and processors and coordinated investment: grape-growers and winemakers; dairy farms and milk dryers or cheese plants; poppy growers and pharmaceutical manufacturers; tree growers, harvesters and forest-product producers; fish farms and seafood manufacturers. Expansion in growing requires expansion of processing, and vice-versa. But with different owners and divergent interests, growing and processing participants are often unwilling to commit ahead of each other, and development-throttling standoffs ensue. Couple that with heightened suspicion between buyers and sellers, politics, and differential rates and forms of return, and what should take months, takes years; what should take years, takes decades.

These are not problems with which “market forces” can readily cope, or which private investors acting alone are like to overcome. Government needs to coordinate and facilitate development or it doesn’t happen. But in Tasmania government tends not to act and the obstacles remain.

I’ve become convinced that the underlying reason for this is that the Tasmanian community actually does not want government to overcome these obstacles – or at least, it does not want it enough to sacrifice existing amenity for those obstacles to be removed. In Tasmania, we’ve arrived at a situation in which if any interest group regards itself as disadvantaged by a development proposal – whether materially or in terms of its values – there is insufficient weight on the pro-development side to push through resistance to change.

The first source of this resistance is demographic. Only a minority of Tasmanian households derive their income from participation in the private sector, and few indeed are dependent on the portion of the private sector traded out of the state. The 2011 census revealed that over a third of Tasmanian households derived their sole or primary source of income from a Commonwealth government payment: old-age pension, disability, supporting parent, and, of course, unemployment.

While the census does not record the proportion of households that derive their income from a government job, almost another third of the Tasmanian economy was made up of public services (health, education, welfare, administration, policing) and government business enterprises. This includes everything from the ports, railroads, shipping, buses, three electricity corporations, forestry establishment, maintenance, and harvesting, gambling, horse racing, motor-accident insurance, irrigation development, and management of tourist and cultural sites.

On top of this, it is estimated that up to 10% work for a private corporation whose sole client is government: road construction, building maintenance, or outsourced government services in the welfare sector.

These numbers suggest that as little as a quarter to a third of Tasmanian households derive their livelihood from the genuine private sector. Of them perhaps a third gain their income from wholesale and retail trade and associated logistics, another third from residential and commercial construction and maintenance. The clients of both these groups depend largely on public-sector incomes, leaving only about 10% of all households making a living from the traded private sector.

Tasmania can afford this lop-sided economy only because for every dollar Tasmanians contribute to the national tax kitty, they receive back $1.58 in benefits and services.

The implication of these statistics is that only a small minority of the Tasmanian population has a direct personal stake in economic development. While most might broadly favour economic development, they will not personally benefit from it.

Not even the tax revenue that ultimately funds their government-derived income originates from Tasmania. Its security is not determined by the performance of the Tasmanian economy. Much more important is the far-away national economy, fuelled by the even-more-distant resource boom. Even without the boom, most government-backed incomes are regarded as solidly secure.

When a particular economic development is proposed and would necessitate some inconvenience or clash with values, which most ultimately do, few Tasmanians have an immediate stake in making a compromise. Little is lost personally by opposing the development or delaying its introduction. If government attempts to expedite the proposal, a large number of Tasmanians will oppose such action as improper. Instances of inconvenience mentioned by opponents of particular projects include more trucks on the road, difficulty finding parking, lights on the horizon from off-shore aquaculture developments visible from the twice-yearly-visited holiday shack, spoiled views of natural features, and, of course, environmental and humanitarian concerns.

All are real concerns. But only a population whose income is independent of the performance of its private businesses will come to privilege such concerns, no matter how minor, above the need to earn a living.

Such economic independence provides fertile ground for the widespread commitment to environmental values and Green politics displayed by the Tasmanian community. Perhaps most importantly, independence from the performance of the private economy provides a weak basis for constructing a constituency for a coherent and agreed economic development strategy.

Progress is made only if no one disagrees.

Demographics and income sources have coalesced to create a specific culture in Tasmania. More accurately, it is two cultures – one of a substantial “underclass”, the other of a smaller, comfortable, government-dependent middle class. The dark side of Tasmania’s enviable emphasis on a laid-back lifestyle is a culture of low aspiration, especially among the under-class.

A recent study undertaken by an educational foundation unearthed the startling conclusion that a large proportion of Tasmanians specified not being educated as an important aspect of a “true Tasmanian”, and even a good person. Educated people were regarded as “less Tasmanian”, and probably worse people, not the sort with whom one would want to enjoy a beer: full of themselves, stuck up, and less reliable. (In addition, some parents don’t encourage their children to become educated for fear education would make them more likely to leave the island.)

In other words, not only did education undermine many Tasmanians’ sense of identity, which they greatly valued, and place them at risk of becoming separated from their community, but education was believed to make them less-likeable people.

One upshot of this finding is that much policy aimed at encouraging young Tasmanians to become better educated was founded on an erroneous assumption: that Tasmanians would want to be better educated if only they could, and their failure to do so must be due to lack of economic means. All policies therefore aim mainly to reduce the economic burden of education.

But if, as this research suggests, the targets of these programs actually believe that education is undesirable, the real focus ought to be cultural change, which is never easy. Wages for unskilled labour, among the world’s highest, make the choice to be uneducated in Tasmania even more feasible and sustainable.

The problem of the underclass is rarely discussed in Tasmania. It’s not even identified as such. We refer to the underclass as “disadvantaged”, as though their circumstances were something imposed from outside, for which the “victims” bear no responsibility. The fact that the Tasmanian underclass is white, not an ethnic minority, helps to make it less visible. Once the issue is defined as “disadvantage”, policy tends to be directed towards providing more resources, to overcome the disadvantage.

But if the source is ultimately cultural, providing more resources risks making the underclass’s under-achieving choices more feasible. The risk is that it reinforces and reproduces the problem.

In reality, that’s what we see in Tasmania. Supporting the underclass is an industry in itself. The mayor of one town hit by the decline of the forestry industry suggested that a refugee centre could be established in his district, which would offer the benefit of attracting more welfare services and boosting the local economy.

For the middle class – in Tasmania a much smaller group than elsewhere – education was seen as desirable, but only to a point. Valued above most other concerns was a modest, comfortable lifestyle, the kind that steady government employment guarantees. The ease with which it had become possible in Tasmania to reach this income level and enjoy material security meant that there was little incentive for more education. The introduction of the goods and services tax and the wave of new tax finance provided to Tasmania had facilitated this culture by driving a mini-boom in the early 2000s as the state government added thousands of new public servants and sharply increased their wages, to reach “parity” with the mainland. Flow-on effects raised housing values and precipitated a retail-consumption spurt.

The final source of blockage and failure to take advantage of opportunity is internal division. With prosperity seen to stem largely from government largesse, development in Tasmania is often regarded as a zero-sum game. If one sector or geographic region gains something, it is seen to come at the expense of someone (or somewhere) else. Hence, all opportunities are greeted with an outbreak of conflict over who should get what, usually between the northern and southern halves of the island. The mayor of Launceston famously stated that it was more important to him that rival Hobart not be the site of any AFL games, for example, than that more were played in his own city.

Challenging this self-reproducing pattern of failure has not proven easy. Because its origins lie so deep in the culture and population mix, change can probably come only from outside. Either the national taxpayer and federal government will declare “enough” – though there’s little sign of this – or Tasmania will be altered by new arrivals seeking opportunity and a better lifestyle.

Some voices within Tasmania do argue that a government-dependent way of life is not sustainable. They believe we can’t go on and will be forced to change. But abundant government finance fuelled by the resources boom and a local demographic and culture that blocks change has rendered that untrue. The ultimate problem is not that Tasmania cannot afford its pattern of failure, but increasingly that it can.

You can read the whole series here.

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58 Comments sorted by

John Newlands

tree changer

The fact that Tasmania does not depend heavily on coal, iron ore and water trading to some extent gives it future proofing. When these activities contract on the mainland Tasmania will have the advantage. For example food production could expand as water use tightens in the Murray Darling Basin, the problem being the cost of freight across Bass Strait.

Measures of wellbeing such as GDP imply the more frenetic the pace the better. Alternative measures could give weight to more compact suburbs and the soothing effect of natural beauty close by. For example few Sydney residents can actually see the harbour. Everywhere in Hobart you just look up to see snow capped Mt Wellington. That has to make up for lower GDP.

