On the rutted road to non-victory, as the Shooters take their shot

Phillip Bigg turned the wheel of his truck, his chest-length ginger beard flying, and we wheeled off the main road and onto a rutted track. There was a new smooth graded road beside it, but “the owners don’t like us using it”, he said. We had come out of New Norfolk, a town at the southern end of the Lyons electorate, and were heading to Magra, rural backblocks that had once had a town of its own. On the bad road to the ghost town — doesn’t get more symbolic than that.

As we juddered slowly up the hill, I realised I probably wasn’t going to see Phillip, a candidate for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, in action, handing out a few leaflets or talking to the punters, as I’d hoped.

“Yeah, we had some leaflets in the works, but they haven’t arrived.” He grinned. “Shambles, yeah.”

Instead, we had stopped off at his place, to collect one of his seven guns for a photo op. Tasmanian bush hens ran before us, shaking their large rears and upturned wings in a tizzy. A wallaby leapt out.

“Beautiful,” said Phillip. “I should have brought one of the smaller guns.”

Shambles indeed. Phillip is the new state secretary of the Shooters, a party that has been around for a decade in Tasmania without making much of a mark. That, it must be said, is part of the wider Shooters failure. At one stage they had several seats in the NSW lower house and looked like they might be starting to offer a real alternative to the National Party. But then the NSW party exploded with personal infighting and lack of solidarity, and its members sat as independents, save for the remaining “leader” Robert Borsak (now joined by a second).

Could Tasmania serve as a staging post for a revival? Not in 2024.

“We won’t win this time,” Phillip says, as we wheel onto a road that hangs off the side of a cliff, still going upwards. “But this is a starting point.”

Phillip is ostensibly the number two on the Lyons ticket, and he certainly won’t win. But he was the only one of about nine candidates and party emails contacted that got back to me. He might have his work cut out. 

“Surely your problem is with the name?” I said, as we pulled up to a high point and I counted my remaining teeth. “You’ve got a full spectrum of policies. Guns are now actually the least of it…” That’s not completely true. One cause has been resisting the extension of excessive regulation to antique guns, and the party is also in favour of legalising silencers, I guess for the all-important hired killer vote. (Okay, technically sound suppressors for game hunting.)

But on the way up, we had talked of many things — sustainable logging, reforming the salmon industry, greater support for small communities and small businesses, the dud deal that Tasmania’s participation in the national electricity market represents — and he struck me as a far more thoughtful person than the party’s name reflects. We agreed to disagree on stories of kids identifying as cats — “Phillip, it’s an urban myth!” — and a couple of other things. It was easier, since I mostly agree with him on cultural policy. 

“See, the Greenies want…”

“But, Phil, you’re green. Everything you’ve said is green.”

“Well, the party’s green,” he said. “I mean everyone’s green now. It’s just not wanting all the other stuff the Greenies lay on. I mean none of them really go out into the bush now.”

True, the shots we then took at the top of the hill, with the magnificent land spreading out below, put us back in heavy Wagner territory. But, ehhhh, what are you going to do? The Shooters’ inclination — or that of those I’ve encountered — is, paradoxically, more radical than the Greens in terms of notions of a somewhat altered way of life.

It’s talking about the idea that a small and peripheral state such as Tasmania really has to try and foster a set of alternative values, compared to the illusory promises of the major parties, about what makes life worthwhile. This civilisational politics was there at the origin of the Greens. It is now far less possible than it was because the party now represents the knowledge class who like the shiny new world.

That would form the basis for a stable party outside of the left-right system. Compared to the Jacqui Lambie Experience, it is halfway there with regards to having actual policies and a recognisable worldview. But it has a ways to go, starting with that name:

“I dunno,” Phillip said, after complaining about media blackout. “It tells people we don’t give a damn what they think.”

“Yeah, in Tasmania, it’s just kinda dark though…”

We drove past the new estates being built outside of New Norfolk. “Little boxes,” he mused, echoing the ’60s song — “little boxes / on the hillside / little boxes, made of ticky-tacky / and they all look just the same…” — just about the most New Left cry against the standardisation of life. It had been an interesting afternoon. 

But there is still that Tasmanian reticence, not to do politics.

“Let me ask you,” Phillip said, as he dropped me off at the bus station. “With 10 days to go, what would you do?”

“Well, I mean, I’d go to Officeworks and do a 1,000 leaflets for 80 bucks, and get to every farmers market, every turnip festival, every weekend car show within reach. You only need 4,000 votes to be in with a chance…” Was I now helping the Shooters? Is this why people on the left occasionally get ticked off with me?

“Yeah, maybe,” he mused. I’m not sure what the alternative was. But in the longer run, the party may yet have a chance. And absolutely nobody knows what will have transpired, come Monday. But it will be weeks before we find out who was the shooter and who was the wallaby.