A report on news.com.au last week pondered, with tongue in cheek, whether Australia should cut the state off and let it stand on its own feet. 

Most of the article explored the idea, saying the state gets a higher proportion of GST revenue compared to its population compared to Western Australia. 

It mentioned the state’s slow population growth and unemployment. 

Then it dismissed its own joke at the end, saying the country was one big family. 

It was playful and mostly harmless, except it didn’t quite sit right.

Tasmanians wouldn’t care if they’re the subject of jokes by mainlanders.

But a joke is funniest when there’s a strong element of truth in it. 

This one didn’t quite ring true. 

Obviously the idea of excising parts of the country struggling economically is fantasy anyway. If we did that, it would be goodbye to a lot of regional Australia. 

But Tasmania has contributed much more than Ricky Ponting to Australia’s overall fortunes.

For a start, the tourists that visited the state last year came via a mainland city.

Many will have come to Australia partly because of Tasmania’s appeal.

They’ll go away raving about the state, and draw more people to the country.

But the fact nearly 1 million mainland tourists visited shows its adding something more.

Tasmania’s in the middle of a fairly harsh and radical economic transformation, as it finds new ways to generate wealth apart from forestry and mining.

With the right technology mix it’ll be able to do this.

One of the state’s new hero industries, tourism, shows that Tasmania has the ingenuity to reinvent itself and carve out a future.

When I speak about the state to mainland friends there’s the usual jokes about having two heads.

However Tasmania is in vogue as a tourism destination.

It’s being celebrated more and laughed about less.

It intrigues mainlanders. 

The state’s crop of gourmet food, boutique beer, wine and arts enterprises is exciting to our mainland counterparts.

There’s nothing close to being like MONA up north.

The idea of visiting pristine coastline and rainforest is enticing to people jammed into increasingly crowded cities like Sydney and Melbourne.

Tasmania’s tourism boom didn’t happen by accident. Hard work and bright ideas from locals helped bring this about.

Experiences like Pumphouse Point and the West Coast Wilderness Railway show the state has a genius for harnessing its beauty and rich history in exciting ways for tourists. This kind of creativity bodes well as the state looks for new ways to make money.

There’s other good news too.

The state has experienced an economic turnaround, even if recent job figures are less encouraging. Its agricultural industry is strong.

The news.com.au story described Tasmania as some kind of black sheep in the Australian family.

Not really. It’s coming into its own.

Tasmanians will read articles like that and feel the jokes wash over them like water off a duck’s back.