Peg Putt

I released a list of more than 20 questions on Friday – yet all week the government embarked on bully boy tactics attempting to smear the reputation of Nigel Burch – who deserves our thanks and gratitude for his courage, and they tried to also smear anyone else, like the Greens or Liberals, who continued to press the case. Doug Parkinson’s defamatory comments and ‘don’t you worry about that’ statement when he seemed to be channelling Joh Bkelke Petersen, exemplified a government in blind panic.
PUTT’S SPEECH TO ANTI-CORRUPTION RALLY
Challenge to Lennon and Bartlett to Make Change
Peg Putt MP
Greens Opposition Leader
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
www.tas.greens.org.au

Greens Opposition Leader Peg Putt MP today addressed an ‘Anti-corruption / Healthy Democracy’ public meeting at Hobart City Hall. The text of her speech follows.

“I will commence with a quotation:

‘Any jurisdiction that doesn’t have its own ICAC-type body is just crazy.

If you don’t have one you have either discovered a secret to human nature that has eluded the rest of us, or – as is more likely to be the case – you are just kidding yourselves.

Create one. You won’t regret it.’ Morris Iemma, NSW Premier, 24 October, 2007.

“Yet here in Tasmania, the Premier continually refuses to acknowledge that such a safeguard against corruption is necessary, and in light of the litany of events that have brought the standards of ethics in governance and public life in Tasmania into serious question and the reputation of Tasmania low in the eyes of the nation, is now prompting further questions about the government’s reluctance. What have they got to lose? Or is it, what have they got to hide?

The Greens have for years campaigned for openness and accountability of government and for measures to lift standards and enable investigation into claims of wrongdoing.

At our election campaign launch for the 2006 state election, a centrepiece was my announcement of our policy to establish an ICAC style body.

A series of inglorious episodes have followed, and of course other concerning events had preceded the call, including the Federal Hotels exclusive pokies deal, the government-funded Pulp Mill Task Force spruiking this private project, and the Global Performance Management issue.

We have now also witnessed the Tasmanian Compliance Corporation scandal that saw the dismissal of the first Deputy Premier Bryan Green for his mates deal signed secretly on the eve of the election, and two Supreme Court trials have failed to resolve issues around the criminality of what occurred. Now all this has culminated in ‘Shreddergate’ as it is now known.

Along the way, Gunns got an easy fast track for their pulp mill and millions of our dollars went to promote and prop up the proposal, including $300,000 of public money spent on the Premier’s obsequious TV ads spruiking the project before it had any form of approval whatsoever;
the RPDC became a revolving door of Commissioners who outlined government standover tactics and gross interference;
and then the shenanigans about the appointment of a magistrate began.

A Roy Morgan opinion poll taken in August 2006 outlined that 60% of Tasmanians say the Lennon government is ‘not effective’ against corruption, and just over 1 in 10 Tasmanians (11%) say the Tasmanian government ‘does not fight corruption, but also encourages it’.
I wonder what such a poll would say today?

We Greens are pleased to have been able to expose the Shreddergate episode, having first given the government – specifically the Premier, and the then Deputy Premier Steve Kons, every opportunity to tell Parliament the truth – before we produced the shredded document that Kim Booth had spent about 24 hours putting back together from a bag of shreddings.

As he said, it was the biggest jigsaw puzzle he’d ever done.

Until that point, remember, the government had been insisting that there never had been any intent to appoint Simon Coper a magistrate, no document signed by the Minister to that effect, no intervention by the then Secretary of the Premier’s Department, and no destruction of the document.

It is now history that Steve Kons lied to Parliament and resigned his portfolios as a result.

But it doesn’t end the matter.

Clearly a cover-up had been underway, and just what was being covered up, why, and what that implies about the way appointments are made in this state, and about a thuggish modus operandi to secure compliance to the government’s questionable politics, needs to be thoroughly examined, exposed and dealt with.

We can’t await an anti-corruption body to do this. We need a Commission of Inquiry into Shreddergate, now.

I released a list of more than 20 questions on Friday – yet all week the government embarked on bully boy tactics attempting to smear the reputation of Nigel Burch – who deserves our thanks and gratitude for his courage, and they tried to also smear anyone else, like the Greens or Liberals, who continued to press the case.

Doug Parkinson’s defamatory comments and ‘don’t you worry about that’ statement when he seemed to be channelling Joh Bkelke Petersen, exemplified a government in blind panic.

I can’t go through all 20 questions now, but the key ones are for the Premier regarding his continual evasion and our need to understand his role in relation to the proposed Cooper appointment. He always avoids these by talking about the eventual appointment and saying he didn’t interfere in that. There are also questions about the role of Steve Kons and of Linda Hornsey, including whether she acted on direction or alone, whether she was out of control, and about the culture which apparently exists of retribution and reward in government decision-making.

Sometimes I’ve thought I’m in a recurring nightmare as we have tried to delve into this in Parliament. So much has all the hallmarks of the Parliamentary spade work required to excavate the TCC affair.

To return to the key big picture issues:
• We want government to be for all Tasmanians, especially those doing it tough, and not preferentially for government mates and favoured private corporations such as Gunns and Federal Hotels
• Cronyism has to go, along with back room mates deals
• We want an end to the culture of bullying and intimidation and blacklisting of good citizens
• We need to lift the shadow from the public service – now highly politicised and ruled by fear and threats of retribution
• And we must remove the shadow unfairly placed over judicial and magisterial appointments.

We need a package of measures to be put in place, and to see the winds of change blow through government in Tasmania.

Remember that the DPP has made it plain that Tasmania has no independent investigative body, to much squawking from government, that the TCCI has backed public discussion of an ICAC, and that the Law Society wants one looked into.

We do need and must have an independent anti-corruption body with investigatory and educative powers.

A more impartial, arms length process for judicial appointments.

We also need Tasmanian political donations and election finance disclosure laws – here’s another ripe avenue for corruption, currently unmonitored.

And, post Ministerial probity laws – we have a Greens Bill to this effect – to deal with the potential corruption issues around an ex-Minister moving straight into the corporate area they previously regulated.

In my view Paul Lennon is not the man to foster this change – he is too much part of the problem.

I challenge him to prove me wrong, or David Bartlett to prove me right.”

Click here for the full Tasmanian Times debate on accountability and transparency: Democracy Tasmania