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Sue Neales Saturday Mercury

It’s a line you will certainly have heard Premier Paul Lennon repeat countless times: “We have a lifestyle that’s the envy of the nation.” He likes to thunder it with pride. But, seriously, do we? Do all Tasmanians have a great lifestyle? Is life really better for everyone living here than if they were living in some other magical spot in Australia? Do children here have a better time, a brighter future and a healthier and happier life than if they and their families lived elsewhere?
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Martin spoke of his dismay in watching a “New Tasmania” — which had been on the path to becoming less parochial, more outward-looking and more confident — turn back towards policies focused on footy teams, race tracks, single projects such as a big pulp mill and a general cargo-cult mentality. And of how another lifestyle and direction for the state was worth fighting for.

Read more here: Let’s stop kidding ourselves

Wayne Crawford:

Did anyone other than Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard really believe Saddam Hussein was in league with Osama bin Laden, when every intelligence agency in the world knew the Iraqi dictator had repeatedly rebuffed al-Qaida’s overtures, didn’t trust bin Laden and had nothing to do with the September 11 terrorist attacks? How did we let ourselves be fooled into believing — contrary to all evidence — that asylum seekers had actually thrown their children overboard to try to force the navy to rescue them from a sinking boat? How could Australian grain growers have been so gullible as to believe the AWB assurances it was not using farmers’ hard-earned money to pay illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s regime — at the same time as the Australian Government was preparing to invade Iraq? It’s called “spin”, the art of massaging the facts to achieve a particular objective or fit a line of argument. It’s a euphemism for a lie, falsehood or, as Winston Churchill once characterised it, “terminological inexactitude”.

Read more here: Indigestible diet of spin