ABC Local Radio’s Leon Compton meets six of the seven LegCo candidates for the seat of Huon outside Cygnet Library 9-10am, Wednesday April 30. Jimmy Bell sent his apologies.
Huon Valley mayor Robert Armstrong wanted no truck with the paparazzo
Helen Lane
Liz Smith
Paval Ruzicka
Peter Hodgman
Rodney Dillon
• Greg James, in Comments: Then came Pete Hodgman, yesterday’s man who did not mention his past record, the failed Antarctic Experience, sending Tourism to sleep, ruining the football and the 10% unemployment he left behind as a minister in the Groom/Rundle Liberal/Green governments. When it comes to needing a second Hodgman in this area, I have to ask are the public that stupid? Do we need a one party state? Is this about Peter Hodgman topping up his very generous superannuation policy or about a lack of youthful Liberal Party talent or is it about Hodgman suffering attention deficit syndrome. The reasons that PH gave were vacuous, did not relate to the Huon or Kingston and certainly did not relate to his abysmal political record. His reasons related to Liberals needing someone skilled to interpret for the other members of the LegCo their needs. So why is he really standing? I think I know why…
• Bob Hawkins report: The LegCo debate: Wake me up when it’s over
Bit of a yawn about nothing at the Huon Division Legislative Council candidates’ forum at Huonville on Wednesday night. This was quite fortunate, really, because if anything of great moment had happened it was too late to get it reported in what passes for the local press before Saturday’s poll. And the Mercury, as usual, was derelict in its reporting of politics south of the capital. I have no idea, in fact, if a Rupert rep was there.
Independent candidate Jimmy Bell, victim of vandals who destroyed or defaced scores of his posters, couldn’t make it: seems he knocked himself out on the fumes of whatever it was he was using as he toured the electorate cleaning up his posters.
Nothing new from the other six candidates. Easily the worst performance of the evening was that of the Libs’ Peter Hodgman, who has been spreading his wealth far and wide in a plethora of posters — every cent paid by himself, he told the 80 or so audience. (As one voter said, privately, of his posters, “There should be a pair of horns on that one”.)
Nevertheless, community instinct, backed by the psephologists, is that Hodgman will win the LegCo seat and line himself up for a third state parliamentary pension, having already served spells in both state houses of parliament.
Hodgman, not surprisingly, bragged about his family’s role in Tasmanian politics. All fine men they might be/have been, but it should also be remembered that the Hodgman name has been prominent in a long succession of hopeless governments and oppositions that have brought our state to the pretty pass it is in today. One only has to give a moment’s thought to more than a century of post-Federation Tasmanian governments and oppositions to know that not one of them could be held up as a model for the motley, potentially disastrous mobs we’ve got on both sides of our lower house today.
On Wednesday, at the Huonville Bowls Club, Hodgman (Peter, uncle of Will), dressed just like a real-estate man, which he is, came across to me, and others I spoke to after this sleep-making forum, as bombastic, condescending, patronising, contemptuous, arrogant . . .
And, when he virtually described the Huon as a basket case, that got Robert Armstrong going. Though the Huon Valley’s mayor offers no specific ideas in his brochure for the Huon’s economic development, he was strong in his objection to Hodgman’s “talking down” of the Huon. “We should be talking it up,” he said. And a theme of his fellow Huon Valley councillor Liz Smith’s campaign has been the great upsurge in small-business activity in the region in recent years.
It’s rare for Armstrong and Smith to find common ground.
Sure, things aren’t all that great down here in the Huon Valley. There is still not enough drive among parents to encourage their kids to achieve their educational potential, and there’s lots of unemployment. But Armstrong, and his five fellow independents obviously don’t take kindly to a Liberal describing their beautiful region as “in crisis”.