4 months ago report
1. Dennis Alexander
  
  logged in via LinkedIn
  
  In reply to John Newlands
  
  OK. First this or an article very like it recently appeared in Crikey.
  Second, Tasmania has plenty of holes in the ground that only become viable during extreme commodity booms: Zeehan; Roseberry; Queenstown; Savage River. It used to have electricity based metals processing but these were priced out of the market. There are residual populations around all of these former glories, but they generally suffer from endemic underemployment and monoskilling. There are many good and well-intentioned people…
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  OK. First this or an article very like it recently appeared in Crikey.
  Second, Tasmania has plenty of holes in the ground that only become viable during extreme commodity booms: Zeehan; Roseberry; Queenstown; Savage River. It used to have electricity based metals processing but these were priced out of the market. There are residual populations around all of these former glories, but they generally suffer from endemic underemployment and monoskilling. There are many good and well-intentioned people in Tasmania: some intend to stay.
  I escaped thirty years ago and for my children's sake, I'm glad I did. As the article states, there is a culture, a glorification, even, of under achievement, anti-education, anti-elitism (even of sport these days) and a cliquiness among both the "ruling oligarchy", North-South, West-East, professions, occupations and sports at every level down to town and suburb that perpetuates this culture with an us vs them mentality impervious to argument or critique.
  
  4 months ago report
Stephanus Cecil Barnard

Town planner and freelance writer at Kalahariozzie

what an insightful article. During my first visit there last year, I was struck by two things, the general friendliness of the people; and the real backwardness of the place outside the two cities. It reminded me of Zambia in the mid 1990's.
I have to disagree with John Newlands, Tasmania is not future proof. Reading the article highlighted how dependant they are on the rest of horrible coal digging, water spilling Australia. Without big brother to the north, Tassie will be in deep trouble. As a tourism destination, it is nice but offers less for more money than NZ, and by the looks of it, any enterprise proposal will be met with resistance anyhow.
I would prefer my tax dollar being spend on fixing real problems, not self made ones by happy lazy people.

4 months ago report
1. Sean Lamb
  
  Science Denier
  
  In reply to Stephanus Cecil Barnard
  
  " It reminded me of Zambia in the mid 1990's. "
  Yes. a lot of visitors to Tasmania remark on the astonishing similarities
  
  4 months ago report
2. Seamus Gardiner
  
  Citizen
  
  In reply to Sean Lamb
  
  I think that Queensland is like Tasmania in the 80s. But with bigger hats.
  
  4 months ago report
3. Stephanus Cecil Barnard
  
  Town planner and freelance writer at Kalahariozzie
  
  In reply to Sean Lamb
  
  so then you have been in Zambia? It has magnificent and diverse landscape and an astonishing richness in animal life, but in the 90's it was poor and backward. Today, it is lifting its people out of dire poverty, and not with the tax money of neighbours. Perhaps you need to swing by Zambia and see what can be done
  
  4 months ago report
4. Sean Lamb
  
  Science Denier
  
  In reply to Stephanus Cecil Barnard
  
  Last time I was in Zambia I had a man in uniform pointing a loaded gun saying he was going to fire if I didn't hand over my documents. It appeared to me this particular gentleman was trying to lift himself out of poverty using the money in my wallet.
  This happens a lot to caravan holiday makers coming off the ferry at Devonport.
  As I said, the similarities between the two places are astonishing.
  
  4 months ago report
Josephine Colahan

Peripatetic traveller

I've been rather amused at this series of articles about Tasmania needing an intervention.

First came the muckraking about convicts and genocide - yes they are a factor in Tasmania's history, but surely no more than anywhere else in Australia (I am re-horrified at each Australian state each time I look at their colonial and post colonial histories - and a look at European domination since the 15th C is an unpretty experience. Jared Diamond's book 'Guns, germs and steel' is an easy although detailed…
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I've been rather amused at this series of articles about Tasmania needing an intervention.

First came the muckraking about convicts and genocide - yes they are a factor in Tasmania's history, but surely no more than anywhere else in Australia (I am re-horrified at each Australian state each time I look at their colonial and post colonial histories - and a look at European domination since the 15th C is an unpretty experience. Jared Diamond's book 'Guns, germs and steel' is an easy although detailed read to put this into perspective, as is Eric R Wolfe's 'Europe and the people without history'). Perhaps as a small state we are better supplied with historical documentation, and have more interested historians for that reason, so that Tasmanian historical culpability is more obvious? Or are these authors simply muckraking?

I'm thinking about the social divisions mentioned in this piece - could we just simplify and talk about Bogans, Greenies, the Diaspora, and Academics?

Somehow I don't think so - I am a Bogan (as much as I can understand what this means - after all I've also been described as a hippy and I never really fit that description either!) regularly eating wild and farmed meat shot and butchered on the farm, and enjoying a 4WD journey through the old tracks that once were major roads linking thriving communities that have disappeared since Tasmania became Commissioned and Corporationed. Many of those old public roads are inaccessible as they have been gated by Gunns (say no more).

I am a Greenie - my travels around Australia and the planet have been an education into the problems of declining fertility and growing populations.

I am one of the huge Diaspora - spending most of my time out of Tasmania but always returning for the joy of this beautiful state and the great people who live here (yes, those bogans and rednecks - the spawn of convicts, sealers, and the remnants of our Indigenous peoples, the spawn of intrepid pioneers risking their fortunes to make their way to this little outpost of the world to build a good life for their family - whose individuality and pride interest and excite me, the environmentalists determined not to have to live in a corporation desert, and the tree and sea changers that value what Tasmania offers as much as what it doesn't) and despairing at the latest rapacity of 'progress'.

And then, also I am an aspiring academic - always interested to know more and to understand what has occurred, where civilisation is now, and what the distant future holds for our species. I don't think I am so different from others Tasmanian born.

So what is the point of these essays? That so many Tasmanians depend on welfare is a function of the Tasmanian Diaspora - they have left Tasmania to pay taxes in the cities and at the mines of other states. Those that stay behind are the small entrepreneurs - yes many depend on welfare, its one way of subsidising new emerging industry, the (growing as elsewhere) aging population is left behind - they too are on welfare or are self funded retirees and provide 'jobs' for others.

So I would suggest that there is nothing wrong with Tasmania, Jonathan West. As you say: wine, dairy, aquaculture, horticulture, mining, and 'wilderness or gourmet experience' tourism are the opportunities. And, as you say "good opportunities are those in which a community already has a demonstrated strength and path to greater capability, and which combine strong growth prospects with good wages and wealth-creation potential". It looks like the small entrepreneurs of Tasmania are already on a viable path and all that is required is subsidies to encourage such small enterprise and for big government to refrain from subsidising big private corporations which were the death of individual Tasmanian enterpreneurs over the past fifty years.

4 months ago report
Sean Lamb

Science Denier

Bash Tasmania week continues apace I see. I hoping for a geneticist to contribute an article about what to do about that extra digit
This:
"Tasmania can afford this lop-sided economy only because for every dollar Tasmanians contribute to the national tax kitty, they receive back $1.58 in benefits and services."
I think refers to the GST carve up, but the GST is only about 50 billion out of total 300 billion tax revenue. Tasmania has an aging population because many young people go to the North…
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Bash Tasmania week continues apace I see. I hoping for a geneticist to contribute an article about what to do about that extra digit
This:
"Tasmania can afford this lop-sided economy only because for every dollar Tasmanians contribute to the national tax kitty, they receive back $1.58 in benefits and services."
I think refers to the GST carve up, but the GST is only about 50 billion out of total 300 billion tax revenue. Tasmania has an aging population because many young people go to the North Island to work, but that doesn't mean that this aging population isn't entitled to the same level of service provision as the rest of Australia - we are, after all, one country.
"My colleagues and I at the Australian Innovation Research Centre recently prepared a report for the Commonwealth Department of Regional Development that identified six main areas of opportunity: wine, dairy, aquaculture, horticulture, mining, and tourism, especially “experiential” tourism related to wilderness and the island’s gourmet products."
What tremendous insight.

4 months ago report
1. Seamus Gardiner
  
  Citizen
  
  In reply to Sean Lamb
  
  Another point is that I am quite happy working 'on the mainland' to provide services to my ageing relatives back home in Tassy.
  This does not detract from the author's many good points about obstacles to progress in the state, but bashing Tassy because of a low and ageing population smacks of churlishness.
  
