Didn’t see that one coming
Apr 9th, 2008 by Rebecca
Steve Kons, the Tasmanian Deputy Premier - who had been reported as a potential replacement for Premier Paul Lennon if he were to resign this year - has resigned after a pretty strange series of events led to him being caught misleading parliament today.
It seems that late last year, Kons - the then Attorney-General - recommended the appointment of public servant Simon Cooper as a magistrate, only to retract it under pressure from the then head of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Linda Hornsey, reportedly for having inconvenienced the government while Resource Planning and Development Commissioner during the battle over the phenomenally controversial Gunns pulp mill.
The letter nominating Cooper was shredded and thrown out, but was somehow salvaged from the office’s garbage bin, and nearly six months later, has turned up in the office of Greens MP Kim Booth. His office has then reconstructed it and tabled it in parliament hours after Kons had denied that he’d ever written it.
It’s an epic fuckup on behalf of the government, and a pretty spectacular victory for the Tasmanian Greens. The Greens nationally seem to be on fire this year - with this coming on the back of their efforts to procure a Royal Commission into planning approvals in New South Wales, which have been gaining more press by the day. I’m really pleased to see state Green parties starting to work with the Liberal Party, or at least tag-team, against their respective state governments on key scandals like this: it’s making them a lot more effective an opposition party than just being seen to yell from the distant sidelines.
It’s a disaster for the government, too - Kons having been brought in as a clean candidate after his predecessor, Bryan Green, was put up on corruption charges - and not exactly the press they needed after Green’s second trial ended in a deadlocked jury again recently. The whole fiasco - having the Premier intervene to block the appointment of a magistrate because of his less-than-wholehearted support for their pulp mill, and then having the Deputy Premier lie through his teeth on the floor of parliament about it - shows more than anything so far the lengths the Tasmanian government has been willing to go to get that mill built, and just how deeply that they’re in bed with Gunns.
It’ll be interesting to see who replaces him: I assume it’ll be either Education Minister David Bartlett or Health Minister Lara Giddings. I imagine that this might be a good sign as to which one of them has the support to take over if Lennon were to resign, too. I really do hope that it winds up being Giddings; Bartlett strikes me as the soullessly ambitious type, and I’d love to see a woman rising closer to the top down that way. Still, if I had to put money on it, I’d say it’s going to be Bartlett. I have no idea who might take the ministerial vacancy caused by Kons’ resignation: everyone else, as far as I can see, I’ve heard to be useless, retiring, or too much of a maverick to gain support.
Its getting weirder and weirder isnt it?
Politics here in Tassie is on the nose big time. I don’t particularly like the idea of a pulp mill, nor am i dead against it, what really gets me annoyed is how determined the state government has been to get it done, even to the extent of ramming it through all systems when its obvious to blind freddy that Tasmanians dont want it on the Tamar.
Methinks time will show our esteemed Premier to have been very much in bed with Gunns.