As the Governor’s Speech marking the first day of Parliament drew to a close on Tuesday (Sept 24) Jim Bacon’s Government could gaze out into a future of seemingly limitless possibility.

Radical social reform was announced removing all laws discriminating against same-sex couples, a move considered the widest-ranging reform of its type in Australia (but not allowing gay marriage); the sex industry was to be regulated with legal brothels in appropriate light industrial or commercial areas; legislation would protect small business from bullying or anti-competitive behaviour.

All in all a legislative agenda full of social promise and pointing to the golden age of plenty – if the Government and its cheerleaders are believed.

Treasurer David Crean got a big tick from international rating agency Standard and Poors which lifted Tasmania’s credit rating from AA- to AA with a likely upgrade to AA+ over the next few years – because the Government has paid off state debt and lowered state tax rates to the nation’s lowest, bar Queensland.

The new twin ferries promise to be the highway to this golden age and their cargo-cult-like welcome in Tasmania and in Melbourne in the past few weeks indicates half the population believes it.

The Government is trumpeting the fact that first bookings show a huge boost to tourism traffic. Most welcome. Quite wonderful; who would not want the tourism industry to thrive and thrive?

But every silver lining has its cloud and a downside must surely be a further “globalisation’’ of the Tasmanian economy as the ferries also support the bulk importation of goods.

Thus, Coles and Woolworths which already have captured 80 per cent of the national market, make further inroads into Tasmanian small business. And a greater percentage of the goods on the shelves are interstate eggs, meat and vegies and other goodies shipped in bulk on the “Tassie Twins”.

Globalisation – seemingly unavoidable and bringing benefits – is not some glorious ultimate panacea and brings sweeping in its path a comet’s tail of consequences: The Simplot rationalisation may be a case in point as this multinational giant rationalises out of existence its Scottsdale plant, leading to the lost of more than 100 jobs.

Globalisation must go hand-in-hand with global justice. Reviewer Leon Gettler made this point recently: “Globalisation moves in a two-step pattern – closed markets in developed countries and rapid liberalisation in developing countries. And it is often so unequal: average tariffs imposed on poor countries exporting to rich countries are much higher than for the poor; thus the mighty are much more equal than the powerless.

And justice is most certainly not what Tasmanian meat workers are experiencing. With the collapse of Blue Ribbon Tasmania’s meat processing industry is in dire straits … Tasmania’s best meat is going out on the hoof rather than being processed downstream in Tasmania and proudly exported with the premium association of being grown in Tasmania’s comparatively pristine environment. It is impossible to escape the impression that the Bacon Government failed to seize an opportunity to properly restructure the industry in Tasmania when Blue Ribbon first began to stagger.

And now to energy … powering up the age of plenty in the Bacon Government’s grand vision are Basslink and Duke Energy.

And the glossy spin of achievement and promise is already slightly tarnished.

There will be no roll out for domestic and small-business users of gas for anything up to 10 years.

And, more suspiciously, the Bacon Government has been economical in revealing its prior knowledge of this failure.

State Parliament heard that Deputy Premier Paul Lennon knew earlier this year that bids to build Tasmania’s retail gas network failed to meet some minimum requirements – but he denied knowledge of the problem in the lead-up to the state election.

Green and Liberal MPs accused Mr Lennon of misleading Parliament and the public in order to give the impression the tender process was going smoothly in the lead-up to the election.

And there is a lingering suspicion that the whole process has been inadequately handled with Government spin giving the impression of gas goodies in an impossibly short timeframe … after all it took decades for the Hydro to fully service Tasmania.

And now to the bread and circuses … to be provided by Hawthorn and St Kilda at York Park in the winter – in a triumph of a new parochialism which shuns the capital city’s Bellerive Oval; the Government’s parochial and pragmatic political will in this matter ultimately wearing down Football Tasmania.

And, now, the big gamble … and a fascinating business/government nexus.

A nice chunk of the funds in the Government’s coffers is from gambling. The State Labor Government is addicted to gambling, overseeing every hit on the proliferated pokies by the proportion of Tasmania’s population which can least afford it.

As The Tasmanian Interchurch Gambling Taskforce spokesperson Reverend Chris Jones told Simon Bevilacqua in The Sunday Tasmanian: “The problem is enormous but the biggest addict is our state government, it’s addicted to the revenue stream.’’

“The state government coffers were last year boosted by $75 million from gambling, including horse racing. Taxes from gambling were the state’s third highest revenue earner after payroll tax and stamp duties,’’ Bevilacqua wrote; quoting Jones as saying: “This is a tax on the poor. It is dangerously irresponsible.”

The Federal Hotels/State Government gambling nexus is seeing a significant transfer of wealth within the state from the poorest to the richest; the long-term consequences are yet to be realised.

Federal Hotels and Resorts – with a nine-year monopoly on pokies roll-out until 2009 – now controls the Abt – now Wilderness – Railway, prime East Coast real estate, Strahan Village and Gordon River cruises.

Then we have the debate that will not die; the forests, the debate in which the art of spin doctoring is seen at its most obtuse as logs, damn logs and statistics are used fiercely in this most brutal clash of cultures.

This is a clash of cultures between the Old Tasmania mentality of resource development and New Tasmania’s “clever’’ age of creativity.

And this is why this debate is so important… because it is a paradigm of Tasmania; why it was the only significant issue of the recent state election; why it is the issue which stirs Tasmania’s heart and soul like no other since the Franklin River debate.

