Early state election throws up raft of big questions to ponder

Under our normal four-year cycle, the Gutwein Government would have faced a State election in a matter of weeks.

So it’s interesting to consider how a March, 2022, election may have influenced the political decision-making, communications and priorities of the past six months, particularly the timeframes and planning for re-opening borders.

By going to the polls in May, 2021, a year early and on arguably spurious grounds, Premier Peter Gutwein put the greatest possible distance between his Government’s most consequential COVID-19 decision to date – to re-open our state borders and readmit the virus – and having to face voters to defend that decision.

Moreover, the decision took effect in a holiday period when people were most distracted with other priorities and with the longest possible time before Parliamentary scrutiny would be applied.

Some will applaud that as politically clever.

Others will find it significantly concerning.

I ask what may have played out if a March 2022 election was to occur as planned?

• Would Reconnecting Tasmania, the Government’s “safe border reopening plan”, have been revised with new modelling after the arrival of Omicron in Australia at the end of November?
• Would we have seen more regular release and explanation of the public health advice forming the basis for decisions being made?
• Would Education Minister Sarah Courtney have gone overseas on holiday directly before schools were due to reopen?
• Would all COVID packs have been planned, prepared and delivered to all schools and families well ahead of the first day of school?
• Would we have 100 per cent confidence that all school environments are appropriately ventilated?
• Would we have seen a higher level of meaningful support to those small Tasmanian businesses pushed to the wall in the wake of reopening?

We can only speculate on the answers to those and many other questions.

But a fundamental principle of democracy is that the Government of the day is accountable to voters at election time, and between elections it is accountable to Parliament, as the community’s representative.

What Tasmania has seen is the Gutwein Government dodge electoral accountability for its hard decisions and also block appropriate Parliamentary scrutiny in the form of a committee of inquiry into COVID-19 response and recovery.

Contrast that with South Australia, which goes to an election on 19 March 2022, per its fixed four-year cycle, and continues to benefit from the scrutiny provided by its Select Committee on COVID-19 Response, established in early April 2020.

The Select Committee delivered its second interim report in November last year and continued with hearings across the summer break while its Parliament wasn’t sitting.

Via that Committee, SA’s border reopening is being scrutinised on the public record, just this week receiving evidence from the Australian Education Union, the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, and Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union.

Undeniably, many Tasmanians feel let down and disregarded by the Gutwein Government who subjected our State to borders re-opening just as a new COVID variant was emerging and caused disruption to lives and businesses to an unanticipated and unprepared for degree.

Many in the community are afraid for their own and their families’ well-being, especially those that have health vulnerabilities. Many businesses are suffering and face uncertain futures.

The next State election – scheduled for 2025 – is away in the distance and the Premier is surely hoping that the current community consternation and significant disapproval of his border reopening strategy will be a distant memory by the time it comes around.

In the meantime, Tasmanians must look to the democratic institution of their Parliament to give them voice, represent their interests and provide scrutiny of the government and its decisions.

That is the context in which we have seen calls for an early resumption of Parliament sitting and a renewal of calls for an appropriate Parliamentary Committee of inquiry into COVID-19 response.

We had very limited Parliamentary sitting days in the first half of 2020 due to the initial COVID lockdown, and again in 2021, due to an unnecessary early election.

We are two years into what can only be regarded as “Democracy-lite” in Tasmania.

We may also be again setting ourselves up to lose the first half of the Parliamentary year in what remains an historically challenging time.

Where is our back to “Safe, Strong Parliament Plan”?

Where is the guarantee that we have robust arrangements in place to maintain the business of democracy in the face of COVID-19?

The Gutwein Government should have the intestinal fortitude to answer to the Tasmanian people for its decisions.

If not by an election, then through the most robust Parliamentary scrutiny that can be brought to bear.

The Tasmanian people deserve nothing less.