After the chaotic Labor-Green Accord in 1989-92 and the accompanying campaign against the Wesley Vale pulp mill, investment in Tasmania fell away.

In the 1996-98 experiment the Greens copped the blame, rightly or wrongly, for any downturn, although the real demon for voters lay in Liberal plans to sell power assets and slash councils.

The latest economic reports from Access Economics and CommSec highlight a state struggling with more bad than good news. There are hopeful signs, whereby Access Economics predicts a 6000 jobs growth up to 2014 when the state election is due, but also forecasts unemployment rising by 2000 in the next year to more than 6 per cent.

The Parliament is more stable than previously, with the Greens largely benign in Cabinet, but the state won't go anywhere far while the yoke of another pulp mill controversy continues to hang round our neck, forestry is once again shackled by environmental politics and the opinion of other states is that we're one big national park, spoiled with excessive GST funding and living off federal handouts.

For almost 18 months the state government hid behind the smokescreen of the federal stimulus fund and, like some other states, falsely used this one-off emergency funding as evidence of a healthy bottom line.

If the government and Greens want to be competitive at the the next election they must portray a state open for business, standing on its own and creating a climate for jobs growth as governments should do, rather than spending precious taxpayer funds creating them all in the public sector.

Both sides of politics are failing to inspire. The government is currently preoccupied with a blown housekeeping budget. The Liberals are hardly captivating us with an alternative vision. The Liberals say we should be waving the open-for-business sign but they have to explain how, and give more detail.

Too many governments have snuck into office with shallow, motherhood platitudes about streamlining, creating and unifying.