Text of a speech made by Majda Flanagan
Closed session, Tasmanian ALP conference, 30 October 2004.
I am the daughter of refugees. I was raised by my father, a labourer, in wog flats in the back of working class Hobart suburbs.
I say this, because I am tired of hearing the views that I and so many other Labor people hold dear being dismissed by the premier’s spin doctors as those of the ‘latte swilling elites’.
How dare they.
I have been a loyal member of the Labor party for 15 years. In that time I have worked long and hard and with love in my heart, to see Labor party representatives elected to power not only in the federal parliament but to both the lower and upper houses of the Tasmanian parliament.
People like Doug Parkinson. Judy Jackson. Jim Bacon. Graeme Sturgess. Lara Giddings. To name but a few.
I mention this because it has become too easy for the people at the top of the party to dismiss any criticism from within its ranks as treachery to the party, when it is the opposite: the greatest loyalty one can show is to speak the truth.
The truth is that many Labor rank and file with whom I work and deal with on a daily basis feel betrayed and angry with our state government.
The truth is that it is treachery to Labor ideals to preference a party like Family First – a party of extreme reaction. It is a source of utter shame for every decent Labor person who rings me asking how this ever happened.
The truth is that many ordinary Tasmanians, who it is my job to help and deal with on a daily basis on behalf of a Labor party federal member, feel our state government is out of touch with its own people, that it is arrogant and listens only to the big end of town, to the likes of the Walker Corporation, Federal Hotels, and particularly Gunns.
Groups with widespread community support are scorned. People from the Blue Tier and Ralphs Bay get nowhere in the ministerial diaries-but John Gay, Walker and Graham Richardson have open access any time of the day or night.
The betrayal of Mark Latham by Paul Lennon in the final week of the federal campaign disgusted me. According to the forest industry’s own report by Professor Bruce Felmingham, there is a maximum of 1345 jobs at stake if old growth logging ended.
Mark Latham offered us $800 million for those workers, approximately $594,000 per job. He offered us a way out of an impasse that is crippling us as a society. He offered us a future. It was a great deal for Tasmania.
And what did Paul Lennon do? He condemned it with his silence, as surely as Scott MacLean did with his rat’s rhetoric.
They ratted on their party, on us, and two days later delivered John Howard the biggest propaganda triumph of the federal campaign. Premier Lennon could have prevented this. He didn’t.
Where is Premier Lennon’s loyalty? To Tasmanians? To the Labor Party? Or to Gunns profits?
If Lennon is going to say that his actions in the last week of the Federal Campaign were in the interest of the party, then it is a party whose interests are now identical to those of the Gunns board.
If as a nation we cannot safeguard the future of 1345 workers and protect forests unique in the world we are not a nation worthy of the name. We can and ought have a better forest industry, but to have it we have to conceive of that industry as something larger than Gunns profits.
The Labor party should be bringing people together, not dividing them with hate. It should be honouring Tasmanians and not destroying them.
And if Tasmania is to have a future, if the Tasmanian Labor party is to be an effective party of reform and progress, we need to deal honestly with the forest issue and stop being a party that takes its marching orders from Robin Gray and John Gay.
It’s time for this terrible period of shame in our history as a party to end, and for us once more to be the party of hope, of the future, and of the people.
The Labor Party is full of good people. It’s time we took control of our party back. It’s time we got out of the clearfells and started heading back toward our light on the hill.
It’s time.
Thank you.