  4 months ago report
2. Sean Lamb
  
  Science Denier
  
  In reply to Seamus Gardiner
  
  I guess I was just a little taken aback at someone employed by the taxpayer writing a report saying too many Tasmanians are employed by government.
  The areas he identified were hardly rocket science. Maybe I could offer my services to the WA Government and tell them that iron ore mining and exports to China look promising. Or a report to the Queensland government alerting them to the enormous economic potential of tourism in Northern Queensland and the Great Barrier Reef? Perhaps the State Government might look to save money by commissioning less obvious reports.
  The areas identified were all areas were innovators and entrepreneurs have already established industries of some duration now. We don't need to identify those areas of economic activity. We need to identify new or nascent ones
  For example a company M2 has established its call centre support operation in Hobart - probably providing better jobs that seasonal grape picking.
  
  4 months ago report
3. Stephanus Cecil Barnard
  
  Town planner and freelance writer at Kalahariozzie
  
  In reply to Seamus Gardiner
  
  Strange, I am happy working in mainland Australia and providing for my aging mother in Africa. We all make contributions I guess.
  
  4 months ago report
4. Sean Lamb
  
  Science Denier
  
  In reply to Stephanus Cecil Barnard
  
  It's a shame you didn't leave your attitudes in Africa as well. You know you could probably bring your mother over here under the family reunion provisions and then you would find Seamus would happily pay his taxes to provide her with services also.
  Personally if I were South African I would be deliriously grateful to Australia for allowing me in, rather than making snide remarks about contributions
  
  4 months ago report
Fred Pribac

logged in via email @internode.on.net

Tasmania - the fish that John West Rejects.

4 months ago report
1. Josephine Colahan
  
  Peripatetic traveller
  
  In reply to Fred Pribac
  
  ... or the fish that reject John West? Tasmania's history is full of small entrepreneurs and innovators providing technologies accepted world wide.
  
  4 months ago report
2. Fred Pribac
  
  logged in via email @internode.on.net
  
  In reply to Josephine Colahan
  
  Hasn't this series been interesting?
  
  Not so much for the insights about Tasmania but rather into the lack of rigour and myopic opinion that some of our highest ranking academics are prepared to put into writing on these pages.
  
  4 months ago report
3. Josephine Colahan
  
  Peripatetic traveller
  
  In reply to Fred Pribac
  
  This series has been very interesting! But the academics are doing their job - philosophers philosophise about the state of the nation as it occurs after all. It just sounds ridiculous if you have the knowledge and hear somebody stating the obvious in such a pompous manner!
  
  Also very interesting is that the responses bear out some of the points Jonathan West makes! But as Pat Moore - gardener - comments below: we still live in a society rather than an economy, and we have the economic base to do very well if (as some suggest) they leave us alone, cut off the welfare tap and let us decide if we want to join the developed world.
  
  4 months ago report
Les McNamara

Researcher

"My colleagues and I at the Australian Innovation Research Centre recently prepared a report for the Commonwealth Department of Regional Development that identified six main areas of opportunity: wine, dairy, aquaculture, horticulture, mining, and tourism, especially “experiential” tourism related to wilderness and the island’s gourmet products."

Of course, in each of these areas Tasmania will be competing with New Zealand where these industries are already thriving. New Zealand wages are 30% lower and the exchange rate also favours kiwi exporters and tourism operators. And New Zealand looks better on travel brochures. Tough gig.

4 months ago report
1. Josephine Colahan
  
  Peripatetic traveller
  
  In reply to Les McNamara
  
  ... the AANZFTA ... if governments are willing to increase the competition to their own national industries, they can then not complain when those industries slump and out of work employees go on welfare.
  
  There is glib talk about competition increasing production efficiency, but in the long term global corporations run the show and governments must pick up the pieces for the citizens they have impoverished.
  .
  
  4 months ago report
Carol Chenco

Carol Chenco is a Friend of The Conversation.

Research Officer

Well as a Victorian, I am happy to contribute my taxes to Tasmania. I love the place because of the quiet pace of life, the beautiful environment, the appreciation of history resulting in beautiful architecture, and, the amazing variety of food and drink on offer. I regard Tasmania as a 'getaway' from the hectic pace of life in cities on the mainland. Please don't change Tasmania!

4 months ago report
1. Josephine Colahan
  
  Peripatetic traveller
  
  In reply to Carol Chenco
  
  Thanks for contributing your disposable income to the entrepreneurs of Tasmania, Carol.
  
  Perhaps you would also consider the recommendations of the Gonski report and encourage Federal Government to apply them. Education is a right for those who can use it, and a right of choice in any community. It won't be taken up with any enthusiasm if a degraded system is all that's offered.
  
  4 months ago report
Andrey Panevin

University Student

A major factor that contributes to both the image and the reality of Tasmania and its development are the 29 councils that are spread across this small state, bureaucracy rules the map and indecision follows (http://www.lgat.tas.gov.au/webdata/resources/files/Local_Govt_Area_A4_map1.pdf). Many argue that each council tends to the needs of differing areas (especially those that are more remote) but I can't help but think that if the councils were fewer and more centralised then more efficient and…
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A major factor that contributes to both the image and the reality of Tasmania and its development are the 29 councils that are spread across this small state, bureaucracy rules the map and indecision follows (http://www.lgat.tas.gov.au/webdata/resources/files/Local_Govt_Area_A4_map1.pdf). Many argue that each council tends to the needs of differing areas (especially those that are more remote) but I can't help but think that if the councils were fewer and more centralised then more efficient and intelligent funding and dispersion of efforts would be allowed for. The figures that show what amounts to a poorer education system in Tasmania also stems from overcrowding and under-funding which is due to the fact that "schools in the public education system include 138 primary schools (Kindergarten to Grade 6), 57 high schools (Grade 7 to 10)...Of the high schools, 26 are district (or district high) schools, where in rural areas the primary and high schools are located on a single campus". There is just too much for such a little reward in terms of the higher education rates in Tasmania. Speaking from personal experience in going to a small rural district school, I personally witnessed the lack of big picture thinking that was propagated by the school system, leading to students seeking the easy way out in terms of part to full time work at local small businesses or councils. Out of a class of 18, I am the only one going on to University in this coming year. Tasmania needs a rapid revamping of its educational and governing systems if it is to survive as something other than a summertime tourist destination.

4 months ago report
Josephine Colahan

Peripatetic traveller

One difference between Tasmania and other Australian states is that young Tasmanians leave the state to find employment in the bigger Australian cities. However, this trend is occurring in all states in that young people from rural Australia are moving to the major cities - often the whole family moves to support their young.

While young Tasmanians are accepting Year 10 as a valid point to finish their education it's worth a look at the Gonski recommendations and ask why government is stalling on this. Education is a right for those who can use it, and a right of choice in any community. It won't be taken up with any enthusiasm if a degraded system is all that's offered.

4 months ago report
1. John Harland
  
  bicycle technician
  
  In reply to Josephine Colahan
  
  I am puzzled at what is seen to be wrong with young people seeking employment in their local community. Seems a good path to maintaining viable communities when small communities elsewhere in Australia are being sucked dry by the drain of talent to our bloated capital cities.
  
  It is also unclear to me why Year 10 is scorned as inadequate education. That, surely, has more to do with the quality of education than the number of years spent restrained in school.
  
  We might even be better-off as a…
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  I am puzzled at what is seen to be wrong with young people seeking employment in their local community. Seems a good path to maintaining viable communities when small communities elsewhere in Australia are being sucked dry by the drain of talent to our bloated capital cities.
  
  It is also unclear to me why Year 10 is scorned as inadequate education. That, surely, has more to do with the quality of education than the number of years spent restrained in school.
  
  We might even be better-off as a nation if we spent much more of our Tertiary-education budget instead on ensuring that the majority of students are adequately-educated by Year 10. Then we could clear our universities of all the reluctantly-academic students and we might be able to achieve real excellence in tertiary education as well.
  
  In that we accept that the avereage worker will have To be completely retrained at least three times through their working life, why are we still trying to cram so much education and training in before people can even enter the workforce?
  
