The Boys in Blue

The poker machine party has now pulled the lever. The wheels that produce the unspoken, unknown, and hidden riches are now starting to spin in a carefully calculated effort to deliver another jackpot for the boys in blue.

Gutwein will be hoping that his Liberal Party’s appalling start to the COVID crisis – which saw three hospitals totally or partly shut and a rescue party from the mainland backed by the Federal Chief Medical Officer save him from the jaws of a pending disaster – will now be forgotten by thinking electors.

We were saved from COVID excess not by Gutwein and his merry band of incompetent party members but by the feds and the fact that we live on a very small island. Our hospital system is a shambles; today’s Examiner states that over 12,000 people await an operation and surely this is unacceptable.

The Liberals will be hoping that no attention will be drawn to the size of the debt as created by Treasurer and Premier Gutwein.

I quote Tasfintalk for the accurate unspun disastrous figures:

“The actual cash deficit for this year will be $2.1bn. In 2021-22 the cash deficit will be $1.07bn followed by $656m the year after. …. By June 2021 the government’s net worth will be $6bn. Of that figure, $4.7bn is the net worth of government businesses. Aside from those the government’s net worth will only be $1.3bn, smaller than the Hobart City Council.”

The State of Tasmania is virtually bankrupt with a believed 9 billion in public service pension liabilities, to which the Liberals have added all the forestry workers employed by the bankrupt GBE, Forestry Tasmania, to give ‘unSustainable Timbers Tasmania’ a clean slate yet again. This is another hidden hand up for forestry.

Gutwein mistakenly thinks that the recent electoral results in West Australia and Queensland will reflect on him; these states have a mining boom to keep them in funds, we have a forestry industry that keeps us insolvent, for it perennially runs at a loss. It does however provide the Liberals with a wedge against the Greens and Labor under Barnett.

UTAS has been decimated through no JobKeeper and the international tourist industry has vanished.
The Tasmanian economy has been temporarily saved by mainlanders buying property and pumping their money into the island to escape COVID. Unfortunately, this temporary reprieve makes many Tasmanians homeless but has provided some relief to the economy.

Gutwein has called an election now because he knows he could never win in 12 months. This time women will imperil any Liberal state government majority. I hope the women of Tasmania will step up and produce good independent candidates, including under the inspirational leadership of the recently sacked Liberal incumbent, Speaker of the House, Sue Hickey.

The opportunist former Labor member turned independent Madeline Ogilvie has now outed herself as a closet Liberal so Gutwein lied when he called an election saying he would not govern ‘in minority’.

Hickey was always too smart for the likes of von Abetz, the most powerful Liberal in Tasmania, and the keeper of the federal Liberal Federal dirt files; his notorious comments linking breast cancer and abortion with misogynous drivel such as ‘dead women tell no tales’, is indicative of a seriously creepy mindset.

The lacklustre Abetzian appointees Shelton, Street and Tucker should be shown the exit and the order of the jack boot.

Will the gambling industry finance another Liberal campaign before the donations laws are modernised, making it no longer possible to secretly buy a Tasmanian election?

In the middle of March an independent-dominated Legislative Council provided the Liberals with a major setback to its protest laws and a nasty campaign to run yet another wedge with no interest in the common good.

The laws would conceivably have been used against those who wish to protect the state’s high conservation forests and its unique fauna, such as the EPBC-listed swift parrot, or those who reject the push to put a prison in a nature reserve for the unpopular proposed new Northern Prison. It’s a prison, which like the stalled new Bass Strait ferries they cannot pay for, as they have spent all our money even that in Hydro Tasmania and the state’s Retirement Benefit Fund. When you can’t pay, simply delay.

The anti-protest laws were designed to wedge Labor and the Greens and fill the proposed new prison at Marney’s Hill conservation reserve, paid for by the federal government as part of the National Reserve System. Prophetically, it failed to pass the Legislative Council last week. This second attempt at a prison site is the choice of the brain dead and by rights should lose the Liberals at least one seat in the north.

Gutwein is going to the polls before the effects of a cruelly-terminated JobKeeper crash the Tasmanian labour market, when people will blame the immediate effects of the reduced pittance that is JobSeeker thus reflecting badly on the election potential of his party.

This premature election is confected by the dis-endorsing of the Speaker Sue Hickey over a cup of coffee by the Premier, probably on the orders of the Hickey-hater and senior Liberal Senator Abetz.

Sue Hickey consistently speaks her mind; she’s a person with the honesty to do just that. This is the type of candidate that we desperately need. She has now been given freedom from the boys in blue claiming a minority under false pretences. How could such weaselling take us to an election?

Government by the maates for the maates has seen its use by date and White has lost her street cred by caving in on poker machine legislation after the last election.

Tasmania is a wonderful place to live, full of kind and generous people. However we are governed by the third rate, elected through loyalty to outdated political machines by those who have friends in high places. This must change.

It will take women of fortitude to do this, for they are naturally more honest and mostly have integrity, a character trait sadly lacking in the current political vacuum.

John Hawkins was born and educated in England and now calls Tasmania home. He is the author of ‘Australian Silver 1800–1900’ and ‘Thomas Cole and Victorian Clockmaking’ and ‘The Hawkins Zoomorphic Collection’ as well as ‘The Al Tajir Collection of Silver and Gold’ and nearly 100 articles on the Australian Decorative Arts. He is a Past President and Life Member of The Australian Art & Antique Dealers Association. John has lived in Australia for 54 years.