Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Australian Politics and Policy
many environmental clashes over hydro dams, logging of native forests and, more
recently, concerns about the location and scale of tourism developments.
Political history
Tasmania’s political history has been shaped by its geography and is defined by
six broad eras: Aboriginal settlement; European exploration and convict settlement
at the time of the early Industrial Revolution; the end of convict transportation
followed by self-government during the mid-19th century; Federation and statehood
followed by hydro-industrialisation for much of the 20th century; the rise of
the Green movement and the decline of manufacturing from the 1970s; and the rise
of tourism and the services sector from the 1990s.
Tasmania, known as lutruwita 1 by its Indigenous inhabitants, the palawa
people, was first settled between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago, when there was
alandconnectionwiththeAustralianmainland due to lower sea levels during
the last ice age. Subsequently isolated by rising sea levels, there were nine tribes
spread throughout the area. However, immediately before European settlement, the
palawa population was estimated at less than 15,000.
Located to the south-east of the Australian continent, Tasmania became a waypoint
for European explorers of the Pacific, who followed the prevailing westerly
winds from the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. Early explorers included Abel
Tasman, who landed in 1642 and named the area Van Diemen’s Land. Marion
DuFresne (1772), Tobias Furneaux (1773), James Cook (1777) and William Bligh
(1788 and 1792) all visited around this time, as did several other French and British
explorers.
The first European settlement on the Derwent River, near present-day Hobart,
in 1803 was based partly on fear of French ambition, especially as George Bass and
Matthew Flinders had shown in 1798 that Van Diemen’s Land was separate from
the mainland and therefore might be distinct from the British claim to New South
Wales (NSW). 2 Tasmania’s usefulness as a jail for convicts and political prisoners
was also important as it was realised that, as an archipelago of remote islands,
escape was almost impossible. 3
The Bass Strait islands were used by sealers from the late 18th century, and
intermarriage between Aboriginal women and European sealers was common.
However, a clash between the palawa and the first European settlers near modernday
Hobart led to a massacre and continuing intercultural violence, when a large
1 The written form of the Tasmanian Aboriginal language, palawa kani, has only lower case letters
following a decision by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre to discontinue capitals (Harman
2018).
2 Clements 2014.
3 Although, in 1834, ten audacious convicts managed to build a boat, commandeer it and sail to
Chile (Courtenay 2018).
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