Notably, Hodgman, acting like a classic born-to-rule Lib, chose to direct criticism at the only two women candidates (Smith and Helen Lane). The other two independents, Aboriginal candidate Rodney Dillon, and Paval Ruzicka, spoke like their independent competitors, methodically and caringly about the region they want to represent. Dillon, 2013 “Tasmanian Humanitarian of the Year”, came across as a wise man of a much wider world. Ruzicka showed immense knowledge of the failed forestry industry — and doesn’t seem in favour of dumping the forestry agreement — but he didn’t touch on much else.
In summation, Hodgman was telling everyone at the forum to give him their vote because he would be a member of a government that “had a plan” — 50 pages of which he waved before his audience. In all, his performance was soulless and plastic. Except that I didn’t have a chill of fear in my spine, it was a bit like listening to Eric Abetz (but with a bit of vigour) telling me what to do.
Being the only candidate formally supporting a political party, Hodgman obviously is the odd one out. By talking as he did, he would have been anyway.
As usual, our region’s largely apathetic and obediently docile public, as instructed by facilitator lawyer Tim Tierney, listened mostly in respectful silence; offered polite applause; and asked no questions of probing consequence.
I expect almost all voters went went home on Wednesday evening fully intending to vote the way they had intended to when they arrived at the meeting.
When six of seven candidates feel moved to insist the Legislative Council should be free of political influence, and the seventh, rusted on to a failed but ruling political party, says it shouldn’t, I tend to agree with the essence of democracy — the majority should prevail. But I will be surprised if any of those six independents will be taking a seat on the Legislative Council after tomorrow’s vote.
Such is the mockery that is democracy.
• Ben: I have never seen an election quite like the LegCo contest for Huon, where one candidate seems to have access to more resources than all the other candidates put together.
After this Legislative Council election the candidates are required to lodge an expenditure return with the Tasmanian Electoral Commission. There is a $14,000 limit to candidate expenditure in a Legislative Council election.
I am hopeful that the TEC will closely examine the return from Peter Hodgman to ensure that he has included all of his expenditure *and* the huge amount of in-kind support provided to him by the Liberal Party, including the Premier, and Minister’s Jacquie Petrusma and Paul Harriss (who all appear in Hodgman’s large glossy election pamphlet).
So far:
– Hodgman has put up more and bigger signs than his competitors.
– he has run full-page adverts in local newspapers where other candidates can only afford modest sized ads – this week’s Kingborough Chronicle being a good example (click on 29-4-14 look at page 9).
– he has widely distributed a large glossy pamphlet including a professional photo of the Premier and Ministers sitting in what looks like a taxpayer-funded meeting room, while other candidates are putting out photocopied A4 pamphlets featuring photos taken by their families.
– he has reportedly been assisted by a Liberal Party staffer to run his social media campaign.
– most interestingly, he has used a large number of former Liberal Party state election sign-frames that were not removed after the state election.
All around the Huon signs for the Liberals were covered after the state election in March rather than being removed, with the cover subsequently replaced by a Peter Hodgman sign in the lead-up to this LegCo election.
Should Hodgman include expenditure for all the materials and time taken to erect all these sign-frames, and then cover them again, and then re-erect Hodgman’s sign on the same frames? If not why not, as he has benefitted directly from the Liberal Party’s construction and subsequent covering of the frames.
Should Hodgman include the time taken by the Premier and the Ministers for the photo in his pamphlet and adverts as an expense? How about the use of taxpayer’s property for political advertising?
Should Hodgman include the time taken to run his social media campaign as an expense? And will he reveal whose computer resources were used to run that campaign?
All candidates are theoretically limited to spending $14,000 on their campaign. If Hodgman is able to exclude the extensive in-kind support he has received from the Liberal Party he will effectively be allowed to spend far more than the $14,000 his opponents are limited to.
The TEC must scrutinise Hodgman’s expenditure return, and it must take action if his expenditure and in-kind gifts from the Liberal Party total more than $14,000.
Ed: ‘Ben’ is known to the editor, but wishes to remain anonymous.
