We’ve got to talk about Jim …
Jim Bacon, Premier of Tasmania, 1998 to 2004.
Jim was known as The Emperor (but not to his face).
The Emperor has no clothes! … But (ex) Premier Lara Giddings dressed the naked truth in the finest raiment in her paean of praise to the Great Leader in her election night concession speech ( ABC here ).
From Lara’s speech you would think Jim Bacon was the love child of Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Paul Keating and Mother Theresa.
Not quite true, in my view.
The truth (to me) was he could be charming, elegant, creative and personable one minute; nasty, brutish and short (tempered) the next. In other words, another ordinary, flawed human being, who would have made a brilliant used-car salesman; he was very good at selling Tasmania.
I’ve seen a bit of both: The Charm evidenced from four occasions of drinks with Jimbo; Guinness in the Republic in that golden moment before assuming power; stubbies in Jimbo’s Newtown garden, bubbles with Bacon to Peppermint Bay, a lovely loose evening at the Grand Chancellor for a Media Ball (when it was a rather grand occasion); Jimbo was dolling out the awards …
And I’ve seen the other side; not long after TT birthed in 2002, Jimbo demanded an article he disapproved of, be taken down immediately or TT would be taken to court for defamation. I won’t bore you with this absurd lowlight … which involved translating and reprinting an article from the great French morning newspaper Le Figaro; the details are deep within the bowels of this article: The Great Spin Machine.
The Charm seemed to work a treat on most media (except former Mercury Editor Ian McCausland, with whom there was a great enmity) … to the extent that news of his impending death from cancer (he died on June 20, 2004) was mysteriously kept from The People by the then news managers of Mercury, Examiner, Advocate, ABC until he could announce it on a Monday; this was gazumped by The Australian which was out-of-the-loop in faraway Canberra; The Oz ran it all over their front page on the Saturday and left egg all over the faces of Tassie media … (Oh, and Tassie Times, which ran a virulent piece by the anonymous Rodney Delta Post (known to the Editor) rightly accusing Tassie media of managing the news and betraying its readership …)
Jim Bacon promised the earth to Tasmania … and for one shining moment it seemed we were all he said we could be.
But he got lucky, in my view.
Swept into power in 1998 on the coattails of a stuttering, faltering Liberal minority government led by Tony Rundle, he promised Tasmania a new golden age.
Truth is it was – mostly – illusion. And boy, were we taken in (Well Lara and the rusted-on Labor stalwarts obviously were … I watched with bemusement as Lara’s praise mythologised Jim; placing him high in a pantheon which had to include Thor, Zeus, Buddha, and Vishnu (with a bit of Shiva thrown in).
I’ve always believed that what-we-believe determines how we act. I’ve always believed that when you dump god you need a god-replacement pretty quickly in your pantheon because the instinct to worship something greater than us, is within us all … Lara obviously has chosen demi-god Jimbo …
Jim was a narcissist; mind you I have long believed we are all narcissists to a Greater or Lesser extent ( there is no-one on earth more interesting than moi; just listen to any conversation; often we Tasmanians are so insecure we are desperate for the approval of others; talking only about ourselves and oblivious to questions about others, especially incomers ) … but where Jim fits on the scale of Greater or Lesser is entirely subjective; perhaps judgment could be aided by a comparison to Kevin Rudd ( Jim would have loved selfies I reckon … )
Wikipedia says this about Jim Bacon:
His time in office was said to have been hugely successful, for the state economy as a whole, for his popularity with the people of the state, and also for tourism with the introduction of two more Bass Strait ferries, and beginning a ferry run between Devonport and Sydney. (However, the Sydney service has since proven unsuccessful and was discontinued in 2006 due to the majority of New South Wales people not wanting to drive into the heart of Sydney.) He controversially appointed Richard Butler to the office Governor of Tasmania in 2003. One of the Bacon Government’s most notable achievements was to wipe out a $1.6 billion state net debt in only six years. Other achievements included huge increases in tourist numbers, leading social policies, partnerships between state and local governments, turning Tasmanian Government entities, such as Hydro Tasmania, into profit-generating businesses (one of the election-winning strategies was to propose this as opposed to selling them), bringing two AFL clubs to play regular home and away matches in Tasmania (Hawthorn Football Club and St Kilda Football Club) and improving the general feeling of confidence in individuals and businesses within the state of Tasmania.
But … Jim Bacon rode in on the coattails of the newly-minted GST and reaped its massive reward for the states. Nationally the economy was booming; Tassie real-estate prices rocketed and we appeared to be on the cusp of Great Southerness.
