Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is something rotten at the heart of Tasmania's democracy that's been festering for many decades and still corrupts our parliament and our government decision-making to this day. I want to name up the problem: it's Labor and Liberal politicians who choose to outsource government decision-making to powerful vested interests who are only interested in profit. In return, those politicians and their parties get political donations, and many politicians get jobs when they leave the parliament.

This culture started with the old HEC, the Hydro-Electric Commission, which effectively ran Tasmania for decades. They dammed some of Tasmania's most special places, including Lake Pedder, and acted as a cash cow for governments by ratcheting up debt off budget and transferring funds via dividends to pay for political promises that the 'con fund' could not afford. When the HEC lost its influence after the Greens and the conservation movement—with the help of the Labor Party—saved the Franklin, the forestry industry took over the job of giving instructions to Labor and Liberal Party politicians. But, along the way, other powerful interests, including the gaming sector, had succeeded in subverting the will of the Tasmanian people by buying politicians to further their own ends. This corrupting and corrosive influence of big business, big money and big politics is coming to the surface again with an election due in just a few short weeks. Tasmania Incorporated, or Tas Inc, is a network of so-called businessmen—the old boys—who think they own Tasmania and who think they have some divine right to profit from its treasures no matter what they despoil and no matter how much social harm they cause. They have for far too long had an outside say in what happens in our great state. It is Tasmania, that beautiful island, and its people who lose out every time.

In 1989, northern Tasmanian businessman Edmund Rouse tried to bribe Labor MP Jim Cox to cross the floor and bring down the Field Labor minority government in an attempt to put Liberal Robin Gray in power and prevent the Greens from being the balance of power. This shameful affair was exposed at the Carter royal commission, one of the very few times that members of Tas Inc have been held accountable. Revelations were made of dollars in brown paper bags changing hands, not to mention 10,000 bucks in cash hidden in freezer bags in Robin Gray's home. Rouse went to jail, but the corruption has not gone away; it's just taken on new forms.

Before the 1989 election, North Broken Hill, who wanted to build a pulp mill at Wesley Vale, announced the recall of the Tasmanian parliament to water down the approvals process. That's right—the Tasmanian parliament was recalled on NBH letterhead! That's how corrupt it gets in my home state of Tasmania.

The then environment minister, Graham Richardson—he of the 'whatever it takes' mantra—said:

At no time in Australian history have we ever seen an abrogation of parliamentary sovereignty in the way we have on this particular mill.

This corruption was repeated years later when Gunns tried to build its Tamar Valley mill, with Paul Lennon as Tasmanian Premier. Gunn's was permitted to ditch the assessment process run by the independent Resource Planning and Development Commission, when the company was secretly given the heads up by Tasmania's most senior public servant that the project was about to be assessed as being critically non-compliant by the RPDC. Gunns Limited lawyers then wrote the enabling legislation that passed through the Tasmanian parliament. Of course, a few short months after leaving parliament, Paul Lennon was appointed to the board of Gunns. And while the company has folded since, the players remain the same. Former Gunns boss, John Gay, convicted of insider trading, had his ban on being a director for five years relaxed, such that he now owns a company that stands to profit from the Liberals' efforts to log protected native forests in the Tarkine.

It is not just Mr Gay or the Labor and Liberal parties that have been bought out by Tas Inc. The Jacqui Lambie Network's lead candidate in Lyons, Michael Kent, is one of the most prominent members of Tas Inc. and one of the most brazen about its corrosive influence. He was front and centre, and the only one to out himself, in the shady Tasmanians For a Better Future campaign, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars campaigning against minority government during the 2006 state election campaign. But now that he's seen a chance to benefit himself and line his own pockets, suddenly he is a massive fan of minority government. He's also a massive hypocrite.

Michael Kent is a Liberal masquerading as an Independent seeking the balance of power in Tasmania's parliament so he can deliver more pokies misery to the Tasmanian people and more fish farms to destroy the marine environment and Tasmania's beautiful coastline. How do we know this? Because Mr Kent wrote a book about it. In his book he said:

I’ve always worked on the principle that whoever assists me in the direction I want to go then I’m happy to assist them.

In other words, you scratch Mr Kent's back and he will scratch yours.

On the big issues of fish farms and poker machines—crucial issues in the upcoming Tasmanian election—we know Mr Kent would conduct himself in the appalling transactional way in which he has meddled in Tasmanian politics for decades, because he's said so himself. He told the Australian newspaper on Monday this week that he would have 'a conscience vote on the key issues of fish farming and pokies', because 'on poker machines and fish farms, we have a difference of views'—speaking about Jacqui Lambie. There it is: Mr Kent has a different view from Ms Lambie on two of the most critical and high-profile election issues facing Tasmania.

So a vote for Jacqui Lambie and Michael Kent in the electorate of Lyons, where he is running, is a vote in support of the massive expansion of fish farms on the east coast of Tasmania and on the Tasman Peninsula and for a massive privatisation of public waterways that will destroy the marine environment in local area. It is also a vote to keep pokies in Tasmanian communities. Astoundingly, Mr Kent is on record as saying 'there is absolutely no pokies addiction in regional Tasmania'. Mr Kent, get out, talk to the folks and have a listen because you're wrong about that, too. What he means is he'll sell his vote on pokies to the highest bidder. He said to The Mercury in 2015:

You’ve got to have a jolly good memory to be in politics, you have to worry about what you said and when to whom. You almost have to be a good liar and that would be no good for me …

Well, Mr Kent, we remember what you said about cosy deals you've done over the years. We remember you confessing to try to buy the 2006 election for your mate Paul Lennon and we will be making sure the Tasmanian people remember it too.

I want to say one more thing about Tas Inc. Labor has finally and belatedly stepped out of the pocket of Federal Hotels and adopted part of the Greens policy of removing poker machines from clubs and pubs. This is a good thing. It doesn't erase the damage Labor allowed poker machines to do in Tasmania for decades and the tens of thousands of dollars in donations they received from the pokie barons. Of course, that damage in our community can only be measured in lives ruined. But it does show that it is possible to stand up to the power of vested interests.

With the Greens, and now Labor, planning to remove pokies from pubs and clubs in Tasmania, the only thing that can now deliver for the pokies barons is a Liberal majority government. Interestingly, once Labor's decision was made, Federal Hotels boss Greg Farrell said, 'We will be reviewing our policy towards political donations in the coming weeks, to both parties.' You bet they will! What a surprise! Federal Hotels usually give, of course, to both Labor and Liberal to secure their obscene profits. Remember, 70 cents in every dollar put into a poker machine in Tasmania leaves the state and ends up in the pockets of one of Sydney's richest families.

In the months since the policy announcement, Federal Group and similar bodies have been spending thousands of dollars attacking Labor and the Greens on primetime TV. Some of the millions of dollars they leeched from Tasmanian families and pokies addicts are now buying banners and TV ads seeking to leech votes to their new puppets in the Liberal Party and the Jacqui Lambie Network. To them, and to every member of Tas Inc., I say this: bring it on. The Greens have fought you for decades. We're going to fight you now and we will keep fighting your corrosive influence for as long as it takes to restore a genuine democracy in my home state. Tasmania does not belong to the Michael Kents and the Tas Inc.s to despoil for profit; the place is worth so much more. The people are worth so much more than just fodder for corporate profits. The future of our beautiful island, our archipelago and its people, are not Michael Kent's and Jacqui Lambie's to gamble away.