Re: Australian Greens discussion
It seems that Tasmania thinks it's o.k to shut down most of its industry, in the name of conservation.
But they don't like it when people point out they are a welfare state, of their own choice.
There has been a significant degree of population churn which brings this about.
Go back a generation and Tasmanians were very much in favour of development and much was happening. Go back even further and you'll find that quite a few "firsts" for Australian cities were did in fact occur in Hobart or Launceston.
But if you look at the past third of a century or so, Tas has essentially stagnated to the point that it is now pretty much accepted as reality. Those in favour of development today, are about as quiet as those opposed to it were at one time. "No" has become the new normal.
Meanwhile people seeking employment have left the state to pursue opportunities elsewhere meanwhile the state has become a magnet for those of the opposite view. Tasmania has thus transformed from having a larger industrial base than either WA or Qld in the 1960's to the point where a recent major controversy erupted over (quite literally) some awnings on an old bank building. Some of the former pillars of development still stand, many are gone, and all are virtually silent.
Perhaps the most worrying of all is to look at how many Tasmanians are actually employed in a business that is not either run directly by government, has government as its' major customer, or government as its' major supplier. Something like half the population depends directly on government, and it's even higher once you count the various private businesses which are merely an outsourced part of the public service, having little if any revenue from anyone other than government.
To be honest and trying to be reasonably objective, Tasmania is about as close as you'll find to a centrally planned economy in a Western country. It's hard to find
anything that government doesn't have a role in somewhere.
To some extent there was always an element of this. Engineers were the defacto central planners previously, and pretty much officially so for 50 years. All that's really changed is that environmentalists / Greens have become the new central planners. Engineers built engineering things, most notably hydro-electric dams and heavy processing and manufacturing industries (especially those which use lots of power). In contrast the conservationists conserve things, most notably rivers and trees (especially trees in areas that also have dammable rivers or minerals).
Both have similar passion but have an entirely different view of how the world ought to be. Perhaps strangely, the dominance of the Greens has effectively turned the engineers into capitalists. Where once their objective was to break even financially whilst creating employment, now there is blatant pursuit of profit. Greens are also somewhat more profit motivated than you might expect, much of their opposition to some activities officially being based on lack of profit as key (or in some cases only) concern.
It won't change until there's a sufficient event to force it. In all seriousness, over the past year or so I've started to think that the Tasmanian Government might literally end up going bankrupt at some point. Seriously, it's not something I'd previously considered as a possibility but I do think it's at least possible going forward from this point. I won't say too much, but I'm absolutely certain that unsustainably
high revenues are being received from some government businesses and yet still there's a budget deficit. Once those excess revenues fall in a heap, and that they will is virtually certain, well that's when I think things could turn nasty in a big way.
The Greens will have their era, especially in Tasmania, just as everything else before it has also had its' era. It's hard to predict the future, but conservation itself is now hitting the limits of constant growth.