Rockliff Government Vies for Corruption Crown

The Fitzgerald Inquiry from way back in 1989 renders strong support for Queensland as Monarch of the Dodge, but does a gaoled police commissioner outrank a gaoled MP regarding scandalous misconduct? If not, then New South Wales has a claim to the throne, reinforced by the recent (extra points) salacious and excruciatingly farcical exposure of former Premier Gladys Berejiklian.

You’ll have your favourite memories of how those with power have trashed their responsibilities, but when it comes to combining that with the most damage done, we have a new contender for that corruption crown.

The Apple Isle. Tasmania.

We should have seen this coming, given the teeth-grindingly awful way successive Tasmanian governments have sold out whole communities to the demands of Greg Farrell’s pokies-enriched Federal Group. Refresh your memory with James Boyce’s excellent book, Losing Streak, if you’re feeling up to a scandal of greed-acious proportions, or just to get you in the mood for the latest Tassie grotesquerie.

Before we get to that, however, a nod to Jeremy Rockliff’s Liberal Government for promising, back in 2022, to bring in a mandatory limit of $5,000 per year on poker machine spending. It hasn’t yet been implemented and, given the events of the past week, may yet trip at the final hurdle. But the move (actually more a gesture than a move) to do something about the life-destroying effects of problem gambling is a tufty feather in Rockliff’s cap.

That cap, last week, was in hand when the Tassie Premier met with the two independents who defected from the Liberals, mostly but not entirely because of the cabinet decisions behind closed doors about the proposed AFL stadium to be built in Hobart.

Member for Lyons John Tucker also used his new-found power as an independent in a minority government to demand legislation to install CCTV in abattoirs. There’s a Tassie mini-shocker connected to this, with an abattoir formerly part-owned by current Tasmanian of the Year, Stephanie Trethewey, revealed to have ‘issues’ around animal welfare. The ducking and weaving in response to the revelation is one of those good-grief stories done so well by the few remaining excellent journalists at our ABC (and well worth a read here).

But it was a gigantic ‘issue’, the kind you only expect to hear about fictionally on one of those harrowing British TV series like Unforgotten, that appears to have hardened the second independent’s resolve to stand up to Rockliff.

Read the full story here: Rockliff Government vies for corruption crown (independentaustralia.net)