The pokies debate isn't about gambling it's about power

When Labor announced its anti-poker machines position, the Tasmanian election became defined by only one issue: Power.
 
Labor shone a torch on the issue of who holds the power in this State and like blue carnivorous moths they came. The interstate pokie barons swarmed in, flooded their cash into our little electoral market and bought a political party.
 
And now we can see who holds the power.
 
No one is surprised of course. This is exactly what happens when you threaten the order of things.
 
I was once taught a very simple distinction between conservatives and progressives.
 
Imagine those wooden alphabet blocks we had as kids. When they're stacked up high in a tower, well that's the conservatives' version of power, with themselves perched on top clutching the spoils to their chest.
 
When the blocks are laid out flat along a wall that's the progressives' version of power, handing out the spoils in small brown-paper parcels of equal measure.
 
It ebbs and flows with every election. The conservatives rebuild the tower and restore themselves to the penthouse suite. The progressives tear down the tower and hand the bricks around.
 
That's the theory anyway.
 
The election campaign has shown us a pretty clear picture of Tasmania right now. At the top of the tower are a few wealthy people, jostling for room on the tiny precipice terrified they'll be found out and it will all come tumbling down.
 
At the bottom of the tower are the rest of us. The great acid-washed. Standing in neat rows keeping the order because we're not quite angry enough and we wouldn't know how to organise ourselves even if we were.
 
Wedged into the corners in the darkness are the quietest of all, the neglected daughter who knows no parent apart from the State, and the son of a fourth generation who knows nothing of what it is to hold a job.
 
Labor's proclamation about the machines that take money from the poorest and gift it to the richest has begun a conversation that we need to have, about who should hold the power in our democracy.
 
And regardless of the outcome of the election on Saturday the tower is shaky. The worn old floorboards are creaking underfoot as we feel the power balance slowly shifting.