It is an issue which appears to affront many Tasmanians’ sense of justice and understanding of their very soul – the latest sense of outrage emanating from the recent revelation that a rare slice of Tasmania’s maritime history in the remote south is set to be clearfelled.

A privately-owned section at Bennetts Point on the north-east peninsula of Recherche Bay near Cockle Creek is to be logged by woodchip giant Gunns; the area French explorer Nicolaus Baudin eulogised in 1802: “It is most extraordinary to see these dense forests, ancient daughters of nature and time, where the noise of an axe is never heard and where the vegetation is richer every day from its own product.”

Local tourism operators are incensed; one, Mike Foley, quoted by Sunday Tasmanian writer Bevilacqua as saying: “Visual ecological disasters, screaming log trucks on country roads, native wildlife poisoning sanctioned by the Government because it is the cheapest alternative.’’

And here is the Bacon Government’s big problem ... how can the burgeoning tourism industry with such massive promise from the “Tassie Twins’’ co-exist with clearfell, poisoning, screaming log trucks, and monoculture forests; as it spends millions promoting the tourism benefits of the twin ferries, it encounters massive negative publicity as tabloid TV (A Current Affair) tackles its clearfell/poisoning/plantation policy, or The Australian Financial Review does a three-page special on Gunns.

And how can the burgeoning arts culture live with sponsorship from Forestry, an organisation it regards with distaste?

Who will forget the white clouds of Forestry burn-off smoke billowing into the clear blue skies during the first 10 Days on the Island cultural festival last year; or the white-hot rage of Premier Bacon when presented with artists’ protest at this and the issue of old-growth clearfelling.

And as the date for Tasmania’s next 10 Days draws nearer this particular debate is going to grow like a wildfire.

There are several dozen writers and artists disaffected by the heavy-handed association of Forestry sponsorhsip with the arts; arguably the debate has claimed its first casualty, with the resignation of Readers’ and Writers’ Festival program director Lindsay Simpson. Many high-profile writers have been concerned at any association with Forestry and writers’ festival director Joe Bugden wrote to Tasmanian Writers’ Centre members in May to assure them that Forestry Tasmania was NOT a sponsor of the Readers’ and Writers’ Festival.

Then, soon after, internationally-renowned writer Richard Flanagan withdraw his award-winning novel Gould’s Book of Fish from the 10 Days’ big award … the $40,000 Pacific Area Literary Prize. It’s not often a writer feels so incensed he/she will opt out of a chance at $40,000. But Flanagan was anguished enough to act – as he explains fully in his letter to Henry Reynolds, published in full by the Tasmanian Times.

All this controversy points to another feature of the state we’re in: the sometimes brutal exclusionism of the one-party state.

There are those who say that if you oppose the Premier/Deputy Premiers’ full pro-forests position – or question its development or wealth-transfer policies – you face vilification and exclusion. Ask prominent conservative Tasmanians who have reconsidered their position.

Perhaps the half-joking statements of prominent Tasmanians firmly entrenched as power players in the Government/business nexus are more than light asides: “Toe the line or you won’t work in Tasmania.’’

And: “Old-growth logging in Tasmania ends when Gunns says it ends.’’

The Bacon Government is blowing up its development balloon taking us along for the ride.

Paradox is in the basket beneath the balloon – that uneasy interface of tourism and resource exploitation, of the party of the workers as the biggest supporter of big business.

We’re on a fascinating journey.

Mind you, this is Tasmania and we have always marched to a drum beat distinct from the rest of Australia.

Our history is different; the structure and layers of Tasmanian society have developed with their own distinctive island character ... and perhaps, here lies a the beginnings of an understanding of our current political reality ...

For, in colonial times there were masters, overseers and servants/slaves, and perhaps today’s Tasmania is largely the same.

The political establishment may have changed its complexion from the conservative squatocracy of the 19^th century.

But there are the same old old-boys’ networks; a new century “interface between big money, senior bureaucrats and the strongmen of whichever of the two parties of capital happens to be in power at the time,’’ as academic Peter Hay so eloquently puts it.

And this ruling class; this one-party state, is no less narcissistic, oppressive and hyper-sensitive to questioning and proper debate than the colonial masters.

The overseers can be found in the Public Service, organizations dependent on government largesse (“Toe the line or you won’t work in Tasmania”) and sprinkled throughout ever strata of society, from business to sport.

Then, there are the servants/slaves – just grateful for a job.

There is another disparate group – the Dissenters; the Outsiders ... whether they be the corner store owners alarmed by the increasing globalisation of the Tasmanian economy, the cashed-up expatriates looking for nirvana or the disquieted retirees alarmed by billowing plumes of Forestry burn-off smoke.

All recalctricants can take inspiration from history, however – and one historical symbol of intransigence are the Pipes of the 19^th century.

John West (once editor of the Launceston Examiner, then later the Sydney Morning Herald) in his History of Tasmania (1852) wrote:

“The newspapers of this hemisphere were long mere vehicles of government intelligence, or expressions of the views and feelings of the ruling powers’’.

He recorded how “Malice or humour, in the early days, expressed itself in what were called Pipes – a ditty, either taught by repetition or circulated on scraps of paper: the offences of official men were thus hitched into rhyme.’’

Thus, “the fear of satire checked the haughtiness of power’’.

Long may it be so in this, beloved Tasmania!