This can't be true ... (Well yes, it is ...)By HAGSurely it can't be true... Hag last night heard in one of the more disreputable cesspits in the capital - but one, Hag must assure her three readers, without a gambling Oasis (she has some pride) - that the bitter aftertaste of the Labor-Green Accord still lingers ... ... and as this ale-fuelled nonsense has it, involved is former Labor Premier Michael Field. It is not exactly a secret that Fieldy and former state Green Christine Milne were not all that fond of one another ... particularly as the Accord unravelled over the issue of ... you guessed it - forests. But it was with some disbelief that Hag heard this astonishing goss in the cesspit: Fieldy, an incredulous Hag was told, has helped engineer some preference deal or other in Tasmania which favours Family First's Jackie Petrusma over fellow Senate hopeful Milney. Family First in Tasmania favoured by Labor ahead of the Greens ... just as the Libs have done in South Australia ... whack the Greens last at all costs. The only credibility that this story can be given is that the Lennon Labor Government in Tasmania IS far to the Right of Robin Gray and is not all that keen on Mark's forests plan. In fact we had the generously proportioned salmon-eater Dick Adams - in a not out-of-character display of industrial age throw-backism - fulminating against any possibility that the RFA is not some Holy Writ communicated on some sacred cable-logged hilltop by the Great God Logging Baron. (Not to mention the rampant anti-Latham-plan-hysteria from state Liberal Leader Rene Hidding ... Rene and Dick wouldn't be out of place in the same party). But surely such a deal would be overridden by Federal Labor decree; therefore an impossibility. This is just a stupid, wild, impossible rumour, the fulminations of late-night-ale-fuelled passion. If nothing else it reveals the wild rumours, urban myths, scuttlebut and outright stupidity as the Big Day nears. Scotch it immediately Fieldy. ... Hag also heard that Latham's flying forests policy visit to Tasmania was Top Secret. The only ones who knew were Latham's minders ... and the Premier's Office. But there was a welcoming committee of lug truck drivers with big rigs illegally parked and forest workers on the lawns of Parliament House and a voluble Premier Lennon marching out to announce that hell would freeze over before a single forest worker had to reconsider his occupation (bugger all other workers, meatworkers, for example). We are dealing here with a special protected species ... (Hag actually feels sorry for the workers, pawns in the great game of the truly protected species, the logging barons). Now how did the word leak out to the workers to front up on the lush lawns. And why weren't they at work? And who's going to pay for the parking tickets? ... Well, yes it is ...
...Sadly, it is true - Michael Field headed up the Tasmanian Labor preference negotiations for this federal election, and led the ALP decision to preference Family First ahead of the Greens. It is important to note that he is not alone in this - Shayne Murphy, the Democrats and the Liberals also decided to preference Family First ahead of the Greens. So far as Field and the ALP goes, it seems that the ALP would rather stop Christine Milne getting into the Senate and have a Latham Government consistently opposed by the religious right in the Senate, than have a progressive party to support more funding for public education, health services and key environmental objectives.
Attached (and listed below) are the Greens' and Labor's Group Voting Tickets for the Tasmanian Senate (pdf from the AEC website
ALP GROUP VOTING TICKET
AUSTRALIAN GREENS GROUP VOTING TICKET
RAPID RESPONSE EMAIL: What do you think? Tuesday, October 5, 2004 |