  Particularly in the context of tourism and hospitality I suspect that we may find a high proportion of the most-imaginative entrepreneurs to have quit low levels of formal schooling and higher levels are not guaranteed to help them do better.
  
  If the education system is regarded as performing poorly, logic suggests fixing it before extending it.
  
  Nor should not be incarcerating young people ever-longer in school as a covert way of reducing apparent unemployment.
  
  Local councils also help to keep local communities and local cultures healthy. Their "efficiency" in the narrow economic sense is only one part of what makes for good local governance.
  
  4 months ago report
2. Patrick Stokes
  
  Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University
  
  In reply to John Harland
  
  "In that we accept that the avereage worker will have To be completely retrained at least three times through their working life, why are we still trying to cram so much education and training in before people can even enter the workforce?" - Maybe because education is a good in itself, not merely training for the workforce?
  
  4 months ago report
3. Robert McDougall
  
  Small Business Owner
  
  In reply to Patrick Stokes
  
  depends entirely if the individual has the stomache to endure the education "system". Education happens every day, it's how we learn. But formalised education is an entirely different kettle of fishies.
  
  4 months ago report
4. Josephine Colahan
  
  Peripatetic traveller
  
  In reply to John Harland
  
  I like the way you're thinking, John Harland. The value of an education is the understanding of the philosophical, political and economic systems in which one lives and the understanding of alternative systems. That's a good classical education.
  
  Today, most education is geared to 'skilling' students into employment - either as the 'labour' or as the 'entrepreneur' in the four functions of capitalism (the other two being land and capital).
  
  There is nothing inherently wrong with Capitalism…
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  I like the way you're thinking, John Harland. The value of an education is the understanding of the philosophical, political and economic systems in which one lives and the understanding of alternative systems. That's a good classical education.
  
  Today, most education is geared to 'skilling' students into employment - either as the 'labour' or as the 'entrepreneur' in the four functions of capitalism (the other two being land and capital).
  
  There is nothing inherently wrong with Capitalism - western society has had the benefit of this system for a couple of centuries - except for two major problems. The first that it is based on the displacement of Indigenous peoples and the use of resources that have been labelled 'private' when they actually belong to the nation - or, what's worse, to other nations. The second problem is that corporations have weaselled into the state of being regarded as individuals claiming the protection of human rights.
  
  There is not a lot we can do about the first instance - the damage is done to those peoples - unless we remember that human rights is based on life, health and liberty and it's everyone's task to attend to each other's needs.
  
  In the second instance - the sooner corporations are restricted to their original purpose the better off the majority of people will be. It is the corporations who have touted the theory of neoliberalism. The idea is that we will all benefit. But 20-30 years later and see what has happened - wide gaps between rich and poor, bankers being 'bailed out' with taxpayers money, and the type of problems in even western nations that are exemplified by West's article here in The Conversation.
  
  While many Tasmanians, as in any group of westerners, are beating a path to the city to work within a corporate system, I applaud those who return to live a simpler lifestyle and/or become small time entrepreneurs working within a local community.
  
  Australia was that 'nation of small shopkeepers' that had made Britain so strong. But over time thousands of affluent small communities have disappeared as those small farms and businesses were disadvantaged by government regulations as the neoliberal concept took hold.
  
  How can any government have the gall to entertain the idea of a super trawler into a nation's fishing grounds after decades of disadvantaging local fishing families? is just one question to ask!
  
  4 months ago report
5. John Holmes
  
  Agronomist - semi retired consultant
  
  In reply to Josephine Colahan
  
  In reply to Josephine Colahan
  
  'The second problem is that corporations have weaselled into the state of being regarded as individuals..'
  
  Its just that the big corporations are the heirs of Alexander the Great et al - finance your lifestyle by asset striping any concentration of wealth will do - temples etc of other lands and moving on. Now we have transnationals asset stripping of other corporations, nation states via debt, as well as the locals peoples. Not much has changed.
  
  One result is seen in the Caste system of India.
  
  4 months ago report
6. John Harland
  
  bicycle technician
  
  In reply to Patrick Stokes
  
  I have seen many young people whose education only began in earnest once they left school. In many cases it was their academic education that started when they came back to the same school, studying the same subjects with enthusiasm because they had a context to that learning.
  
  Fulltime schooling is a deeply inefficeint means of educating many people.
  
  4 months ago report
Stephen John Ralph

carer

Jonathan

As you (AIRC) have only recently identified the problems you outline, one question is why has it taken academics, universities, schools, colleges and no doubt government (advised by a public service and many others) to reach your conclusions.

I take it these problems have been percolating for years if not decades. Shouldn't the University of Tasmania and a host of other organisations be at the forefront of change and innovation, and EDUCATION.

Better late than never isn't a good answer, so WHY has it taken so long to get this far.......

4 months ago report
Chris Sanderson

CEO

Well, we live near Byron Bay, NSW. That’s because we like the climate, lots of rain, good soil and above all comfortable temperatures all the year round. Tassie has always been too cold for me.

But that’s all going to change.

For someone like me, who thinks a lot about climate change and studies its maps of the future, Tasmania is looking progressively more attractive.

It is forecast to be about the only place in Australia that will not be getting uncomfortably hot as the mainland adds…
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Well, we live near Byron Bay, NSW. That’s because we like the climate, lots of rain, good soil and above all comfortable temperatures all the year round. Tassie has always been too cold for me.

But that’s all going to change.

For someone like me, who thinks a lot about climate change and studies its maps of the future, Tasmania is looking progressively more attractive.

It is forecast to be about the only place in Australia that will not be getting uncomfortably hot as the mainland adds around 4ºC to the average temperature over the next 2-3 decades.

Not that I expect to be around by then. However my children will be and already one of them has settled in Tasmania and seems to love it just the way it is.
IMHO, Jonathan West and his Australian Innovation Research Centre at University of Tasmania need to do some climate change research before suggesting that Tasmania should innovate by following the rest of the world over the cliff towards which it is heading.
And the cliff is not just climate change with its increasing temperatures, more frequent and extreme weather events, bush fires, floods and droughts that needs to be taken into account, but also what Paul Gilding describes in his book: ‘The Great Disruption’ and Jurgen Randers covers in his recent book: ‘2050’ as well as many other writers such as Richard Heinberg, Tim Jackson and now Al Gore in his new book: ‘The Future’ – See this recent Lateline interview - http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/news/lateline/video/201302/LATs_GoreLongVersion_0402_512k.mp4 .
And that is the consequences of a mélange of the world’s over-population, economic recession, resource depletion, higher oil and food prices, social disruption and probable failure of democracy, given the ineptitude of our current breed of state and federal politicians and their hijack by the fossil fuel and mining industries that Roosevelt called ‘Fascism’. I see even mainstream economists like Ross Gittens are commenting on this assault on our democracy - http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/the-four-industries-that-rule-australia-20130205-2dwew.html
So it seems to me that Tasmania is wisely resisting the advice of the promoters of the ‘Global Market’ system, which depends for success on infinite growth on a finite plane. Good luck!
Instead it seems already to be a mostly agrarian community that has learnt how to make do with less ‘stuff’ and live more simply and grow and buy locally. These are resilience and rural survival skills that rest of us have lost over the last few industry focussed generations. Let’s hope those fabulous cherries can still be grown in Tasmania by 2050.
So rather than following the herd, perhaps Tasmania should instead be preparing for an influx of climate change immigrants from the mainland over the next decade or so and teaching them some survival skills such as growing your own food.
Maybe the Tasmania Department of Planning could explore how to create planning laws that would facilitate the establishment of rural multiple occupancy communities such as the 150 or so found around Kyogle, Lismore and Byron shires of NSW. It took us 20 years or so to plan, get state and local council approval and establish such a community, so now would be a good time to start.

4 months ago report
1. Stephanus Cecil Barnard
  
  Town planner and freelance writer at Kalahariozzie
  
  In reply to Chris Sanderson
  
  so are you really scare of the change? I'll swap you with my property here in on the hills in Central Queensland. But then Siberia, Greenland and Mongolia also looks more attractive, if you can stomach that amount of compulsory vodka.
  
  4 months ago report
John Holmes

Agronomist - semi retired consultant

Good summary.

It will be interesting to hear Colin Barnett's next pitch about WA not getting its fair share of the tax pool.

One area similar to the problems of development in the Far North and NW of Australia is the issue of expensive transport, both for inports and exports. Better solutions need to be explored.

