TASMANIA has been running on cut-price democracy for the past 13 years.
Ever since Labor leader the late Jim Bacon and Liberal Tony Rundle conspired to try to get rid of the Greens by slashing the size of Parliament in 1998, there has been nothing but scandal upon scandal, with Tasmania going to hell in a handcart, run by a toy-town assembly and unelected apparatchiks.
For a brief time it seemed as though the political parties had come to their senses. After Tasmanians returned a “hung Parliament” at the election last year – with the real prospect that this would become the norm under the downsized legislature – the Labor and Liberal leaders put self-preservation ahead of all else and joined the Greens in signing an agreement to legislate for a return to the previous numbers.
The Government even went so far as to commission Tasmania’s most accomplished political scientist, Emeritus Professor Peter Boyce, to do a report on the pros and cons of a return to Parliament’s previous size.
But the grand plan fell in a heap before Boyce could even present his report advocating strongly for a return to a 35-member House.
The agreement between the three parties lasted only a matter of months before the dominoes started to collapse.
First the Liberals pulled out of the deal, after a thoroughly fictional inflated figure of $12 million a year was quoted as the cost of making the change (Boyce’s report says the Premier’s Department has calculated the cost at more like $3 million).
Then the Labor Government, whose heart had never really been in it anyhow, used the lack of tripartite support as an excuse to ditch the reform until state finances “markedly improve” (whatever that means).
This leaves only the Greens – who have always had a firm policy of keeping up the parliamentary numbers – supporting a return to the larger, more functional Parliament.
Paradoxically, it’s the Greens who should have been celebrating the gutless decision by the Labor and Liberal parties to keep Tasmania running on a half-empty Parliament.
…
Democracy cannot be done on the cheap.
First published in Mercury, Friday, April 8.
