Coroner & Legal
I’m a better man, says Bryan Green
From deputy premier to the Supreme Court and a potential jail term and back again, it has been a heck of a journey for Bryan Green. ZOE EDWARDS reports.
Sunday Examiner
Sun 30 Jan, 2011
REGIONAL Tasmania will benefit from having Bryan Green return to the deputy premiership, the Braddon MHA said.
Mr Green, who is also Forestry and Primary Industries Minister, said the “engine room of the economy” demanded attention.
“We have to make sure there is regional development off the back of any change in the forestry sector if we want to keep the economy strong,” he said.
“When we’re looking at the future a lot of it will evolve around Braddon, Bass and places like Huonville.
“We have to concentrate on those areas so, in that sense, they will benefit from me being (deputy premier).”
The 53-year-old was reinstated to Labor’s deputy leadership on Monday following the sudden resignation of David Bartlett as premier.
He is matter of fact about moving back into the exact office he was forced to leave almost five years ago following his involvement in the Tasmanian Compliance Corporation scandal.
The room with the view is on level 10 of the Executive Building in Hobart, directly below the office of new Premier Lara Giddings – who said her choice of deputy had been easy.
“I’m not superstitious like that at all,” Mr Green said, adding he had worked hard to retain the powerful position.
“I was the only Labor person at the top of the poll in their electorate at last year’s election.
“Most people wouldn’t have ever thought I would be in the position again, not too often do you get two chances of becoming deputy premier.
“It provides something for others to look to – if you believe in yourself and keep going there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
His was a long, dark tunnel, involving no confidence motions in Parliament, accusations of corruption, criminal charges and two Supreme Court trials.
Within months of his re-election in 2006, the popular Braddon MP, minister and deputy premier was relegated to the backbench after it was revealed that just two days before that election he had signed an illegal deal with the Tasmanian Compliance Corporation – a firm headed by former Labor ministers John White and Glenn Milliner.
The “deal for mates” gave the TCC a monopoly over building accreditation in Tasmania for three years and committed the government to a multimillion-dollar payout if that was challenged.
Choosing to stay in politics, Mr Green maintained that while he was guilty of signing the document at the centre of the scandal, he was not guilty of corruption or criminality.
Both trials ended with hung juries and the criminal charges against him were dropped.
Five years on, there is a sense that Mr Green is eagerly waiting for the day journalists stop ringing him to talk about his “political resurrection”.
His palpable anger at the Opposition for not letting dust settle on the past is a hint.
Mr Green was quick to dismiss as “gutless” Opposition Leader Will Hodgman’s claim that it was “an extraordinary proposition” that Mr Green was once again deputy premier of the state given the Greens used to “brandish him as corrupt”.
“That word (corrupt) should have disappeared through the political landscape,” Mr Green said.
“Now that the Integrity Commission is in place you can’t throw around that word unless it’s proved.”
Had there been such a commission in 2006, he may not have had to experience the trauma of facing court.
The very public fall from grace, on top of the jail time that could come with the charges he faced, triggered a battle with anxiety and depression.
“It taught me an enormous amount about myself,” he said.
“I thought I’d been anxious before, but I soon learnt that I never had been.
“You can’t think properly.”