Also re agriculture, the issues of competing with NZ / Southern Australian with the supermarket duopoly. Eg you loose your frozen pea market if you are under cut by 2.5…
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Good summary.

It will be interesting to hear Colin Barnett's next pitch about WA not getting its fair share of the tax pool.

One area similar to the problems of development in the Far North and NW of Australia is the issue of expensive transport, both for inports and exports. Better solutions need to be explored.

Also re agriculture, the issues of competing with NZ / Southern Australian with the supermarket duopoly. Eg you loose your frozen pea market if you are under cut by 2.5 - 5 cents/kg. Not helped by the very high costs across the Strait.

Having watched 'non Tasmanians' arrive and work in Tas, myself included, it does take a very long time to be accepted in the community. One person I worked with suggested that from his experience that 15 years was not sufficient.. Cf the far North of Australia < 1 year. Myself, being related to about 0.1% of the NW Coast by marriage, felt that it would not be too different for me. Even locals who have been away for long periods, like my wife, find it nearly as hard to fit back in. Bit difficult. Found it to be a very nice place to visit, but not to live in. A major reason to leave was the limited availability of work for my children, plus the general lack of enthusiasm in the community for higher education/trade skills.

One could suggest that many of those with drive, leave, and of those left, some develop an inferiority complex which can turn into an ignorant arrogance. This is not very conducive to development. One felt this both at work, in Ag extension; and in one's social life, that one was walking on egg shells. Just because you have a different background does not mean that you are putting others down if you include a non judgmental reference to some where else. This makes it quite hard to share ideas & adapt technologies.

Sure I live in WA, and have seen similar arguments had such discussions re attitudes here and the 'Great White Fathers on the East Coast' but the insularity in Tas was/is much more pronounced, and applies at the local level of <50 km. Historically this is a product of moving from one river catchment to the next over the hill/mountain to the next, especially away from the coast, but there is a reasonable road system in place now.

Some solutions -

Lower transport costs to the rest of the World. Trying to compete with NZ or SAmerica, etc, by first transshipping most goods via Melbourne etc is lunacy.

A greater willingness to promote Tasmania as a good complimentary source for agricultural products and sources for product not easily grown else where in Aust. The banana disaster where most crops were lost, or problems with very low water in the Murray Darling, show that we need a stable national supply system which has the capacity to cope with climatic variations.

This may need some very good initiatives out of Tas, say grower cooperatives, not branches of multinationals.

4 months ago report
Robert McDougall

Small Business Owner

perhaps the answer for tasmania is to focus on local domestic economic activity and forget the rest of the world.

i.e. small business local community focussed as opposed to multinational corporate shopfronts?

Tasmania has so much going for it in terms of real stuff, as opposed to "imaginary" stuff that the rest of Australia gets caught up in.

4 months ago report
Pat Moore

gardener

Judgemental words like "underclass", "low aspirational", "underachieving" coming from a former Associate Professor of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration is perhaps indicative of a cultural clash, a major disjuncture of values? Like landing on the moon? It's all relative....little island down under Downunder Vs global empire? Iceburg VsTitanic?

The Australian Innovation Research Centre at the University of Hobart is perhaps using an economic rationalist lens to analyse…
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Judgemental words like "underclass", "low aspirational", "underachieving" coming from a former Associate Professor of the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration is perhaps indicative of a cultural clash, a major disjuncture of values? Like landing on the moon? It's all relative....little island down under Downunder Vs global empire? Iceburg VsTitanic?

The Australian Innovation Research Centre at the University of Hobart is perhaps using an economic rationalist lens to analyse a unique island society with a particular history. Niche, micro, green ,apart are words that perhaps have some relevance to any economic aspiration it may have & already appreciates but in Tasmania it is perhaps still possible to say at least that we live in a society not an economy?

Perhaps some words issuing from the studied object on the other side of the lens might include "recalcitrant" or non aspirational? Perhaps Tasmania is never going to be fully enlisted into the economic rationalist project?
Maybe it will still be existing in its own sweet way after the global economic rationalist experiment has imploded? And the burnt out, used up economic rationalist refugees are fleeing there for escape?

4 months ago report
Trevor McGrath

Pharmacist Hobby:climatology

The way I seem to look at all this in the world of economics, being part of it is one thing, we should only join for our own advantage, not to be economically sodomised by others. Tasmania like the rest of Australia would not starve or go unhoused or unclothed if the rest of the world put a total blockade around Australia or Tasmania. So why all this race to the bottom stuff, we should do things the Australian way and tell the rest of the world to do whatever it is they want to do.... By the way…
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The way I seem to look at all this in the world of economics, being part of it is one thing, we should only join for our own advantage, not to be economically sodomised by others. Tasmania like the rest of Australia would not starve or go unhoused or unclothed if the rest of the world put a total blockade around Australia or Tasmania. So why all this race to the bottom stuff, we should do things the Australian way and tell the rest of the world to do whatever it is they want to do.... By the way how many people want to move to Zambia as compared to moving to Australia.... Perhaps some one who works for the UN could tell us how many people in the world's camps put Zambia first on their dream sheets. Or The Mad Monk might transfer the whole of Tasmania to beyond Capricorn as part of the new Bradfield scheme. A bit of topic… but does this new push finally say that the right side of politics has recognised that the Murray Darling is dying and therefore best get out of there as fast as possible, with let me guess, subsidises for the wealthy land owners, and agribusiness companies to relocate north… just when they are all telling us that there is no climate change. Cheers

4 months ago report
1. Stephanus Cecil Barnard
  
  Town planner and freelance writer at Kalahariozzie
  
  In reply to Trevor McGrath
  
  mm Trev... unless you have been / worked there you would not know. There are more refugees in Zambia than in Australia, and there they do not need boats to reach the shores. Go check your Google Map and see which countries surround it. Although not the economic miracle Australia is, it has changed dramatically since the 1980's, mostly for the better, and it is fast reclaiming its colonial title of the food basket of Southern Africa. (Oh but colonial is a swearword... i apologise for cursing…
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  mm Trev... unless you have been / worked there you would not know. There are more refugees in Zambia than in Australia, and there they do not need boats to reach the shores. Go check your Google Map and see which countries surround it. Although not the economic miracle Australia is, it has changed dramatically since the 1980's, mostly for the better, and it is fast reclaiming its colonial title of the food basket of Southern Africa. (Oh but colonial is a swearword... i apologise for cursing)
  
  Isolating Australia is hardly the answer Trevor, I am sure you wrote your comments on a PC designed in Rockhampton, assembled in Hobart, using recycled garden equipment by technicians from Port Hedland. But somehow I believe we need to find a way out of / after the mining boom, as it will not last, and we do not want to be caught pants on knees.
  
  I see you are the proud carrier of a M.Sc. Good stuff, can you then logically explain to me the left's hysteria about "The Mad Monk"? When you grew up in Africa Australian politics are resemble Weetbix with water.
  
  4 months ago report
Cornelis Wegman

Architect

Thank you Jonathan West - you have hit the nail on the head about development. Every time a proposal is foreshadowed, dozens of well meaning citizens emerge from the woodwork to explain that it won't work. This happens even before we get any details! Potential developers are frustrated by complicated requirements, and finally, when they have complied with all the rules, changes in conditions force them to reapply and start all over again. Are we all thinking of boats?

We have a culture that says 'NO - maybe' instead of 'YES - but'. We must approach potential developments from a positive, instead of negative, perspective. Tasmania is beautiful but is that enough?

4 months ago report
1. Josephine Colahan
  
  Peripatetic traveller
  
  In reply to Cornelis Wegman
  
  (Once upon a time, many moons ago, the 'Fertile Crescent' was fertile ...)
  
  The potential developments that I will approach positively are those that involve Tasmanians for a few generations rather than a few months, enhance the natural environment, and make a contribution to other Australians. I haven't noticed many of those lately other than those ideas appropriated by Jonathan West ...
  
  Yes, it is enough to be beautiful - if fact it's necessary to be beautiful if we want 'experiential' tourists…
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  (Once upon a time, many moons ago, the 'Fertile Crescent' was fertile ...)
  
  The potential developments that I will approach positively are those that involve Tasmanians for a few generations rather than a few months, enhance the natural environment, and make a contribution to other Australians. I haven't noticed many of those lately other than those ideas appropriated by Jonathan West ...
  
