The King is dead. Long live the King

Tasmanian Times

OVER THE next few weeks much will be heard about the sins and failings of former Premier Paul Lennon. No-one will cry and condemn louder than those Labor apparatchiks who over the past decade have said nothing, banked their fat paycheques, and happily gone along with the actions and behaviour of a Government now broadly perceived by Tasmanians as corrupt.

It will suit many to claim all this was the creation of Paul Lennon. But that would be untrue to political history. Paul Lennon’s greatest failing was that he had neither the political courage nor vision to break from the political culture and practice of his predecessor Jim Bacon.

It was Bacon after all who took the culture of cronyism, intimidation and blackballing to new heights in Tasmania. It was Bacon who sold Tasmania out to corporations — particularly Gunns and Federal Hotels. It was Bacon who mortgaged Tasmania’s future to the disastrous megalomania of the Gunns board.

In all these decisions Bacon was enthusiastically supported by his deputy Lennon. But it was Bacon’s own particular and often peculiar decisions whose political fallout Lennon would have to subsequently wear in his time as Premier, be it Basslink, the Sydney ferry, or Richard Butler as governor, to name just three of the 10 worst decisions of that goverment.

The disaster of the pulp mill became more about the erosion of democracy and public trust than it was even about the environment. If it was the most glaring example of Paul Lennon’s contempt for proper governance and indifference to democratic process, he was here only following where Bacon had trod. At his ascension Lennon made much of his determination to fulfill Bacon’s vision for Tasmania. How could he know it also portended his own tragedy?

For he lacked Bacon’s charisma. Perhaps his greatest political failure was to be too honest about all that Bacon covered over with his undoubted public charm.

Lennon is now gone. The pulp mill is almost certainly dead. And yet the political intrigue that has led to this is in the end the shadow thrown by popular will. The Tasmanian people overwhelmingly wanted Lennon gone and they overwhelmingly wanted the divisive idea of politics and development he embodied to end.

Finally this was a force too powerful even for Lennon’s own obstinacy.

Over the next few weeks, expect local media to run the Bartlett version of both the past and future. Expect to be told what David Bartlett will wish you to believe.

We will of course be told that everything is now changed. But the question for the Labor Party and for Tasmania is: Can it purge itself not just of Paul Lennon but the communal cancer of cowardice, thuggery and lies that benefited them all for a decade.

To share power is after all to share guilt for the crimes of power.

The night before he became Premier-elect David Bartlett attended the annual awards evening for the Tasmanian branch of the Royal Australian Institute of architects.

The guest speaker was writer Richard Flanagan (the speech will shortly be posted on Tasmanian Times).

In his speech Flanagan spoke of the deep cultural problem he believed Tasmania had whereby he said that Tasmania was not a meritocracy but a mediocracy, “where cowardice and conformity and mediocrity rule and are always rewarded. And talent, passion and originality punished.” He went on to say it was time for this era to end.

What was David Bartlett thinking as he listened to this speech? Are he and the Labor Party capable of rising to such a challenge?