The Current State of Tasmanian Politics
Today is a very interesting time to call ourselves Tasmanians. With a staggering $500m+ state debt, massive political divergence between the young and old, we find ourselves questioning what balance there will be in Tasmanian democracy going forward from here. As it currently stands we are in a very strange situation where we are seeing the older generations shifting back to more traditional beliefs while the youth are actively defying and even attacking these beliefs outright as well as opposing the authority present, in regards to the Tasmanian Police, State Government and its many branches. It’s not hard to see that Tasmania is very much now the most Conservative state in the nation, but interestingly with the most progressive youth.
To add onto this, there is a vast amount of youth crime present in the Greater Hobart region which has got to a level where multiple bus routes (such as those to Gagebrook, Herdsman Cove etc) are being cancelled or limited due to increasing violence (Metro Tasmania, 2024). This comes at a time when Metro Tasmania (our public service) is having trouble fielding bus drivers in the first place. Recently on one of my own travels on public transport, I witnessed my bus driver get abused by a young individual, who according to staff later that the person also had a concealed knife that he flashed to the very same bus driver the next day. Additionally, I have heard lots of reports from Kinetic Tasmania ranging from bus driver abuse (the most common of the incidents) all the way to smashing windows, vaping, and lighting materials on fire within buses while en route! As a result, many drivers I know have refused to go to work or called in sick after these incidents. I have to ask why would ever want to be a bus driver under the circumstances in Tasmania?
Yet many of these drivers keep going through hell and do their job, one might easily assume at the surface level it’s because it’s their job and they have to, but it goes much deeper than that. If you look deeper it’s more of a stone wall resilient and traditional attitude that back in those days was common sense but now is anything but common with the current young people. Our older folk were and even still are hard workers and this is very much what people today are taking for granted, not only out of disrespect, but absolute despise and hate and we are seeing this more and more with activist groups that are not only attacking the rights of everyday Australians, but also the parties which should be representing the more traditional values of this nation. Much of this change in mindset has to do with many of the cultural and social changes in the late 20th century, where we as a result saw the rights of parents become more diminished and more power handed to the Government.
More and more today we are seeing youth who are not only becoming less wary than a trout but are also expecting more things to be given to them and to be looked after and this is a dangerous precedent for any democracy going forward. The overall role of a government should endorse the freedoms and rights of its people with set boundaries and intervene when problems arise with national security and the economy. The problem with expecting things from the state is that the state would become the provider of the people which means that the state would have to control to keep track of its people to ensure everyone is getting treated equally. But the bigger and more glaring problem is that the youth are actually becoming more and more reliant on politicians to do the right thing while becoming less educated on politics and social issues as we have seen with misreporting and misinformation from all sides of the political spectrum. A slice of this can be blamed on 20th-century politics becoming more populistic and less elitist impacting today (The Crowd, Gustave Le Bon, 1895) but more of this can be attributed to the rise of the internet and less of a need to memorize information and hold attention to things. With the internet, anyone can be an author and claim to be an expert, and unlike something more concrete as a book things are much easier to manipulate, and things are much easier to spread.
Youth crime is only one piece of a greater puzzle where it seems all the pieces do not want to fit nicely, and it looks like there is potential for the wrong pieces to be put together in the future, especially from the Youth who may either vote even more uninformed and misinformed than the previous generation or enter into politics and do an even worse job than our predecessors.
Additionally the results of the 2024 state election have shown a fracturing from the major parties, where both our primary left (Labor) and right (Liberal) parties have been thoroughly rejected from forming a majority government, again much of this can be attributed to the Hobart stadium debate but I believe that due to the re-establishment of a 35 seat parliament + new young voters entering into the voter base with result in further losses for the major parties over time and larger gains for the minors.
That is just my brief reflection of observations made on the Tasmanian political scene, and more specifically a great danger from the youth in the long term. I hope this either provided a little insight or a different perspective on many changes happening in Tasmania.
This article is an open project and will be expanded over the next couple weeks so expect corrections, changes and updates.
Bibliography (Harvard Referencing):
Hobart: Gagebrook/Herdsmans Cove Service Early Termination (17 April 2024), Metro Tasmania, accessed 25 April 2024.
Le Bon G (1895) The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, CreateSpace, France, accessed 24 April 2024
Bovill M (11 June 2019) Tasmania was once (figuratively) split in two, could it happen again?, ABC News, accessed 25 April 2024.
#Tasmania #taspol #auspol #Hobart #politics #socialissues #tasmanianpolitics
