Sue Neales Mercury
DAVID Bartlett is set to become Tasmania’s next premier after winning a promotion in a major Cabinet shake-up. Mr Bartlett, 39, is poised to become the new Economic Development minister in the February reshuffle so he can prove his financial credentials before being handed the state’s top job – possibly as soon as September. Political insiders say this would give the ambitious young politician 18 months as Tasmania’s new leader before the scheduled early-2010 state election. Mr Bartlett would retain his education portfolio. “I think a reshuffle that promotes someone else to a major economic portfolio is a reasonably clear indication that the Premier has a timeline in mind (to depart),” one Cabinet minister said yesterday. “And that timeline is during 2008.”
But the political future of Premier Paul Lennon, 52, who has been at the helm for the past four years since the resignation of his predecessor Jim Bacon, does not appear firmly decided … Read more here
Hag told you so: The Hag wrote on TT last November: PAUL Lennon is on the verge of quitting. Expect an announcement very soon. That was the astonishing, unsubstantiated rumour, gleaned in a pub encounter late last night. My source is impeccable. He says his source is impeccable. The reasons. Partly dirt. queaky-clean new PM Kevin Rudd cannot abide any hint of sleazy, Labor-mates’-club dealings. And the stench rising from the island has just become too much. Whether it’s court cases or close association with Big End of Town mates (house renovations not excluded), it seems the new PM wants to sweep the land clean. He is in favour of the new broom in wall-to-wall Labor land. In recent times Labor leaders in WA, Victoria, NSW, Queensland and the Northern Territory have bade farewell to the poiltical stage. That leaves Mike Rann in SA. And Paulie in Tassie … standing out like a sore, suppurating, thumb. Bye, Mate.
Your read it HERE first.
Meanwhile, there’s a predictable denial in today’s Mercury, but it isn’t yet online …
