Tasmanians in their 'poor, dumb' state were asked in 1999 to dream big about 2020. Now it's here

A little over 20 years ago in Australia's poorest state, a television program played with the fantasy of Tasmania being a social, economic and cultural leader — with participants speaking as if from the future.

The audience seated in that austere ABC studio in October 1999 listened to a number of panellists, all taking part in the suspension-of-disbelief exercise, with host Judy Tierney telling them with a straight face how the place had shed its image of an "economically moribund, geographically isolated island to be recognised as a clever, socially cohesive community of doers".

Occasional cutaways to the audience give a clue as to just how implausible it must have been, with Tasmania of the 1990s reeling from a number of economic, social and cultural blows it had taken — including becoming the location of Australia's worst mass killing, at Port Arthur just a few years earlier.

As the 90s neared their end, Tasmanians had elected a new Labor government which took a proposal to the public — to participate in a kind of collective dreaming and articulate what they wanted Tasmania to be like in the year 2020.

Beginning in 1999, thousands of submissions from individuals and organisations were distilled into a series of goals and benchmarks, argued and debated over, until the first version of Tasmania Together was ready for public release in October 2001.

But dogged with accusations of meddling and a watering down of its aspirations by vested interest groups — including from forestry and gambling — the "community-owned 20-year social, environmental and economic plan for the State of Tasmania" was in trouble from the start.

However — in 1999 at least — the idea of a 'blueprint for the future' captured the imagination of many — among them Jim Bacon, the state's new Labor premier and participant in the ABC's crystal ball exercise, broadcast ahead of the project's first consultations.

In introducing him to the audience under the pretence of it being 20 years into the future, ABC host Judy Tierney said Bacon, "now 70, with snowy pate and moustache" had "handed the reins to our first Aboriginal premier … with a new career coordinating our aging population and developing quality of life programs".

In reality, only three of the five on the panel would live to see the Tasmania of 2020 — Bacon not being one of them.

'Poorest, sickest, dumbest' weighed heavily

While many Tasmanians are yet to see the benefits of what Treasurer Peter Gutwein described as an economic "golden age" of recent years, the turnaround in confidence from 20 years earlier cannot be denied, all of the surviving panellists agreed.

Gerard Castles, a panellist on the 1999 television program and member of Tasmania Together's original "community leader's group", said the state was "the butt of jokes and people could see no way out" of what he described as "an absolute crisis of confidence in the late 90s".

Mr Castles, who was at the public forums and information-gathering sessions, said Tasmania had a reputation as "the poorest, the sickest, the dumbest state in Australia".

"It was a terrible situation to be in and that permeated the whole of society," he said.

The project, with its broad range of goals and benchmarks in pursuit of a better life for Tasmanians, won praise from some circles for its consultative approach and its effect on policymaking — but criticism from others who branded it little more than a feel-good exercise.

Mr Castles, a strategic communications specialist in Hobart, agreed that while there were still huge challenges to overcome, the project was worthwhile.

"What was lacking in the late 90s [was] any clear vision of where we wanted to go; once that stake was in the ground … it began a radical re-engineering of the way Tasmanian society worked, across education, government, health, bureaucracy [and] that overall vision was the key engine that drove change," he said.

Panellist Julie Macken, a journalist who had covered the Gunn's paper mill saga, said it was clear Tasmania in the late 1990s was at a crossroads.

"[The question for Tasmanians was] are we going to become this incredibly cool and clever state, where we produce amazing food, a beautiful place with an exciting culture … or we are going to be logged out, clapped out, where the lowest common denominator rules in terms of business," Macken, who now lives in Sydney, said.

The island state's dark past was never far from the surface, even late into the 1990s, Ms Macken said.

"For my money, Tasmania has always been a place that has produced the best in people and the worst. Some brutal people, a brutal history," she said.

"That sounds extreme, but it felt like that at the time."

Tasmania 'a place to go' when things go 'pear-shaped'

Tierney, who retired from a long career with the ABC in 2003, said: "Tassie is in a pretty good place today, compared to 1999."

"It was very stagnant, economically moribund, but there was something starting to emerge, including a sense we could market our 'clean and green image' around the world," she said.

The state's tourism and investment boom and government push to triple the population by 2050 should be carefully managed, Tierney and Macken agreed, with both mentioning "climate refugees" another factor Tasmania will need to consider.

"We're having this discussion on a day where I'm in Sydney, the air is unbreathable, it is going to be 45 degrees Celsius, myself and most people I know are in the [NSW] Rural Fire Service, we are rotating on and off fighting fires that we've never seen before," Ms Macken said.

For Ms Tierney, the focus on developing the state as an eco-tourism destination, expansion of fish farming and plan to restart the forestry industry after the expiration of the 2020 moratorium on logging were the main concerns for the years ahead.

"I can see dark days coming, you've got the two sides again, so much passion. This isn't good," she said.

Tasmania Together plan gone — eight years early

As early as 2000, rumblings were emanating from within Tasmania Together, with Mr Castles alleging interference from forestry interests over the goal to phase out logging by clear felling by 2010.

More criticism of the shifting of priorities would follow — before news of Jim Bacon's cancer diagnosis would break in February 2004, followed by the announcement Mr Bacon, aged just 54, was dead.

In the four months between the news of Mr Bacon's ailing health and death, Forestry Tasmania announced Tasmania Together's goal of phasing out clear-fell logging by 2010 would result in hundreds of job losses, lower profits and demand for timber, with a call for the proposal to be dumped.

The obituary for Mr Bacon, broadcast on the ABC on June 20, 2004, featured footage from his final press conference months earlier, with him citing his proudest achievement while in office.

"To see the people of Tasmania optimistic and really confident about the future," Mr Bacon answered.

By 2012, the Tasmania Together plan was gone too, eight years early.

Future dreaming

The Tasmania Together project, for all its flaws and arguable outcomes, was vitally important for the state — mostly because of what it offered Tasmanians, Mr Castles said.

"It asked Tasmanians to dream of a future they wanted to have; once they articulated that, it helped the state change forever.

"[Someone in 1999 said] wouldn't it be great to have a kind of Guggenheim-on-the-river; 20 years later you have in MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) quite possibly one of the greatest, if not the best, museums in the world, that is attracting global attention."

Ms Macken said communities and individuals "create our futures, either by thinking about them, or not thinking about them".

Another panellist Robert Theobald, a US-born futurist and author, was introduced to the 1999 audience as if "by special arrangement and hotline to Heaven" — it being common knowledge he had been diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.

Staying with the 2020 theme, Mr Theobald said he had seen what lay ahead for the Tasmanians of 1999.

"I was down here in 1999, there was a level of pessimism, nothing could happen down here, everybody was leaving and 'would the last person turn out the lights'," he said.

"[Tasmanians said] we are going to have a high quality of life, we are going to say the quality of life is more important than the quantity of goods," he said.

"People recognise Tasmania is a leader, one of the places you look for ideas, creativity and vision."

And with that, Mr Theobald sits down, the seeds of a shining Tasmanian future having been sown.