Barnaby Drake

Ted Dythum

Peter

Xavier

James Smith

Peter’s pic of the Premier’s website

Jim Crint

National Affairs Correspondent for The Australian - Mike Steketee
Tuesday 27 May 2008 - page 6
‘The departing Tasmanian Premier called yesterday’s [Monday 26 May] events a “smooth transitional leadership change” . another word springs to mind: Desperation. Exposed repeatedly as having little interest in upholding proper standards of behaviour in office, Lennon was about as terminal as a politician can get. It is a rare enough feat for a Government leader to trail the Opposition leader as preferred Premier, but Lennon managed to do it in a poll last week by 39 per cent to 17 per cent. Such a collapse in confidence was a major factor in dragging the Tasmanian Government’s overall support to 25 per cent.’

And a reflection from phill Parsons:

Did somebody get the Numbers on that bus.

Lennon has gone following a declining popularity that confirmed the shrinking chances of labours re-election.

So the reasoning behind the Premiers move given by Lennon’s faction goes.

But what if another factor has come into play and the trip to Aotearoa New Zealand led him to form the view that the icon of his reign was now in ruins, a pulpmill in the current economic circumstances was unviable and therefore it had lost it’s Hart.

We will never know and with China wash with money looking for resources to exploit the possibility remains that such matters will count for little in ensuring lines of supply for 1.3B consumers, short term losses, long term gains.

Whatever, the link between the trade unions and the Labor Party continues to grow more tenuous as a country with little understanding of the role of unions in creating the living conditions they enjoy sees an ongoing decline in union membership reflected in the source of new Labor MPs.

Lennon had been schooled in the struggle within the Right of the Tasmanian Trade Union movement and knew how to work the numbers up until Monday the 26th of MAY 2008 when suddenly his interest in such matters disappeared.

Why so sudden with a deputy who had never sat as such in the parliament ?. No training period, just Left to sink or swim.

Gone is all the years of contact between the forest industry, the racing industry, the gambling industry and the government he managed in bending Tasmania’s future to those interests.

Not that Premier Lennon did not take progressive measures without prompting, for example his apology to the Tasmanian stolen generation stands out as above and beyond. 

Unfortunately the list of negatives from the pulpmill process and the destruction of forests through the Deputy Premiers failing to the PAL policy and its associated MIS along with heartland issues that were left hanging for so long - education, health and welfare - until recently and his failure to consider the key matter, climate, until makeover man was required to front for the old style Lennon in a resuscitation attempt.

So what will the new team bring to us.

Bartlett will be more than a new face with his own style and ideas, for example negotiating over pay rather than alienating the Public Service even further when popularity is so low.

However it is the choice of deputy that sets the new of balance between Labor’s past and the future direction.

Gidding’s election as deputy over Wreidt augers well for much of the past to be put well behind and new substance to appear.

Wreidt’s ambitions now have to wait for the Right time.

One early move that will show that Premier Bartlett as his own man will be the team he selects to run his Premier and Cabinet office. Evan Rolley may be kept on given the nature of contracts but Bartlett must make clear he is the director of strategy not a puppet of an old plan.

Bringing Graham Sturgess into the Ministry can only be the payment to the Right faction. Perhaps in higher office his abilities will improve.

Then there is the three thorns.

Green and Kons will stick in the side and be hard to shift given their popularity as vote getters in that most conservative of seats, Braddon. If change in the Tasmanian community is in the wind Braddon will show that in its election response to their behaviour.

And then there is Martin, lost to Labor through the behaviour of one man, Robin Gray, who created a public man of principle out of a private one by taking his plan for a mill down through the plan.

Now Terry can set the terms of his return or remain free of the party encumbrance to reflect the values of honesty and integrity he sees as important in government if it is to act for the benefit of all Tasmanians.

Winning isn’t everything to such a person.

The 22 month task for Hodgman’s Liberal team has just changed. It may not be harder as the damage done by Lennon’s style of leadership and his decisions will need hard work in a new direction to be distanced from.

However, the Liberals also need to be careful in selecting candidates so they play a consistent progressive tune and avoid standing candidates with dated views and attitudes or their potential will receive another hiding.

For the Greens the message remains the same, integrity in government and selection of a sustainable course for development.

Their hurdle is convincing more Tasmanians that the light goes out with the old parties course, not with theirs.

They may hold the balance of power in what could be a close race as new ideas vie for allegiance in a community divided and focused on the past, something Bartlett has identified as a challenge for his new leadership. 

Perhaps even a review of the forest practices under the RFA or even a Latham like package for renewing Tasmania’s wood based industry may flow from the change, especially if the pulpmill also becomes a financial victim in duck season. 

Unfortunately, for those who may see a new dawn for forests, Rudd has pinned his flag to the mast from the past and put his telescope to the 2020 Vision for forests when that the storm of the climate going unstable needs new rigging, a new course and oil on the waters.

It will take incredibly good luck or an unpredictable catastrophe to turn Tasmania’s forests into a carbon storehouse returning an income to the state and to keep a sustainable native forest industry based on solid wood product.

Perhaps this was the course Lennon saw on his unreported trip around a nation that depends on the clean, the green and the clever to draw tourists to its natural beauty, to restore its natural heritage, to draw on its clean energy sources, to export its agricultural products to the world, and to produce graduates from a high quality education system.

The next piece of positive news for Tasmania adopting a sustainable course will be the pulpmill is unable to find the finance so we can review how we sell the native forest products and make more of their essential natural services to store carbon and water and less of the no value export of woodchips or pulp.

phill Parsons has trouble with believing the spin of Aird and Polley but hopes the manure will benefit the roses at Broadmarsh.

 

Lukas

Comment here

And, there’s more, including Jonathan Bowden, Barnaby Drake,  Ted Dythum, Peter, Xavier, James Smith, the Premier’s website Jim Crint, Mike Steketee, phill Parsons …