The Robin Gray factor (2)

Jason Lovell

Without the power of this lie, Tasmanians may have been able to see that the Greens appear to be a fiscally responsible Party, focused on spending taxpayers’ dollars on essential services for taxpayers, instead of racetracks (three), a Victorian football team, a horse hospital, an uneconomic dam, legions of spin doctors, lights for private-school training fields, new additions to churches that aren’t in disrepair, forest industry subsidies across all sectors, free gambling licenses etc etc.

Without the power of this lie, Tasmanians may have listened to the Greens’ allegations that the Lennon Government has taken Tasmania down exactly the same path as Robin Gray and that if we continue we will inevitably end up in the same place — economic depression brought on by the fiscal ineptitude of the State (Labor) Government.

AFTER reading The Robin Gray Factor, it seems to me that while Robin Gray financially ruined Tasmania during the late 1980s by borrowing heavily to prop up his divisive Government, the Lennon Government has done exactly the same thing in secret during the past decade — all while criticising the Greens constantly for their financial management during the Labor-Green Accord years.

But leading economists have now clearly identified the fiscal ineptitude of the Gray Government as the cause of Tasmania’s financial depression in the 1990s, not the Greens.

Hopefully we can now move on from the myths and lies that have been deliberately crafted around the Labor-Green Accord, and point our collective fingers directly at the real source of Tasmania’s deep depression in the 1990s — the fiscal ineptitude of the late 1980s.

Unfortunately this seems rather unlikely, given that Paul Lennon based his 2006 election campaign on a theme of majority government or bust, with the ‘bust’ part of his theme relying on this one crucial lie — that the Greens financially ruined Tasmania when they shared power in the early 1990s (and therefore cannot (ever) be trusted to act responsibly with state finances).

This lie is vitally important for the future prospects of Labor in Tasmania, because without it people may look more closely at the claims, from both the state Liberals and the Greens, that it is in fact the Lennon Government who are financially irresponsible and inept.

Without the power of this lie, Tasmanians may have been able to see that the Greens appear to be a fiscally responsible Party, focused on spending taxpayers’ dollars on essential services for taxpayers, instead of racetracks (three), a Victorian football team, a horse hospital, an uneconomic dam, legions of spin doctors, lights for private-school training fields, new additions to churches that aren’t in disrepair, forest industry subsidies across all sectors, free gambling licenses etc etc.

Without the power of this lie, Tasmanians may have listened to the Greens’ allegations that the Lennon Government has taken Tasmania down exactly the same path as Robin Gray and that if we continue we will inevitably end up in the same place — economic depression brought on by the fiscal ineptitude of the State (Labor) Government.

Without the power of this lie, Tasmanians may have questioned the large numbers of secretive 20-year deals that the Lennon Government has signed, especially the incredibly low costs and charges asked of the private developers in return for access to Tasmania’s best public resources.

The Lennon Government now has a long history of secret contracts and actions that add up to financial ineptitude on a grand scale. Unfortunately for Tasmanians, instead of borrowing to the hilt to publicly finance their own idiocy, as Gray did, the Labor Government has been able to hide the fiscal damage they are doing via 20-year sweetheart deals for developers, shielded from public view by commercial-in-confidence clauses.

I can only hope that while Tasmanians are paying out the Lennon Government’s commitments for the next 20 years, we can all agree that it was decisions made by people like Robin Gray and Paul Lennon that have made life so much harder than it ought to have been in Tasmania.

Regards,
Jason Lovell