Tasmania has been very cosily run in the past decade by the ALP with a hundred or so hacks filling every government board and instrumentality.
Surely one would have thought these positions should go to Tasmanians on the basis of ability or experience.
But no. In Tasmania today, they go to the fawning supplicants to Labor power; the familiar job and mateship connections that give truth to Tasmania’s slogan (or what should be its slogan): Exploit the Possibilities.
I’m reminded of this by the revelation on Tasmanian Times of recent appointments: Salamanca Arts Centre: The nomination of Maddie and Ron. Madeleine Ogilvie was also recently in the news for backing Labor’s dumb Tarkine Road: Talk about parroting the party line: HERE
Arts writer Jane Rankin-Reid, a bit of an outsider to Tasmania’s cosy clubs, put it rather well in this comment on Talk about parroting the party line:
Re Salamanca Arts Centre; the current government dishes out these trophy roles to its favored political mates like sweeties. Arts Minister O’Byrne’s studied amateurism in making appointments of ALP insiders rather than independent professionals is an act of cultural control freakery. Like Arts Tas and Screen Tas, Salamanca Arts Centre’s board and management needs a complete overhaul; not another bloody ALP junior candidate for Denison for goodness sake.
re Ogilvie’s remarks on the Tarkine; pass the sick bags please. It’s hard to believe genuine change is even remotely possible in the Tasmanian ALP when candidates are already parroting their party’s predictable excuses for pork barreling projects which have yet to even receive the appropriate regulatory approvals.
Her Tarkine remarks sounds like the words of a 1980s ALP union thuggo; all that’s missing is the moustache. I had hoped for far greater signs of sincerity and intellectual insight. Instead I feel patronized by her intentional mediocrity, cheated by more of the same shameless spin and astonished that she would put herself through such an ethical makeover while still maintaining a certificate to practice as a legal advisor! Come on Madeleine, you can do a hell of a lot better than this mindless ideological pirouetting you’re indulging in. If all your candidacy stands for is playing up to the under achieving tossers occupying the current government, then you may actually fail to win that seat after all.
Picture: Of Michelle O’Bryne
