Territorial Modes of Governance and the Discourses of Community Reaction in the State of Tasmania

Abstract

Reflecting on neo-liberal and Deleuzian theory, this paper examines how new modes of governance are shaping Australian regions and what kind of resistance is emerging in response to them, in particular to government encouragement of business and commercial appropriation. The first part of the paper discusses recent literature on regional policy-making in the context of neo-liberalism. It is argued that Deleuzian metaphors such as ‘reterritorialisation’, ‘deterritorialisation’, ‘machinic assemblages’, ‘folding’ and ‘lines of flight’ provide a rich conceptual vocabulary that can be used to enhance an understanding of contemporary regional policy-making. To demonstrate the efficacy of this claim, the paper draws upon the example of policy-making in the Australian State of Tasmania and the conflicts these policies have generated. Amongst the paper's conclusions is that the competitive practices now being pursued within the auspices of regional policy-making generate a set of new interactions that have significance both across Australia and beyond.

The author is grateful to the two anonymous referees for their helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this paper. He would also like to thank Richard Herr for sharing his knowledge of Tasmanian politics, and Warren Sproule for his advice on the writings of Deleuze.

Notes

1. The Australian political system is federal in structure. The Commonwealth government based in Canberra is responsible for national economic policy and industrial, foreign affairs and defence. The six State governments (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania) and two Territory governments (Northern Territory and The Australian Capital Territory) have devolved responsibilities for health, education, local economic policy and social policy. There are also areas of overlapping roles; for example, higher education.

2. The challenge is made all the more onerous because Deleuze and Guattari reworked many of their definitions during the course of their writing.

3. In this regard, Deleuze and Guattari have been influential in the ‘actor network theory’ approach developed by the French sociologist Bruno Latour (2005).

4. Over the past 60 years (1936 onwards), the Liberal Party has only been in government for 16 years in Tasmania.

5. See for example: www.tasmaniantimes.com/index.php/weblog/comments/the-sins-of-labor/.

6. At the time of writing (July 2007), the charge by Gunns has not yet been determined by the courts.

7. For an extended discussion of what Deleuze and Guattari metaphor as the ‘social machine’, see Hillier (2007, p. 62).

8. The government tendered for interested agencies to assess the pulp mill application and chose a Swedish company ‘Sweco Viak’ from their shortlist.