  Yes, it is enough to be beautiful - if fact it's necessary to be beautiful if we want 'experiential' tourists to enjoy those wilderness and gourmet experiences.
  
  Older Tasmanians will remember when Tasmania was more beautiful with thousands of small mixed farms, orchards, dairies before agribusiness and economic rationalisation hit the shore, and forestry took its awful toll. I can't imagine a negative response to boutique farming with on farm value added products, particularly if they cleared up the mess of rampant forestry activities and intensive farming practices.
  
  Those boutique farms I have visited employ the farm owners and at least two or three local Tasmanians - multiply that many times ...
  
  4 months ago report
Stephen John Ralph

carer

Yes Cornelis it just may be enough.

Do you want to tear down or dig up beauty for some temporary gain...oil will run out, minerals will be all dug out,
and so forth. But hopefully "beauty" will remain.

If industry isn't happy with Tasmania - move out. If developers get frustrated there appear to be lots of shonky opportunities in NSW, hell even Victoria the way the Libs are going - just email Matthew Guy.

What is it about progress and economics that sees a natural path to destruction, only to move onto the next big thing. The West and it's corporations have left a tragic tale of destruction and environmental mayhem in too many third world countries.

Couldn't we just leave Tasmania alone.

4 months ago report
1. Stephanus Cecil Barnard
  
  Town planner and freelance writer at Kalahariozzie
  
  In reply to Stephen John Ralph
  
  leave it alone but pump tax money into it? No, either join the dance, or go home without a bag of lollies from the Main land party. Just look at NZ, they did not stuff it up, but they get along pretty fine without petty opposition to every and anything.
  It seems Tasmania wants the loot but not contribute to it.
  
  4 months ago report
2. Leigh Burrell
  
  Living it up on a union slush fund - top hotels, fine dining, women, cash!
  
  In reply to Stephen John Ralph
  
  Yes, just leave Tasmania alone. Turn off the welfare and let them decide if they wish to be part of the developed world.
  
  4 months ago report
Stephen John Ralph

carer

So you'd like to wreck Tassie just like the Great Barrier Reef will be destroyed by Queensland.

When Qld becomes too hot, too flood prone and too hurricane prone where will you move?

You might not be safe up in them thar hills.

4 months ago report
Cornelis Wegman

Architect

Why is it that development is, by many, always assumed to be extreme and destructive? Is it not possible to strike a balance between conservation and development? No, beauty is not enough unless you are content to have others pay for the luxury of making an omelette without breaking the eggs!

4 months ago report
Stephen John Ralph

carer

Because Cornelis "development" these days is synonymous with greed and the desire to squeeze the last juice out of the orange so no-one else can have some.

Sustained development would be great if only the "sustained" part could be adhered to. Take for example the potential for Melbourne's green wedges to be exploited by developers under the sanctions of government.

Sooner or later enough is enough - the world is increasingly becomong worse and worser (!) for developmen's sake. Let's wake up and smell the roses...not the manure.

4 months ago report
1. Leigh Burrell
  
  Living it up on a union slush fund - top hotels, fine dining, women, cash!
  
  In reply to Stephen John Ralph
  
  It's also synonymous with health, education and security. They can choose development with its benefits and drawbacks or they can live like a commune of deadbeat, no-account hippies without our financial support.
  
  4 months ago report
2. Cornelis Wegman
  
  Architect
  
  In reply to Stephen John Ralph
  
  I think that you are being too cynical. Private enterprises are usually driven by profit but an important role of government is to restrain their enthusiasm and provide a balance. We have a weak government, unintelligent ministers in key portfolios, and a small town cycophantic attitude to famous names and people with deep pockets. Our government's policies are driven by populist responses rather than sensible debate. As a result, the restraints don't work and responses are driven by those who make the most noise, or have the deepest pockets, or are likely to assist someone's re-election.
  
  I love smelling the roses - especially those that I have paid for!
  
  3 months ago report
3. Stephanus Cecil Barnard
  
  Town planner and freelance writer at Kalahariozzie
  
  In reply to Cornelis Wegman
  
  This is an extremely insightful debate. I just wonder how many of the contributors here have actually tried to start a business in Tasmania. I am not talking about uranium mining or harvesting of ancient forests, no, I am talking about starting a boutique hotel / small guesthouse. Did you try to wade through the planning system to get an approval for a non destructive non environmentally degrading land use, such as this on a rural property close to Launceston (by example)?
  
  Well, a German female…
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  This is an extremely insightful debate. I just wonder how many of the contributors here have actually tried to start a business in Tasmania. I am not talking about uranium mining or harvesting of ancient forests, no, I am talking about starting a boutique hotel / small guesthouse. Did you try to wade through the planning system to get an approval for a non destructive non environmentally degrading land use, such as this on a rural property close to Launceston (by example)?
  
  Well, a German female friend, highly skilled, independently wealthy, very entrepreneurial and keen to start over in her life after a divorce and I did try last January. I can report that it is easier to swim through lava. The local planners are extremely friendly but cautious, not trying to suggest support for such a venture, there will most certainly be objections, the use is not supported in the planning scheme, although the planning scheme came out of the Ark with Noah, it is what it is. After spending a few hours with the planners and later with estate agents, she said it is easier to invest that money in a shoddy place like Mozambique, as at least there she is made feeling welcome, and hurdles not rolled into the road. I can report that she has now acquired a beachfront property through a 99year between Beira and Maputo. Not cheap, not without hurdles but done. It will consist of 20 rooms, and as the standard for boutique hotels are, 2-3 staff per room will be employed.
  
  Perhaps it is the way Tasmania is, and it want to be. After that experience last January I understand why so many young people leave to the mainland, and no Sean Lamb, contrary to your believe we do not have attitudes. I do not live there, it is quite nice, the people are friendly but the hurdles are to high. Perhaps Tasmanians need to stare at their own navels and then discover why it is the way it is. Sadly it is becoming so for Australia as well.
  
  3 months ago report
4. Trevor S
  
  Jack of all Trades
  
  In reply to Stephanus Cecil Barnard
  
  "Perhaps Tasmanians need to stare at their own navels and then discover why it is the way it is. Sadly it is becoming so for Australia as well."
  
  Amen, it's why I invested in Cambodia instead of Australia.
  
  3 months ago report
Robin Verhoeff

logged in via Facebook

I personally think that the federal government needs to work on weaning the state off of the mainland's financial backing. It is inevitable that the only way to save money will be to spend money; that said, not by giving out more handouts and welfare benefits, but by manually intervening and setting up industries that Tasmanians have failed to do themselves.

The agricultural industries need to be industrialised rather than focusing on boutique industries which only appeal to a specialised taste…
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I personally think that the federal government needs to work on weaning the state off of the mainland's financial backing. It is inevitable that the only way to save money will be to spend money; that said, not by giving out more handouts and welfare benefits, but by manually intervening and setting up industries that Tasmanians have failed to do themselves.

The agricultural industries need to be industrialised rather than focusing on boutique industries which only appeal to a specialised taste and offer little employment or economic support. The focus must be on producing for the masses. The timber industry has failed and its vast swathes of land must be re-purposed. In many areas, this land is suitable for crops, and where it is too steep, grazing is always an option. Areas designated to agriculture must be utilised to their full potential; no bushland patches and private property without purpose or crown reserves. Mass industrialization of the agricultural industry would be made more profitable if the midlands irrigation scheme was to be carried out as proposed. The west coast too needs change. The mining industry is no longer the powerhouse it was in the past, Zeehan, Strahan, Queenstown, Tullah, Rosebury, etc: none are booming yet the rainfall is the best in the state. The main problem is shallow soils and countless reserves and crown land. Zeehan especially is on the border of a vast, level plain which could at least serve the dairy industry if the scrub was cleared, and tea plants, such as those grown in the cold-temperate climates of Korea and Japan, could survive in the high rainfall environment of the west coast. As for the Surrey and Hampshire Hills (owned and operated by the timber industry) near Burnie, this vast area of land around 600m above sea level is perfect for pastural industries, especially dairy and has little environmental value now. Olives can be grown in the dry climate of the Southern Midlands and is always a viable crop for edible oil and the current vineyard areas around the state could easily be expanded to 4x the area they currently occupy.

