Blogging politics, culture, sociology and life from Brisvegas
Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon has resigned.
It’s hard to be definitive from a distance, but he seems to me to have been an appalling leader. Mired in corruption scandals, joined at the hip to Gunns. Driving the Labor Party to record lows in the polls. But perhaps some of our Tasmanian LPers can give us some more informed perspectives!
Please read the comments policy. If you would like an icon beside your comment, please register a Gravatar.
There is a Comments Preview function below the typing box which activates when you start typing.
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Yes I have no particular knowledge of the fellow, he just seemed to be the worst of all of our generally middling to mediocre State leaders.
I wonder what job he will get with Gunns?
And, as i previously reported, ANZ is set NOT to provide funding for the pulp mill.
Maybe the campaign via the internet to let the company know of community/customer concern has played some part in Lennons’ demise.
I’m inclined to be a little more generous. He suffers from an excess of certainty that he’s alright right and over-the-top outrage that anybody could try to thwart his plans. Yet for all that I believe he’s honest and well-motivated, and that the ALP has been a reasonably good government. That said, I was outraged at the recent scandal where Lennon vetoed the appointment of a magistrate because of his prior role as Chairman of the resource management and development tribunal in expressing environmental concerns over a proposed pulp mill. Unfortunately that sort of bully-boy tactic is part of the Lennon package. My other concern is the introduction of the ‘essential learnings’ program into Tasmanian schools which has left Tasmania as the educational basket case of Australia. Even more unfortunately the current Liberal leader and likely ALP leader are both dull, smarmy nothings who would be out of their depth running a school canteen.
I can’t stand the use of “learnings” as a plural noun!
posted this morning after a tip-off from ABC radio news
“Imagine there’s no Lennon,
It isn’t hard to do….”
Mr 17% to resign? Why would he, out-polling Admiral Nelson so decisively??
What, Lennon’s Labor, you say? Oh, well then, that’s different. The Labor boys have an entirely different calculus of leadership: it’s not like the Liberals.
cheerio
@Wilful I doubt he would take a job at Gunns, though no doubt there would be one waiting if he wanted it. I suspect he will want to get out of the public eye as quicly as possible…
Here’s Richard Flanagan’s well written account of Tasmania, Lennon, Gunn’s and the whole damn thing.
I saw some “Gunn control now” stickers when I was last in Hobart.
Gunns is about the only prism through which I ever heard of the bloke. Wonder what sort of a leader he was outside that context?
As on the evening Howard and the Libs were kicked out of office, today, Australia is a better place.
Helen:
Richard Flanagan of course writes very well and I have enjoyed three of his books very much. But neither that or his far left views (many of which I support) are sufficient reason to blindly accept all of his arguments, facts or implications. Much of what he wrote in the article may or may not be true, but the issue of which I have personal knowledge is the allocation of Auspine’s supply of logs to FEA in a decision Flanagan implies is payback for Auspine speaking out about old-growth logging. That decision was investigated by the Auditor-General who confirmed my personal view that the decision was made on ordinary commercial grounds.
Which makes me less trusting of much of the other information presented. It’s all too easy to cobble together some genuine shady practice with assumptions, nmisunderstandings and half truths to provide a persuasive story. I’ve been involved in a number of investigations of supposedly corrupt behaviour by Lennon and in every case he’s come out squeaky clean. Unfortunately innocence doesn’t prevent mud sticking and the view has gradually become more entrenched in the community of a corrupt Premier who is controlled by Gunns.
So I repeat my view that “he suffers from an excess of certainty that he’s always right and over-the-top outrage that anybody would try to thwart his plans. Yet for all that I believe he’s honest and well-motivated”
Paul Burns @ 10.
“As on the evening Howard and the Libs were kicked out of office, today, Australia is a better place.”
Meaning that today Tasmania is a better place? Possibly the majority of Tasmanians agree with you re Tasmania. Arguably Mr. Lennon was perceived as being 100% committed to pocket lining, bordering on klepotcracy. (a la what politicians are accused of in PNG & other tribally based “democracies”)
However I challenge your claim that on the 24th of November 2007 Australia became a better place.
As far as I can see, John Howard is still alive.
“As far as I can see, John Howard is still alive.”
But his political career is dead, and that is what matters.
And, SATP,the lumpenproletariat are burgling his house as payback for the way he persecuted them for 11 years!
Twice I’ve written a half-hearted defence of Paul Lennon as being at least well-intentioned. Both times it’s been ignored. Which is no big deal - as somebody who only recently worked out who this ‘borg’ was that kept appearing in LP topics, I can hardly complain that Tasmanian politics is not at the top of most people’s list of interesting subjects.
But it does worry me that the majority LP view seems to be very accepting of the views of a MSM that is becoming more and more desperate to sell its product and increasingly less interested in reporting facts. So, allegations about a political leader are loudly trumpeted on the front page or at the top of news bulletins while reports that debunk the allegations are given meagre, if any, coverage. It is inevitable that the quality of people willing to stand for election must decline with a MSM so desperate to attack politicians and a community so willing to believe whatever they are told. I don’t have a solution, but it does peeve me that LPers, of all people, would be so willing to fall into line with the flock.