We could be the Arts Capital of the Southern Hemisphere; I shall long remember, when working as Sunday Tasmanian News Editor, an interview ( Tasmania’s then-best investigative journalist ) Simon Bevilacqua did with Anna Pafitis of Tasmania Together, envisioning a plan for a Guggenheim museum for Hobart; Anna and her mate Gerard Castles were visionaries who dreamed of a Guggenheim on the Hobart waterfront … long before David Walsh created MONA.
Tasmania Together was an interesting example of Jimbo Spin at its best. Established as an inclusive plan to bring together the best and brightest, the Creatives, TT had some wondrous visions; most memorably a commitment to end old-growth forest logging by, when was it, 2001? Seriously …
But it soon cracked at the seams, not least because the Creatives objected to the Ogre, Forestry Tasmania, sponsoring part of another of Jim’s Visions, arts festival Ten Days on the Island. The Creatives ended up doing their own thing, Future Perfect, with acclaimed German Nobel literature laureate Gunter Grass as Patron. ( Interesting isn’t it … Top Down Visions rarely work for long (The first Ten Days was brilliant IMHO) and end up costing; Bottom Up Visions ( Think Leo Schofield’s Hobart Baroque, Listen to Orlando, Will, TT here, and here ) are a different matter altogether …
There was so much promise in 1998 … but Jim Bacon squandered that golden opportunity in my view … having got the budget back under control Bacon then spread largesse to the Favoured (who turned out to be various reincarnations of the Masters October 2002: The state we’re in; October 2002: In the forest of a night); October 2002: Bob Cheek – the understory Earlier on TT: Cheeky spills the beans, below). Then proceeded to squander all that promise … not least on Forestry. As he lay dying there were regrets (You don’t know how powerful these people are, he is alleged to have told Peter Cundall).
Jim also surrounded himself with able advisers at the peak of their respective careers.
• Ken Jeffreys leapt from earlier being ABC senior parliamentary reporter to be Jimbo media adviser, with a coven of other able duchessed journos.
• Michael Lester leapt from Chief Political Reporter on Mercury to being political adviser to Jimbo (and now we have a reprise of that with Mercury Deputy Editor Martine Haley leaping to become head of communications in Will Hodgman’s new Liberal government ( Martine was a former chief spinner for former Liberal Premier Ray Groom … ).
Tasmania has been appallingly served by its leaders in my view. On top of Ray Groom’s 40 per cent pay rise for pollies, Jimbo’s most egregious error – and the fundamental basis for the problems we have faced – was to force through the reduction in the size of Parliament to the extent that governing has been an immense challenge because of a lack of talent and depth. All to sideline the Greens ( when they were perfectly able to do that themselves by too close an association with on-the-nose Labor ). ( Mind you I agree absolutely with journo sage Wayne Crawford’s belief that minority governments have been among Tasmania’s most creative in recent years: Mercury here )
For god’s sake why not go unicameral; scrap that appalling anachronism the Legislative Council, elect a 40-strong one-house Parliament; and beef up the examining committee system; dream on … the Legco is never going to vote itself out of existence and we are stuck with our own version of a born-to-rule class.
Will and his dominant cohort can prove me wrong. They, after all, have (alleged) depth to spare. The signs so far are not looking too good, but: Will Hodgman’s declaration of war; Listen to the message of Orlando, Will..
Agree or disagree? Go mad in comments below. And TT welcomes thoughtful articles in response.
• Bazabee, in Comments: I am sure that that many people were closer to Jim than I was but I did know him and I knew him reasonably well. There were days I liked him and enjoyed his company but there were days when due to his rapid mood swings and outbursts of temper he was a difficult man to deal with. Sorry Lara, Jim Bacon was no saint or as far as I am concerned was he a labour hero. History needs truth not myths if it is to point the way forward.
*Earlier on Tasmanian Times, including CHEEKY on Tasmanian Times:
• From the office of ‘Liberal ladies’
• Cheeky blows the whistle on rorts
• Frank Nicklason, in Comments: Bazabee, #8, suggests that John Le Carre’s book Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy might help us understand Jim Bacon’s character. I haven’t read that one.A book called Political Ponerology by Andrew M. Lobaczewski (Red Pill Press, 1998) could help us better understand those types of people and organisations that Mr Bacon allegedly spoke of on his deathbed. Ponerology is the study of evil. Lobaczewski was a Polish psychologist who lived through WW11 and Soviet times and who applied scientific principles to study evil (individual and macrosocial) first hand in order to try and elucidate how people and societies can protect themselves from it. Lobaczewski conceives of evil as analogous to a disease …
