Lennon’s Labor

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WHEN I wrote last week’s column about Paul Lennon’s failure as premier, a mate warned me to brace for a response. I said: “Nah, Lennon wouldn’t be so stupid, and even if he was, he’ll have an adviser with enough nous to remind him that it will just fuel the fire about Labor’s civil war.”

However, within hours of my column hitting the streets, Lennon was firing angry texts to the Mercury, and next day he penned a churlish response that, by any honest assessment, wholly misrepresented what I had written the week before. It was a cheap shot, and reminded me of the old days when Lennon was premier.

The retaliatory strike was clearly driven by anger. Lennon took no time to consider anything I had written. Anger was the hallmark of Lennon the politician too. He often bristled at the temerity of those who dared oppose him.

Once angry, it seemed from the outside at least, that nothing else mattered, not the party, not colleagues, not the community, not the outcome, not the truth, just retribution. The pulp mill/forestry wars can be critiqued as a public manifestation of this style of politics.

Some MPs can’t help themselves. Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott were all undone by vendettas that took precedence over what’s best for the party and the nation. Political parties are just platforms for the ego for some politicians.

The point of my column last week was clear — Lennon is in no position to stand in moral judgment of David O’Byrne because of his behaviour as premier. Lennon was publicly admonished by a conga-line of critics for political interference in their jobs, including a senior public servant, an expert witness, an agency head and a retired Supreme Court judge, who also claimed Lennon had been dishonest in his recollections of their conversations.

Lennon swept into power on the popularity of the late Jim Bacon, who died in office, and he squandered that goodwill in one term to finish with a preferred premier rating of 17 per cent.

These ugly realities may anger Lennon, but the public record is the public record: his government was one of the most divisive and unpopular in modern Tasmanian history. Most of us thought so, not just his direct political opponents.

Tens of thousands of Tasmanian lives were thrown into turmoil due to Lennon’s dogged pursuit of the world’s biggest pulp mill and his hostility to any who opposed it. Some still carry the scars. He wanted his pulp mill regardless of the pain it caused and no matter how loudly the community complained. More than 10,000 took to the streets of Hobart at one rally against Lennon’s mill.

Author Quentin Beresford, who wrote The Rise and Fall of Gunns Ltd, which won the Tasmanian Premier’s Literary Award in 2015, is among many to call for a royal commission into these affairs.

Former president of the Australian Bar Association, David Porter, QC, provided a 14-page opinion in 2007 that there were “good grounds” to suggest Lennon had tried to obstruct the Resource Planning and Development Commission and it was “reasonably argued” that he had breached two sections of the RPDC Act.

Senior University of Tasmania constitutional lawyer Michael Stokes reached a similar view.

Alas, there was no anticorruption agency to investigate.

That Lennon avoided a forensic probe into his governance and his government — after complaints from retired judge Christopher Wright, among others — is galling. I suspect it was partly because we Tasmanians were so tired of the saga that once Lennon was gone, we were so relieved we just let it go.

The pulp mill cost Tasmania billions, destroyed livelihoods, wrecked marriages, derailed careers, sent people packing to live offshore and is still taking a toll on those with plantations and who invested in forestry schemes.

That Lennon should claim the high moral ground in recent weeks to demand David O’Byrne resign over allegations he historically harassed a young unionist with an uninvited kiss and suggestive text messages (which O’Byrne maintains he did not believe were unwelcome at the time, and for which he apologised and has since been duly investigated and cleared) is shamefully opportunistic.

It is a warning about how low Lennon’s Labor will stoop.

Astute observers realise a civil war is being waged in Labor and Lennon is pitted squarely against O’Byrne. It was on show when he intervened in the first week of the election campaign to demand Dean Winter go on the Franklin ticket with O’Byrne. It was as if Lennon thought “Bugger the party, I want my man in the race”. And what Lennon wants, Lennon gets.

There are many concerning aspects of Lennon’s re-emergence as Labor’s chief powerbroker, not least his willingness to smear critics and use the nearest scandal at hand to destroy them, but perhaps most worrying is workers now need a strong Labor Party more than ever.

Tasmanians are struggling with the most volatile job conditions in memory. The pandemic, new technology and marginalisation of unions have combined to create challenging work conditions, pay and workplaces.

Those with jobs cling to them, accepting pay and conditions they may once have declined. Most are part-time or casual, without the security and benefits of full-time jobs. This workforce casualisation means many do not work enough to make ends meet, creating serious insecurity and a new working poor.

When was the last time you heard Labor express concern at the pay and conditions of teachers or journalists or cleaners or shop assistants or bakers or bar staff or nurses or librarians or baristas?

Where is Labor at this hour of need? Where’s the concern at how many police and paramedics are on stress leave, too freaked out by their short-staffed workplaces to return?

Rusted-on Labor supporters, and there are very few left, may point to policy documents and press releases on websites, but where is the voice that cuts through, the commitment?

Where’s the chorus to reassure workers Labor is fighting the good fight in state parliament? Where’s forward-thinking Labor that knows climate change threatens workers and families? Where’s intelligent Labor that recognises nature is Tasmania’s most precious asset? Where’s the Labor that fights for clean water to drink, clean air to breathe and clean communities to live in? Where’s honest, fair Labor?

You won’t find Lennon’s Labor anywhere here.

No, Lennon’s angry mob is too busy trying to smear me, a mere scribe who, without fear or favour, has dared to observe, record and opine on Tasmania for 32 years.

Where was Lennon when Premier Gutwein was thinking of employing hundreds of Tasmanians to make locally designed catamarans to replace the Spirit of Tasmania ferries? He was lobbying on behalf of the Finnish shipbuilder engaged to supply more ferries for Bass Strait.

Where was Lennon when Michael Field’s Labor was forming minority government with the Greens in 1989? Discussing internal party matters over a few beers with then Liberal leader Robin Gray.

Where was Lennon when Labor Leader Rebecca White took on the top end of town in the 2017 election to get pokies out of the suburbs? Good question, because Lennon is now a paid lobbyist for Federal Hotels and, inexplicably, was working for the pokies king at the time he also sat on an internal Labor committee that convinced the party to dump White’s signature policy before the last state election.

Labor will never become a force in the 21st century until it drops the pathological denial and accepts the failure of this style of politics.

Lennon’s approach fell short as premier, just as it fell short in his bid to smear me this week, and it will fall short again and again.

When will Labor learn?