Last night a prominent Tasmanian, author Richard Flanagan, used the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards to again berate the Tasmanian forestry industry, and in particular the bete noir of the environmental movement, Gunns. And Flanagan praised The Monthly magazine for agreeing to run a story he had written on Gunns and forestry in Tasmania last year.
Flanagan, The Monthly and mainland newspapers like The Age and The Australian are perfectly entitled to focus on the problematic nature of forestry in Tasmania, but in giving so much prominence to the plight of the physical environment they are masking what is a national scandal — the crushing intergenerational poverty that bedevils this island state of 500,000 people.
Tasmania is Australia’s Mississippi or Alabama, a proposition neatly illustrated by The Hobart Mercury’s recent expose about a homeless family on Tasmania’s North West coast. This family was living in a car for weeks, unable to get accommodation from the resource stretched government and non government community housing and accommodation organisations.
This family’s situation is far from an isolated one as an statistical analysis bears out.
Consider these facts about Tasmania:
- Tasmanian households have the lowest median income in the nation at $801 per week compared to a national average of $1027.
- A staggering 37 percent of Tasmanians rely on some form of government pension — well above the national average of 27.7 percent.
- The two poorest electorates in Australia are in Tasmania — Lyons has a poverty rate of 14.9 percent and Braddon has a poverty rate of 15.1 percent.
- Tasmania has the second highest, behind the Northern Territory, teenage pregnancy rates in the nation.
- The number of Tasmanians staying at school beyond Year 10 is 10 percent lower than the national average. It has the worst literacy and numeracy rates in Australia.
- And life expectancy in Tasmania is over one year less than the national average. As the peak Tasmanian welfare body TASCOSS notes: “…rates of death by cancer are the highest in the country and Tasmania is second to the Northern Territory in death rates from diabetes and suicide. A higher proportion of Tasmanians dies from heart disease and has chronic diseases such as asthma and arthritis than the national average.”
This is the tragic real story of Tasmania — one of which mainland Australia is sadly rarely made aware.
Too many Australians see Tasmania as the nation’s environmental bell jar. They salve their conscience by giving money to Wilderness Society saving Tassie forests campaigns and when they head to the Island they are outraged when they see a clear felled forest, but are unaware that down the road is a community that is permanently economically and socially depressed.
Just as some genuinely great journalism and writing has been spawned in the US by lifting the scab off oppression in the Deep South — it is time that writers, journalists and other voices of influence began to give a voice to those thousands of Tasmanians whose daily lives are relentlessly harsh. Trees are but a small part of the overall landscape in the Island State.
Perhaps it is just a place where the locals like to see their kids leave for mainland jobs?
I would have thought the “natural lifestyle” would provide longer lives…who are we kidding?
Investors like Gunns must be shaking their heads.
Worst though, are us mainlanders, who condemn Tasmanians to this life in search of our own environmental satisfactions.
Greg can’t resist an attempt at belittling anyone who has fought for honesty in the Tasmanian political system. The crap he has spouted over the last few years is now becoming apparent to everyone, as Gunns’ pulpmill gradually keels over under the weight of their incompetence. He has backed the wrong horse, as he was told a long time ago. Gunns mill is a crock, and was obviously so a long time ago, and Greg will now try to rewrite history to prove he was right in some way all along. The problems in Tasmania are many, and mainly caused by the government, which has also spent its entire energy for several years focusing on one dud project, the wrong-headed Gunns Tamar pulpmill. This single focus makes it hardly surprising that the education system is broken, which is why so many of us choose to educate our children privately. This is not limited to Tasmania.
And for Nesta: There are problems in the Tasmanian public education system, but frankly, Nesta, if you choose to live at Carlton Beach, then you choose to have significant transport costs. No doubt you were sold the property by someone who told you it was 20 minutes from the CBD. I’m assuming that you have since discovered that the lifestyle is great, when you have the time to be there, but it isn’t raining much, and it takes a lot more than 20 minutes to get to the CBD, especially in the morning traffic. Your 20 minutes is quite dishonest, so how about withdrawing it. Your community is on the distant south-eastern outskirts, at about the point where people start to struggle to afford to commute to Hobart for work. In fact, people who earn less than you probably struggle closer in, especially if they have to catch a bus, or can’t share a car. If you want your children to have an easy commute to a quality college, you will need to move closer, no government can afford to build a good college next to everybody’s house.
I’m not a mathematician but I know there is a difference between ‘median’ and ‘average’ in statistics. Why are you comparing the Tasmanian median income with the national average income? If you have a point to make, shouldn’t you be using the statistics honestly? This bit of trickery makes me question the other figures (unless this is a sad illustration of point five).
It’s not often I agree wholeheartedly with Greg Barns but in this instance I must congratulate him on attempting to bring what is, a national disgrace to the forefront.
I moved to Tasmania from Sydney eight years back and while Tasmania has many advantages none of them are economic. The education system is a shambles and the government, well what’s left of it, actually encourage children to leave school in Year 10 by virtue of only a few public schools offering the Year 11 and 12 syllabus.
Fortunately, I make my income from the marvellous connectivity of the internet but few in the community are so fortunate. My daughter who has ambitions in Science will need to travel to Mt. Nelson from Carlton Beach, a round trip of 100 kms, to complete her schooling before entering university under the current public education system.
The hospital system isn’t in much better condition and to highlight how bad things really are my community of Carlton Beach and Dodges Ferry, only 20 minutes drive from the CBD is still to have running water supplied by our elected officials. This means that not only do we have our water trucked in from elsewhere at great expense but no industry, however small, will set up in the area for their are no facilities to accomodate them.
The bar is set so low that Sorell High School had a former student who departed in Year 10 give a presentation the other day on what a wonderful career she now has at Domino’s Pizza. I kid you not.
The Mercury has a monolopy on printed news in the South of the state and for reasons unknown never highlight the inadequacies apparent to migrants like myself.
It is a farce and unless Federal intervention is forthcoming Tasmania will continue on its merry way to become the basket-case of the first world. The generous and easy-going people of Tasmania deserve better and I’d like to thank Greg for speaking up on what should be front-page news.
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