It’s true Saturday 30th January was a beautiful one in Launceston, and no doubt people had other things on their minds than politics, but Scott McLean, pictured, can’t have been too pleased with the turn out for his campaign launch as Bass Labor hopeful.
Only 50 people max turned up at 1pm yesterday in Royal Park, to listen to Scott spruik his suitability for office, but once the likes of Dick Adams, Michelle Cripps, Martin Ferguson and Helen Polley were removed, together with the ten or so people who were there for the sole purpose of establishing Scott’s position re the pulp mill, you do have to wonder if all those letters to the party faithful, and expensive TV ads screened on Friday, were really worth the money.
Federal Minister for Resources and Energy Martin Ferguson can’t have been too pleased either. Especially if he made a special trip to Tassie to launch Scott’s political hopes. Not a media person in sight. No TV crews, no journos wandering around with camera and tape recorder, or notepad and pen.
Nothing.
Scott’s parliamentary bid was clearly deemed a great big yawn for them too. So apart from a few curious passersby, and (presumably family members and friends), the patter was largely being made to several individuals who have no intention of voting Labor, but who did have awkward questions to pose in relation to pesticides, water pollution, and a solution to silt in the Tamar River.
And the pulp mill of course.
Not that Scott was keen to answer any of them.
Or even able to answer most of them.
And there wasn’t a chance to ask him many, because when it became increasingly obvious Scott was under a spot of pressure, he was called away by a minder to ‘take a phone call’. The classic ploy minders use to extricate their charges from awkward situations. Or else questions to which they really don’t know the answer.
Actually answering questions clearly wasn’t high on Scott’s agenda. As well as making dismissive comments about those being shouted out repeatedly by a guy on a boat; questions about silt build-up in the Tamar river, and calls along the lines of ‘wasn’t it fortunate the launch was timed to coincide with high tide’, Scott was obviously reluctant to answer questions from any of his potential constituents.
Dick Adams, (above at another event), was even less keen.
His response to the man (a man who is in fact Dick’s constituent), was to call him a ‘mongrel’. An offensive and inappropriate reply for a man in the Australian people’s employ – and one that was overheard, and condemned, by several people.
The offending question was: You once inferred that pulp mill protestors were terrorists. Many mums and dads and young folk in this electorate have attended large protests against Gunns’ proposed pulp mill. Do you still say they are terrorists?
The audience never did receive an answer. The campaign launch wasn’t the time or the place apparently. Today’s event was all about Scott, and his suitability for the job, but he did invite questions after the formalities were over. An invitation that was accepted by those seeking pulp mill-related questions, although it has to be said the answers can’t be described as adequate for a man with aspirations to help govern Tasmania.
But to return briefly to Dick. The ‘mongrel’ insult wasn’t the only example of the (dis) Hon Adams MP’s thuggish and intimidating behaviour. He also took umbrage at the wording of a banner. Coincidentally one held by another of his constituents – a woman. She later admitted to feeling threatened and upset by Dick’s unprovoked and angry outburst conducted centimetres away from her face.
It resulted in Dick being led away by another minder, presumably before he could publicly and inappropriately verbal anyone else. The banner asked the perfectly legitimate question about why our State Government continues to condone Forestry Tasmania and Gunns’ spraying cancer-causing pesticides, when the science has shown time and again these chemicals poison our water, our wildlife, and inevitably therefore, us.
The gist of the Hon A’s spray was that the scientists saying this are all wrong, and anyone who disagrees with this opinion is therefore simply ‘scaremongering’.
The pesticide question was also posed to Scott. A retired health practitioner asked if Forestry Tas workers knew the risks involved with the chemicals they are asked to handle and spray on a regular basis. And the potential for increased adverse effects if and when these chemicals are combined.
Scott didn’t know.
Scott didn’t know there had been no assessment done on the number of jobs likely to be lost as a result of the mill either. He’s all for jobs is Scott, and according to him the mill will provide anything between 350-1200 of them. But he wasn’t able to give an exact figure, and was eventually forced to admit Tasmanians would end up with very few of them, so the mill won’t be the employment bonanza Gunns (and Labor) would have us believe.
We haven’t enough skilled people here, (surprise, surprise) so the mill would have to be built (and operated) by people who ‘work around the world building pulp mills’.
The jobs issue was clearly too hard for Scott, and around the time of asking for the fourth time, about the mill’s impact on existing jobs in tourism, winemaking, fine foods etc, his minder quickly stepped in with that ‘phone call that must be answered’ tactic.
Scott freely admitted to being a poorly educated man. He left school early, under something of a cloud, and appeared to be proud of his less-than-adequate academic record. True, we’re not all born to be academics, but on the strength of his mediocre performance today neither does he come across as a terribly knowledgable man about all those state and local issues he should be completely up to speed about, given the job he’s got his hand up for.
If Scott is the best that Labor can do in the way of candidates, then it’s proof positive Labor have run out of steam. I wouldn’t trust Scott to have a role in running the business that is Tasmania, and I certainly won’t be entertaining any thoughts of voting for him on 20th March.
Coming soon: Video of the Dick and Scott show
Mark’s view: HERE
