Laurene Kelly
The messiah from the mainland promised Tasmanians a brighter, bigger future with the embracing of big ideas and we were grateful.
We’d Rundled along appeasing as many as possible, defeating Wesley Vale Pulp even though it was a billion dollar reward for good behaviour in moving into downstream; it showed there was a backbone in Tasmania, the same people who subverted mainstream voting no dams.
We had power, to say Tasmania was different, unique qnd the rest of Australia agreed.
We might have had two heads or be scarred but deep in the short term memory of Australia, Tasmania had a tragic, tangible history.
The battle before Bacon and the traitorship of Labor was etched in those who always voted for them, because the silver spoons thought they were born to it.
Bacon was the ham and Lennon a dull bulb.
There never was vision, never respect for the uniqueness of an island and its ecology, just the bulldozing mentality of power, big fish in small ponds, just as much as the collaborators who have allowed it to get this far from democracy, (the snouts in the public trough).
It is hard to put one’s finger on the worst ten things this past nine years.
The waste of public money is too gross to mention. It supercedes everything, but I proffer ten of my worst experiences in the Bacon/Lennon era:
1. John Gay defacto governor with Robin (bobbing along) secretary.
2. Ignoring sound advice, time and time and time and time again and slagging Richard Flanagan to the hilt.
3. Bacon dying on his watch!
4. Lennon flabbergasted that he had got the top job, then making a red faced arse of himself time and time again, bullying his way, cowering those that came before the big red man. Ignorance.
5. The pulp mill task force.
6. That jobs are more important than quality of life issues like child protection, gambling and health.
7. Intimidation.
8. The club of boys who pat each other on the back while Rome burns.
9. Meander dam.
10. Maintaining the line with forestry without compromise to thirty years of debate.
Tasmanian-born Laurene Kelly has written and had published a trilogy of fiction for young adults. She is a journalism student at the University of Tasmania.
