For my (considerable) sins, I was the first Head of Office for then Health Minister John White in the heady early days of the ’89 Accord Government. (And about the first ministerial staffer to resign, though Alec Marr may have just beaten me.)
White, for all his failings, was one of the ministers who tried hard to make the Accord work. Our office worked closely with Di Hollister and the other Green members. Indeed it was standard operating practice to involve Di in every visit or key meeting and to consult on a very wide range of issues.
Only a few months into the new government, I was summonsed along with other Senior Private Secretaries to a meeting convened by Alan Evans and Jeff Gilmour, chief honchos for Field and Patmore respectively. We were told that a decision had been made to deliberately undermine the Accord. We were to withdraw the kind of cooperation we had previously offered the Greens, essentially treating them as part of the Opposition.
This was well before the Resource Security issue achieved any prominence. Indeed it was another issue — the CRESAP-recommended school closures — that was used first as a wedge. Folks may recall that CRESAP recommended that about 34 smallish schools should close. The Greens were prepared to support the major thrust of the policy but had (very real) concerns about a handful of the proposed closures (3 schools, though my memory may be slightly awry on the numbers). The pragmatic hardheads of the Labor right-wing (Wreidt, Holgate, Polley) along with the Left ministers like White and Bladel couselled acceptance of the Greens position. They argued that keeping three schools open was a minor issue — that the cost-savings involved in the other thirty or so schools was the ‘main game’. They lost to the Centre-Left leadership team of Field and Patmore (or Evans and Gilmore, it sometimes seemed).
The result: the Greens sided with the Libs — in effect crossing the floor for the first time against Labor — and none of the closures went ahead. The writing was on the wall at that stage, with the Greens understanding all too well what was happening. The Resource Security process followed the same isolate-the-Greens path, again with the Wreidts and Holgates striving for sane compromises but failing to recognise that compromise had already been deemed the worst of all outcomes.
The rewriting of history to cast the Greens as demonic underminers of the Accord was swift and comprehensive. I actually reckon that the Fields and Lennons of the world genuinely believe their oft-reported tales of ‘Green betrayal’. They are not lying, just deluded.
In normal circumstances, the passage of two decades would have allowed wounds to heal. New leaders like Bartlett and McKim would normally be able to politely acknowledge the acrimony of the 89-92 period but assert that things are now different. However, the bearers of the cover-up — Field(s), Lennon, Llewellyn and Co. — are still major influences on Labor politics in this state. Short of a wooden stake and a silver bullet, nothing will stop them chanting their mantras about how you can’t trust the Greens. And again, I stress that these poor guys actually believe their version. So sad. So very, very sad.
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MattBrady on the Labor Premier … and the Labor Cabinet: HERE
