From history's page

HISTORY teaches us that we learn nothing from history, poet Steve Turner wrote. In Tasmania we have one of the few chances left to learn and understand in  history's classroom.

A cursory examination of Tasmania's history reveals a sorry record of inappropriate action and exploitation.

A few:

  • The apparently irremedial pollution of the King and Queen rivers.
  • The extinction of the Tasmanian emu.
  • The denuding of the Derwent Estuary, once  a whale breeding or courting ground. Judging by our fascination with the glorious creatures, imagine the  tourism potential if they were still there cavorting.
  • And, perhaps most famously the extinction of the Tasmanian tiger.

    • Sunday Tasmanian writer Simon Bevilacqua revealed the shameful tragedy which signed the death warrant of the Tasmanian tiger in an interview last year with   historian and researcher Bob Paddle. 

    The article detailed the debates in the Tasmanian Parliament in the 1880s which led to a bounty on the head of the  tiger. Tasmanian politicians representing a powerful sheep industry lobby group grossly exaggerated problems farmers had with thylacines. 

    The motives, says Dr Paddle, were an attempt by the ``wool kings'' to transfer power from the state level to local council, where the rural lobby was strong, and to expand sheep runs into Crown land.

    The bounty  produced an editorial attack from the Tasmanian News. ``Year after year this pampered industry has . . . held the leading place in the favourable attentions of the legislature . . . the wool kings govern the House and they get whatever they ask,'' it said. Bevilacqua says the bounty began in 1888 and the first payment was made on April 24, 1888. "Little more than 2000 bounties were paid out and decimation of the species to the point of no return cost a mere ( pound stg.) 2000."

    And, he quotes Paddle: ``It remains a challenge for all modern-day economic rationalists to identify another situation of such significant bio-diversity reduction where so much wanton environmental destruction has been obtained for so little reason and so little money." 

    Perhaps until now.

    In colonial times there were societal layers of masters, overseers and servants/slaves.

    Perhaps today's Tasmania is largely the same. The political establishment may have changed its complexion from a conservative squatocracy but it is no less narcissistic, oppressive and hyper-sensitive to questioning and proper debate than the colonial masters.

    Then there are the overseers, whether in the Public Service, organisations dependent on government largesse ("If you don't toe the line you won't work in Tasmania") or the media, whose proper function is to question as well as report.

    Then, there are the servant/slaves - just grateful for a job.

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