The Report of the Royal Commission into an Attempt to Bribe a Member of the House of Assembly … refers to the evidence of Paul Anthony Lennon in his then capacity as the Secretary of the Tasmanian Trades and Labour Council.
Lennon was in Premier Gray’s office on 19th June 1989 prior to the attempt to bribe Cox and shortly before the opening of the new Parliament. Gray was described by the Commission as a person “whose conduct and behaviour fell far short of the standards of propriety and the conduct and behaviour which his position and the circumstances demanded of him.”
In an affidavit given to the Commission on the Friday 5th April 1991 by Paul Anthony Lennon before Mr Allston who was assisting the Commission and the second legal officer, Mrs Robyn Hobcroft, Lennon stated “that he and Robin Gray had discussed whether there were people within the Labour Caucus who might not be able to live with the Greens. Mr Lennon said that he had referred to Michael Polley during this discussion and Robin Gray had referred to Lance Armstrong and Jim Cox.”
Lennon was later to disagree with these assertions. Three times he was asked by the Commissioner to answer the question in relation to who had first raised the name of Cox. Lennon under cross examination disputed the evidence of both Allston and Hobcroft even to the extent that their notes were wrong.
The meeting in the Premier’s Office on the 19th June took place at the instigation of Lennon. Lennon agreed that they had talked about the Tasmanian Forestry Agreement, the Wesley Vale Pulp Mill and the reasons for its failure and that this had played a major role in the downfall of Gray’s majority in the 1989 election. He was later to deny that the subject of Cox had been raised at this meeting, despite his previous sworn evidence to the contrary.
Here we are over 20 years later with Robin Gray on the Board of Gunns, John Gay another player to feature in the Royal Commission and Paul Lennon all still involved with a pulp mill, all still standing shoulder to shoulder in defence of each other against the Greens and all still tainted by that smell of corruption over due process.
John Hawkins
Chudleigh
cc: Ms Fiona Reynolds, The Examiner