As for the major cities, secondary industry needs to be the focus. A mini industrial revolution must be initiated through the establishing of factories for producing common items, not specialty goods which require skilled labour. Tasmania is one of the best places in Australia for unskilled, unemployed individuals which currently live off the government.

In order to establish factories and industry, the mainland government needs to reduce wellfare and handouts and re-divert the money to development. A reduction in welfare would have to be selective as to not affect working members of the public who need minor handouts to make ends meet, but for people of working age (not youth or elderly) who are unemployed yet physically able to work. Welfare would have to be halved to force these individuals to work in the factories. Should they be working, then their benefit would be re-instated as before so that they are not at a financial loss. These industries would have to be run at a federal or state level as in a Communist system which would help the government to recoup the financial losses until the industries are both fully established, making profits from inter-state and international sales as well as being successfully self-administrating, whereby they would become locally owned, private, corporate entities.

Cities like Burnie and Launceston have been hit hard by the collapse of the forestry industry and need new employment. Manufacturing works in the economic powerhouses of Asia due to it being uninfluenced by physical factors of its environment. Factories need only infrastructure to deliver supplies and export products, energy and a large workforce which does not need to be skilled depending on the items being produced. Launceston for example, has the infrastructure needed for import and export, hydro power, as well as a large, unskilled, potential labour force.

If Tasmanians feel education would make them "un-Tasmanian" or leave home, then don't waste money educating them through highschool if it won't be put to use. Those who seek higher education can then stay in the state to run the industry when the government pulls out.

The socialist concept of taxing the hardworking and paying the slack, only puts down those who work hard to make ends meet and supports the idleness of those who do nothing: stereotypically "Bogans". The taxation limit would have to be lifted higher to encourage people to get well paying jobs whilst still taxing those who have incomes larger than is needed. As I mentioned before, those who do not work would have to be forced into labour by reducing their government handouts lower than what is needed to make a living until they are working in the factories. If the factories that were hiring the unskilled workforce were run by the government, then keeping track of those who are working and those who are not would not be a problem.

Another option that could be used to limited extent would be for the federal or state government to selectively boycott products being imported to Tasmania that are the same as products being produced in Tasmania (eg. If Tasmanian grown apples are the same as Victorian grown apples or Tasmanian made paint is the same as Chinese made paint). Though drastic, if the products were of the same type, quality and similar shelf price, then there should be no difference at the consumer level. If this was the case, then money would be recirculating within the state rather than being lost overseas.

Also, Launceston and Hobart are the oldest cities in Australia after Sydney; their populations should reflect this long term settlement but they don't. Though Hobart is at the limits of what the topography will support, Launceston and Burnie would need vast new areas of land to be designated for residential, commercial and industrial development with a proper 1800s style street grid like used in Melbourne rather than the disorganised sprawl seen in Legana or Blackstone Heights. Better industry would lead to greater population and that in turn would support more industry. As suggested by the federal government for developing Northern Australia, tax incentives could be used to encourage working people from Melbourne or Sydney to move to Tasmania, thus furthering the economy.

These concepts are indeed crude and drastic, but the mainland government can't afford to treat Tasmania as the sleepy, retirement island and govern over it softly as it is at present. Democracy is failing Tasmania (Tasmanians like living off the mainland’s back so democracy makes that so) and the federal government needs to intervene, even if only in a trial area such as a single council to avoid major financial losses should it fail. Tasmania is tapping supplies and money off of hard-working mainlanders and giving nothing but green propaganda and cottage industries in return. Tasmania needs a hard line intervention to reverse the current trends followed by a major population boom.

As a closure to this, the forestry industry is over and un-viable and mining is only viable in limited areas followed by green protest. Cottage and boutique industries are not able to support the economy or provide jobs for the uneducated. If Tasmania is to be made economically independent, then industrialization is the only real option both in tripling the agricultural output and in re-establishing manufacturing sectors, mostly for creating cheap, everyday items like what is currently produced in China. New crops would also have to be established in Tasmania such as tea, olives, rice, etc followed by limiting or banning of imports of equivalent products to those made in Tasmania to keep money in the state so the mainland would not have to constantly cash-up Tasmania.

I am a citizen of Launceston and have seen first-hand the misery of Tasmania's people and economy. Nearly all those who are aspiring working people with potential to change Tasmania for the better leave for Melbourne leaving only the dole-parasites behind. There is no pride in the state and all those who have tried to change the state for the better have been shunned or turned away by greens or those who like Tasmania's sleepy lifestyle. The current situation has to end and soon or the mainland may as well cut all funding and leave the state to die in the wilderness grave the greens have been labouring to dig.

3 months ago report
1. John Holmes
  
  Agronomist - semi retired consultant
  
  In reply to Robin Verhoeff
  
  Robin Verhoeff :
  
  When I first met my then to be Mother in Law, I was struck by the huge food reserves held in the pantry. This, I was told was due in part to the problems of variable shipping into the State from the Mainland. ( I knew I was accepted when on returning there were always supplies of raspberries etc in the freezer held for me and occasionally cooked a mutton bird for me her way.)
  
  My observations since then, including a period living in Tas, is that it is still a crucial…
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  Robin Verhoeff :
  
  When I first met my then to be Mother in Law, I was struck by the huge food reserves held in the pantry. This, I was told was due in part to the problems of variable shipping into the State from the Mainland. ( I knew I was accepted when on returning there were always supplies of raspberries etc in the freezer held for me and occasionally cooked a mutton bird for me her way.)
  
  My observations since then, including a period living in Tas, is that it is still a crucial factor in determining the success or failure of some industries.
  
  I wonder also of the impact of people growing up with their friendship circles determined at birth and relatively closed afterwards, with not a huge % of itinerants moving through the communities. Persons moving 50-70 km seemed to exhibit some of the same feelings of being locked out of the local community as did many of the mainlander's who came in or even returning locals felt. I feel that this may be some part of the cultural impediments of rapid adjustment to changes in both opportunities for new processes or the phasing out of others.
  
  RE agriculture. Robotics at the centimeter level will require a fairly innovative workforce with good local R&D back up. Being at the mercy at a limited number of buyers can be somewhat disconcerting as the time constraints for quality for some products are quiet short. One formed the opinion at times that the processors were only just looking after their growers with sufficient effort to ensure that there would be some, yet not so interested in ensuring that each grower maxed out their potential yields/returns.
  
  3 months ago report
2. Josephine Colahan
  
  Peripatetic traveller
  
  In reply to Robin Verhoeff
  
  Robin, you do have a lot of ideas!
  
  Producing for the masses is what Tasmanians have done since agriculture got off the ground in colonial times - a variety of government interventions have taken this living from many Tasmanian families of whom you are now castigating. Many of them are turning their vision to the boutique market as an alternative. Others have left our rural Tasmania - just as are thousands of other Australians - and are flocking to the 'megacities' from where global corporations…
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  Robin, you do have a lot of ideas!
  
  Producing for the masses is what Tasmanians have done since agriculture got off the ground in colonial times - a variety of government interventions have taken this living from many Tasmanian families of whom you are now castigating. Many of them are turning their vision to the boutique market as an alternative. Others have left our rural Tasmania - just as are thousands of other Australians - and are flocking to the 'megacities' from where global corporations have their agencies from which to supervise the harvest of money from our land to their bankers.
  
  Just as in any rural area, some people are left behind - choice, age, education all are factors in that decision. As I have said before in other posts - Tasmanians also have to leave their state to find the 'megacity' of their choice - once it was Sydney or Melbourne, and now Brisbane or Perth also. The demographic is thus distorted if one is accounting by state GSP rather than Federal GDP per capita.
  
  Why not Hobart? A quick look at our arable land (it is tempting to think we could convert the National Parks and reserves - however most of that land is good for no other purpose) as well as the relative size of Tasmania should be enough to answer that question - but if you want more you could also consider the distance between Tasmania and the rest of the world!
  
  Repurposing forestry land sounds like a great idea - and for some forestry land that has recently been 'repurposed' farmland that could be possible. One (there are others) unfortunate fact is that monocultures such as our forestry industry destroy fertility for future crops.
  
  Your vision for Tasmania shows considerable thought - given a choice between a dictatorship and protectionism I think you will find protectionism is the better option, just as it would be for all Australia. Unfortunately the neoliberal theory has let us down, and I believe (as you appear to) neomercantilism is a better choice. Traditional industries have really had their day so to focus on communications and green technologies (for example) seem to be the logical route.
  
