The Deputy Leader of the Opposition is Jeremy Rockcliff, a farmer from Sassafras in the North West of Tasmania.
His finest public hour was at the Tailrace Centre, Launceston on the 29th April 2008 at a public meeting held to debate and vote over the establishment of an Independent Commission Against Corruption a motion passed by 591 votes for, to none against with nine abstentions.
He took to the stage before 640 potential Liberal voters, mostly middle aged and middle class with a tinge of blue blood in their veins, all to no avail, for he failed to justify his position as Deputy Leader of the Opposition all as a result of being scripted by the spin doctors of the Liberal Party.
He was completely out of his depth, when pushing the pulp mill, MIS plantations and expounding by rote the logging philosophy of Abetz, Gray, & McQuestin, the power brokers of the Liberal Party in Tasmania.
This group had recently forced the resignation of Ben Quin from the Tasmanian Liberal Party over the pulp mill in October 2007.
I have met Rockcliff socially and he is a perfectly decent and honourable family man who appears to accept without question the party line, a line that allows for no independence of thought, thereby, I suggest, preventing an upright and responsible individual from performing his Liberal duty.
The Tasmanian Liberal Party is controlled by the fossils of the past with their links to Lindsay Street and Gunns. In the case of the Gray and McQuestin families these links go back over 30 years to the quest for a pulp mill at Wesley Vale which culminated in a hung Parliament and an attempt to bribe Cox by Gunns then Chairman Edmund Rouse. This all-time low point in the history of Tasmanian Politics can be firmly laid at the door of Liberal Party and pulp mill politics. I suggest that this concentration on logging within the Liberal Party has continued to ossify their thinking. The Liberals will consort with Labor, as exemplified by the reception given to John Howard by 2,000 CFMEU Union Members when he visited the State to guarantee that there would be no stopping of old growth logging in Tasmania.
It would appear that like Labor, the Liberal Party cannot think of one original policy worthy of the Liberal name which is not a bribe to the public. A situation which is exemplified by Rockcliff’s website revamped in 2010 at www.jeremyrockcliff.com.au which leads with ”the content of this is site is provided for informational use only and Jeremy Rockcliff does not assume responsibility for any inaccuracies or errors” one could suggest that politicians thrive and get elected on inaccuracies and errors, a cause of much public distrust. His twitter site lists him as having nine followers and receiving one tweet, doubtless he is hoping for some improvement leading up to his election as the Member for Braddon in March.
I suggest, that should the Liberals be the next State Government the Rockcliffs of the party will be compromised by the fossils of the past, for they pay the piper and call the tune. We will not be giving the man a job but an industry whose future survival may well depend on a closely allied Party, why else would Gunns give $50,000 to the Liberals three weeks after Abetz was made Minister of Forests?
