Henry Melville

EASTER … and true to form Tasmania indulges in its favourite lust — crucifying its messengers and sages.

Tasmania — like the former Van Diemen’s Land — remains a place of brutish punishment, abused power and public censorship.

And it has a Minister who wears many guises. A true-believer and a Christian lay-preacher; amongst parliamentarians he is mockingly referred as ‘the Parson’.

To proclaim the word of God from the pulpit is one form of public service, but it is his other Ministry that David Llewellyn stands in measured contrast.

His daily vocation is as the Member for Lyons. A common-touch person of simpleton phrases, and yet a veritable Pharisee of the Temple Mount. Miraculously he is also a loyal Praetorian guardsman of Paulus Lennon, the Governor of the prefecture of Tasmania answerable to a not-so-Holy Romanesque Empire that rules this island.

Named after the Holy Land king of the Old Testament — David, the beloved of Yahweh — our Tasmanian version has also acquired the epithet of The Minister-for-Everything.

In his earthly Ministry — as both political Pharisee & Praetorian — under patronage from Governor Lennon and the Empire of course, he has provided dutiful service and been granted authority over the destinies of some Tasmania’s treasures — food production, water, energy, the natural environment, health, emergency services, police and now its law-making.

Alas with such a calling to faith and service, it is unlikely that even his Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, would fare too kindly under the authority and ministerial protection of our David and his fellow Labor Centurions.

Had Christ chosen to preach His Beatitudes in the forests around the protest camps amongst His dishevelled band of outcast Loraxs; or had He dared to upset the tables of the moneychangers in their gambling Temples; or had He exposed the awful truth of industrial egg production would our David and his fellow Centurions, like Pontius Pilot 2000 years ago, act any differently?

Would he wash his hands in front of the crowds and dismiss the Son of God from his presence. Would he, by various acts of omission, be ordering His crucifixion.

What is this rough Tasmanian breast that commonly crucifies its Christs and yet each year slavishly celebrates a noble Christian birth in Bethlehem?

Jesus — for God’s sake — DO NOT be re-born in Tasmania … methinks your truthful form of Christian ethics are not welcome here.