  Good luck with your studies as a future planner!
  
  3 months ago report
3. John Harland
  
  bicycle technician
  
  In reply to Robin Verhoeff
  
  A very entertaining pisstake on Neocon thinking, Robin. More economic direction than a Marxist-Leninist and more dictatoship in the interests of Capital tthan most fascists would reckon to be possible.
  
  For some people, Tasmania is no more than an economic opportunity, awaiting only a whole lot of government intervention, economic panning and subsidisation to make possible the Natural Course of Capitalism.
  
  For people who live there, boutique businesses may be a great deal more attractive than…
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  A very entertaining pisstake on Neocon thinking, Robin. More economic direction than a Marxist-Leninist and more dictatoship in the interests of Capital tthan most fascists would reckon to be possible.
  
  For some people, Tasmania is no more than an economic opportunity, awaiting only a whole lot of government intervention, economic panning and subsidisation to make possible the Natural Course of Capitalism.
  
  For people who live there, boutique businesses may be a great deal more attractive than monocultures.
  
  Addressing the question of taxation distribution is long overdue. However we should start with the most significant abuses first and the subisidies paid to extractive industries, that employ relatively few pelemfor the scale of damage they cause, and subsidies to heavy users of fossil fuels Australia-wide would seem more-appropriate first targets for concern about hiw our taxes are spent.
  
  Weaning a community off excessive welfare is not the same as dictating to them how they live their lives. Nor is it reason to destroy their homelands.
  
  3 months ago report
Bill Dodd

logged in via Facebook

So the problem is cultural and, according to Mr West, can be fixed through two possible ways. "Either the national taxpayer and federal government will declare “enough” – though there’s little sign of this – or Tasmania will be altered by new arrivals seeking opportunity and a better lifestyle."

I am wondering whether the situation might be improved through the second option, by an acceleration of the number of people coming to Tasmania who have a more enterprising spirit than the current demographic. Perhaps Tasmania could provide community resettlement and education for asylum seekers. Or maybe there is a need for younger people from the mainland to come to Tasmania to work.

3 months ago report
1. Josephine Colahan
  
  Peripatetic traveller
  
  In reply to Bill Dodd
  
  Hi Bill
  
  I am interested in the demographic that Jonathan West uses in his article that puts 25% of the population in the 'genuine' private sector of employment. The rest - 33% on welfare of some description; 33% employed by public services and enterprises - plus another 10% working for private corporations whose sole client is government. He says: "Of them perhaps a third gain their income from wholesale and retail trade and associated logistics, another third from residential and commercial…
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  Hi Bill
  
  I am interested in the demographic that Jonathan West uses in his article that puts 25% of the population in the 'genuine' private sector of employment. The rest - 33% on welfare of some description; 33% employed by public services and enterprises - plus another 10% working for private corporations whose sole client is government. He says: "Of them perhaps a third gain their income from wholesale and retail trade and associated logistics, another third from residential and commercial construction and maintenance. The clients of both these groups depend largely on public-sector incomes, leaving only about 10% of all households making a living from the traded private sector."
  
  The problem I see with these figures is that they are isolated - to what is he comparing them that he calls this a "lopsided economy"? I assume this conclusion is as a result of a comparison of the five Australian states - or is he including territories of Australia? Why compare between states? I assume, again, the reason is the disproportion between tax dollars contributed and benefits and services returned. Could such an argument of a 'lopsided economy' versus results of taxation be called an oxymoron?
  
  My contention is that Tasmania is a rural area. Hobart's population of 217,000 is way below that of the lowest mainland state - Adelaide's population is 1,213,000 - a difference of just the odd million. Sydney's population is 4,628,000 and is the highest. If one was to take a comparable slice of any mainland state - arable area, isolation, population size - no doubt we would find a similar demographic as that proposed by West. Another similarity would be the number of rural peoples in those states and territories leaving their place of birth to live and work in one of the major cities. Even if all Tasmanians flocked to Hobart we just wouldn't swell that number! Tasmanians must leave the state to another state capital in order to find that 'genuine private sector' income.
  
  This Tasmanian 'Diaspora' live and work in Australia - pay taxes to the general kitty and still call Tasmania home - we visit those friends and family who stay for their personal reasons - and we care about what happens to Tasmania - Tasmanian taxes paid are thus counted as other states contribution. I don't have the size of that Tasmanian Diaspora - I don't imagine it's as big as Sydney's population - but that contribution should be acknowledged by an academic if he is willing to call down onto Tasmanians the type of opprobrium that is generally reserved to the popular press.
  
  To reply to you directly, Bill, as you do I don't see much sign of the national taxpayer or federal government declaring "enough" - perhaps because by looking beyond the popular press Australians can see the fairness of caring for all Australians - not just those who flock to the city to become the fodder of global corporations. If federal government did cut back we can easily do without any more superhighways, although employment would step down yet another notch! And Tasmanians have always welcomed and absorbed the small entrepreneur making their home and livelihood in Tasmania. But to suggest that the "current demographic" - whether its West's contribution or a more realistic version - is not enterprising takes little notice of what has been occurring over the last several decades - perhaps longer.
  
  Tasmania (just as all rural areas - note my argument above) has already been suffering an "Intervention". While capitalism is a very useful economic system, when it's unbounded from the nation as with the neoliberal theory that has held sway since the Keating government, the people of the nation lose out. In my youth Tasmania was a state of thousands of small business enterprise - graziers, dairy, orchards, horticulture, fishing families, small factories, timber-mills, miners, grocers and 'agencies', as well as the professions. There is nothing wrong with the entrepreneurial spirit of Tasmanians - it's just that, as in any rural community, it's been dealt a mighty blow.
  
  By the way - I believe we are providing community resettlement and education for asylum seekers, more would be good but only if we also encourage them to use the skills they have brought with them - some are professionals, some are great market gardeners, some are so traumatised by their experience they must have all the care we can give them.
  
  3 months ago report
Catie Porteous

logged in via email @yahoo.com.au

Jonathon, could you please cite the educational foundation study you refer to? Sounds like interesting reading.

3 months ago report
Gregory Lehman

MSt Student at University of Oxford

Interesting blog here from a colleague at Oxford reflecting on anti-intellectualism in New Zealand. Parallels with our island state? I often wonder what we might learn from New Zealand. Their economy seem to function on wine, tourism and dairy exports, yet they don't require (and haven't got access to) a massive GST subsidy. http://theaotearoaproject.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/is-new-zealand-really-anti-intellectual/#comments

about 1 month ago report
Gregory Lehman

MSt Student at University of Oxford

Does education ‘undermine many Tasmanians’ sense of identity'. Although West's argument is predominantly an economic one, it has been read in Tasmania to point to consequences of scale and boundedness – not just in markets and monetary growth prospects, but in social aspirational horizons and imagination. Islands do not have to be archipelagic. They occur in any socio-geographic bounded existence. Remote rural communities in Australia are good examples. Or relic communities in post-industrial wastelands…
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Does education ‘undermine many Tasmanians’ sense of identity'. Although West's argument is predominantly an economic one, it has been read in Tasmania to point to consequences of scale and boundedness – not just in markets and monetary growth prospects, but in social aspirational horizons and imagination. Islands do not have to be archipelagic. They occur in any socio-geographic bounded existence. Remote rural communities in Australia are good examples. Or relic communities in post-industrial wastelands. So part of the popular discourse is often defensive in nature. But is this only because people feel threatened by something that they don’t feel well-equipped to engage with? That they know has been responsible for change that has been destructive of who they are? Is there perhaps a profound ‘allgemeine Alltäglichkeit’ that seeks to assert itself in the face of imposition from movements that are intuitively ‘other’ to the placedness of people’s lives. (see Lorraine Code ‘Ecological Thinking: the politics of epistemic location. OUP, 2006). If this is so then we need to invest strongly in ensuring that intellectual culture is suffused with the local, the indigenous; and is not a vector for the infection of small, bounded communities with global forces that are inherently exploitative and erosive of these communities. People’s identities are built on what they (collectively) have been. Intellectualism is predominately associated with change/growth in the Western setting. So perhaps opposition to this is a form of conservatism. But a well-founded one.

about 1 month ago report

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