Extract from The Mercury political and social commentator Wayne Crawford’s Saturday column:
The Liberals continued to focus on the issue of Lennon’s integrity — despite that a mere 7.7% of those questioned in The Mercury’s latest TasPoll rated integrity as an important issue in the election. Certainly, the Premier has a worrying blind spot when it comes to issues of perception of conflict of interest — with a growing list of examples including his acceptance of generous hospitality from PBL’s Crown Casino while he negotiated with the company on the $700 million Betfair deal; his brother John being given lucrative consultancy work by departments for which Lennon had ministerial responsibility; and a company owned by woodchipping giant and prospective pulpmill developer Gunns Limited doing an extensive makeover of the Premier’s country manorhouse. It’s not suggested anything illegal or dishonest has taken place, but it has not been a good look — something which the Liberals have seized on.
Their mantra — repeated ad nauseam in just about every statement issued by the Opposition since before the election was even announced — has been the Premier and his Government’s “special deals for special mates” while the “State Liberal Team have a plan to get it right for all Tasmanians.” (The third leg to the trifecta of Liberal aphorisms refers to the “arrogant and out of touch Lennon Labor Government .”)
But it seems that in the Liberals’ eyes, some Labor mateships are more significant than others. During last week’s forum debate between representatives of the three parties on ABC television’s Friday night Stateline programme, presenter Airlie Ward queried Liberal treasury spokesman Brett Whiteley on why the Liberals had been strangely silent on the issue of the Gunns company doing Lennon’s home renovations.
Oh, replied Whiteley with a straight face, the Liberals weren’t going to get involved in criticising the Premier over something for which they had seen no documentary evidence and was only an unsubstantiated allegation.
Really? Lack of any evidence — documentary or otherwise — hasn’t stopped them claiming the upbeat and positive photo-story on Lennon in last week’s Bulletin magazine (published by PBL) was a reward for the Betfair deal, a consolation prize after a story for the Women’s Weekly was held over. Nor did it prevent them alleging Lennon had accepted inappropriate hospitality from PBL, well before evidence of the accommodation upgrade was published by The Mercury and other News Limited papers.
Surely, the Liberals’ failure to capitalise on the renovation row wouldn’t have anything to do with not wanting to offend Gunns (which is a generous donor to both political parties and a former employer of Opposition Leader Rene Hidding).
No — such a thought would surely be far too cynical.
Earlier on Tasmanian Times: The Premier’s house (5) … and 4,3,2,1
