Community Betrayed Over Promise to End Government Support
www.tas.greens.org.au
The Tasmanian Greens today said that Premier David Bartlett has betrayed the Tasmanian people by offering continued government support to Gunns’ Executive Chairman John Gay in May this year, despite pledging no further government support after 30 November last year.
Greens Leader Nick McKim MP said that the Premier’s ‘Dear John’ letter is the hard proof that under David Bartlett the culture of Labor doing favours for Labor’s mates has not changed, and Labor ‘s track record of dissembling and deceiving the Tasmanian public continues.
“Normally a ‘Dear John’ letter is used to end a relationship, but in this case it appears to have consummated it,” Mr McKim said.
“This is a serious betrayal of the Tasmanian community, and says a lot about Mr Bartlett’s character and capacity to unite our people behind a common vision for Tasmania’s future.”
Mr McKim also said that Mr Bartlett’s suggestion today that his ‘line in the sand’ only related to financial support is a deceitful attempt to weasel out of taking responsibility for his own actions.
“Mr Bartlett promised last year that the, ‘Government has drawn a line in the sand regarding any future Government involvement in this project’, and the only reasonable conclusion is that he has breached that commitment.”
“Mr Bartlett’s letter to Mr Gay would have made Paul Lennon proud, and today he is simply trying to avoid responsibility for his own actions.”
“Here is the Premier offering to be a lobbyist for a project which he himself has stated has divided the community. Well, he has blown the community’s trust, and the divisions will unfortunately continue.”
“This is not a mere position back-flip, this is the ‘say one thing but do another’ Premier deliberately deceiving the Tasmanian people while behind the scenes he is reassuring Gunns Ltd that it is business as usual.”
Nick McKim MP Greens Leader
