IF Kevin Lyons was bribed to bring down the Tasmanian government in 1972 as many now believe, the course of Tasmanian history was changed forever by an act of corruption of the scale and temerity usually reserved for tin pot regimes and despots.
Lyons’s resignation as deputy premier brought down the Bethune Liberal minority government and delivered power to a Labor administration with a vastly different policy agenda.
The Tasmania we live in today would likely have been very different had Lyons stayed the course with the Liberals.
Lake Pedder may not have been dammed. Wrest Point casino may not have opened. Without the casino, David Walsh may not have started gambling and there would be no Mona.
There may have been no pokies. Our communities may not have been torn apart along environmental lines over the past five decades.
But it is all speculation …
… Walkley Award-winning former Mercury political reporter Wayne Crawford says they were exciting days: “In my experience here in politics, and I go back to 1968, the best, most reformist government there has been was the Bethune government and for that to be crippled by Kevin Lyons was a travesty” …
… HUGH Dell, a senior adviser to Reece, was booted out of Labor, along with two colleagues, after he blew the whistle on the Lyons bribery allegations. They were regarded keys in the Left faction.
With the Left weakened, premier Reece reasserted Labor’s jobs-first industrial agenda and dammed Pedder, despite opposition from within his own party and from Liberals.
Dell went on to write, with academic Richard Jones, a charter for a new political party, the United Tasmania Group, that combined environmental concerns with progressive policies in education, welfare and health …
Read the full article HERE (in case you have problems getting around the paywall whack the headline in the url and hey presto …)
Simon Bevilacqua, Mercury
