The makeover of cuddly Paul

AS Linda Smith in The Mercury observed last month, once you see Paul Lennon setting up a photo opportunity with a dog, you know there’s a state election in the offing.

Given that the Premier has barely deigned to give a press conference or even a comment (other than “Don’t talk shit” and “Who gives a rat’s arse about that?”) in his years in power, it’s intriguing to imagine the intellectual processes behind the scenes that led to the dog-cuddling incident …

Soft dissolve to the corridors of power along which stride, West-Wing style, a pair of furrowed-browed individuals …

Adviser 1: Paul needs an image makeover. The market research is showing that the rug rethink only increased his approval rating by 0.5 percentage points across electorates and actually decreased it in Braddon.

Adviser 2: I know, he could shave his moustache off too.

Adviser 1: Well it would differentiate him from Bryan Green — but it could lose more ground in Braddon.

Adviser 2: I’ve got it! Call the driver. There’s a letter here from the RSPCA — Cripps Nu-Bake is donating five cents for every loaf it sells at Woolworths for the next 12 months to the RSPCA shelter. They’re announcing it out there in half an hour. Get Paul out there, put a fluffy homeless puppy in his arms. Snap, ah, doesn’t that look cute? He really is a nice guy after all.

Two weeks later …

Adviser 1: It hasn’t worked. There hasn’t been any movement in the approval rating and I can’t get the dog hairs off that jacket.

Adviser 2: Try sticky tape.

Adviser 1: I think we’re going to have to get a little more sophisticated.

Adviser 2: You mean dry-cleaning?

Adviser 1: Look, no-one fell for that cute and fluffy shit, but he’s still got trade union cred. We need a big statement about supporting the workers of this state. The logging contractors are turning dirty on Gunns. Even the CFMEU have unpuckered their lips. So we’ve gotta try a different tack.

Adviser 2: I’ve got it! Paul goes to welcome the Fair Dinkum Food campaigners off the Spirit as they arrive back in the state.

Adviser 1: No, bugger it — it would be perfect, because everyone agrees with the campaign. It’s the perfect no-brainer. But the bloody Federal Government has already got behind it. We need something different, something really striking …

Cut to pages of next day’s papers …

“The rights of state workers will be protected by new laws designed to fight the Federal Government’s proposed industrial relations changes. Premier Paul Lennon yesterday announced he would introduce the legislation into Parliament later this year.

“I don’t want to see an Australia where we have a working poor, where families cannot get a home loan or buy a car because there is no certainty of employment,” Mr Lennon said. “That is why my Government will legislate to protect Tasmanian workers and their families.”

He cares, he really cares! And, Gabfest ventures to suggest, a lot of people who may have been ready to give the Lennon Government a swift kicking at the next state election might find that when the time comes, the prospect of living under the federal industrial relations changes with Liberals in power at the state level too may weaken the anti-Labor resolve.

And,

A RUNNING sore as far as state political issues goes is the waiting lists at public hospitals. The figures look bad, but there is a positive side to the state of our hospitals: they have not buckled to expediency the way their counterparts in other states have. If you can actually get admitted to the Royal Hobart Hospital, you will be treated with every care and attention. The medical staff decline to cut corners, the nursing staff are professional, helpful and pro-patient. Despite the horror of the waiting list, there are no matching horror stories about the treatment at the Royal. No people killed by having the wrong drugs administered by exhausted nurses or wrong kidneys removed. No people dying neglected in their beds when there is no response to their emergency buzzer.

Please feel free to contradict this with any horror stories you are aware of, but this columnist had an elderly alcoholic friend admitted to the Royal as an emergency case recently. They kept him there for six weeks and were keen to repeat all the procedures and keep him there for another six weeks just to be sure they had completely cured him, except he protested and, after thoughtful rehabilitation, he was duly discharged. He is now making an excellent recovery.

In another hospital, in another state, the doctors may have decided that because of his age and his habits, my friend wasn’t worth wasting the resources on.

It would be a really awful thing if the public agitating over waiting lists led to hospital staff having to compromise standards to feed a few more patients through.

Gabfest is a Tasmanian media professional