Hag
TASMANIA’S best investigative journalist of the past 20 years will no longer be writing in mainstream media.
Today Simon Bevilacqua’s last articles are published in The Sunday Tasmanian:
AN official delegation visiting a Swedish pulp mill was forced to flee because of an overwhelming stench. A senior Tasmanian official with mild asthma almost collapsed and had to be helped back to the tour bus. The factory was touted as world’s best practice and an “odour-free” pulp mill. The incident has been confirmed by two members of the Resource Planning and Development Commission pulp-mill assessment panel who toured German and Swedish mills last year.
( And:
Delay in promised testing
A tattered system
Love of history saved the bay )
Perhaps he is wearied of being extruded weekly through the grids of mainstream Tasmanian journalism …
Whatever his reasons, at least it will be a relief not to see various spinners scurrying up The Mercury stairs to complain about yet another Bevilacqua truth-telling exercise. No more, Hello Barry.
At least you won’t see Bevilacqua heading for a higher paying job in the Government media unit — somehow I doubt they would have him anyway — or occupying federal MPs’ plush parliamentary PR seats.
Bevilacqua is a lifetime journalist. He’s going sub-editing on The Mercury … and Hag has no doubt that his superb forensic analyses and writing skills will surface in another time and another place … He’s too naturally inquisitive not to keep writing about his beloved, too-often trashed Tasmania.
Meanwhile Hag mourns one thing. Bevilacqua has never been awarded Tasmania’s top journalistic gong: The Keith Welsh Award for Oustanding Service to Journalism. This is a travesty.
So, in some way towards rectifying this gross injustice, Hag herewith bestows on you her own esteemed gong: The Green Fairy Absinthe Award.
You’re a ripper!
Cheers, Mate!
