Common Richard me mate, do I have a deal for you, says Lennon.  What do you think Flanagan will reply to that one?  Clearly the man has not understood a word of what Flanagan wrote about.  Lennon, you are kidding yourself if you believe that you and Flanagan have anything even remotely in common.  Not surprisingly, you do not have a clue that there is a difference, you are confusing snot with custard.

Well well Mr Premier. You have found someone to write your mail for you. It must cost an awful lot of money to have people on board to take the rhetoric of failure and turn it into positive language.

But just because you put a shoe in the oven - it dont make it a biscuit.

The outbreak of peace that you spoke about clearly recognises that there is none at present.

Look very hard at the situation in front of you. Study it well. It is a direct response to your incompetent leadership.

One might observe that it wont go away until you do. And like your term and the actions that you will no doubt stagger through like a drunk over the next period of time - it is far from complete. Everything you are and do is reflected back to you by what you see.

And if this note is being read by some jelly-back and ammoral “P.R man” who cobbled together the words submitted under your name -” PR Man - shame on you”.

Did you do those years at university, and did you clamber up that greasy if not mildly competetive professional slope to end up writing such smarmy dibble. Go get a life.  Youre an embarrassment too.

Even after Mr Lennon’s appeal to shared values, significant differences with Flanagan appear to remain.

Flanagan is believed to personally write the work published under his name, and is not known to consistently represent his fiction as fact.  There is also no credible evidence that Flanagan is exceptionally venal, despotic, cowardly,or stupid.

Despite Mr Lennon’s offer of his hand in friendship, there may be an ultimate barrier to reconciliation. A good writer was said by Hemmingway to have an “inbuilt crap detector”.

If so, Thuggo would keep Flanagan’s ringing maddingly.

John Hayward

A nice try Mr Lennon, but I suspect the over-bearing, bullying tactics you’ve repeatedly demonstrated should anyone dare to disagree with your (rear) vision for Tasmania, are now too well-known for anyone to take these words seriously.

Personally I hope we don’t have to wait until 2010 before having the opportunity to judge the destructive, divisive politics you embrace. I would suggest they’ve been far from successful, and I’d like to think you might have the decency to resign long before 2010.

From this end of the state the feeling is that your focus has been on providing whatever Gunns Ltd and/or Forestry Tasmania asks for, and sod the rest of us if we don’t happen to agree.

And this despite providing an endless stream of worthwhile, valid and responsible arguments about WHY we don’t agree.

If, therefore, your responsibility is not just to Richard, but to the people of Tasmania as a whole, I don’t recall seeing any evidence of it. You certainly haven’t shown any responsibility to any of the people in the Tamar Valley and Launceston for example. You haven’t listened to any of our concerns. You’ve continually dismissed truckloads of evidence that have clearly shown your pet pulp mill project will NOT be the economic saviour you’re so pig-headedly adamant it will be.

You cry poor when it comes to finding cash for our hospitals, nurses, doctors, and health issues generally, but are happy to spend obscenely large amounts of taxpayers money on race tracks and football.

I’m all for a ceasefire Mr Lennon, and respecting each others differences. However, I simply don’t believe you’re actually capable of doing it.

Typical sycophantic rubbish from John Wayward in #3.  I would certainly not pretend the Premier or any other Tasmanian politician was any kind of paragon of truth and accuracy, but nor is Richard Flanagan.  Flanagan’s political articles are riddled with inaccuracies and hyperbole, many of which I have detailed on this site in commenting on previous instalments, and Lennon’s charge that Flanagan is “constructing his own reality and then standing back and commenting upon it as if it were established fact” is absolutely consistent with my experience of Flanagan’s polemic.

It may not be the consistent representation of fiction as fact, but Flanagan’s sprays certainly blur the two in a way that the worst sort of politician *would* be proud of - except for one thing: that no-one who actually lives here seems to fall for it, except for the already converted. 

Flanagan’s “battle cry for our Tasmania” is less bad than most of his efforts, mainly because he avoids discussing the science of any issue. (Not only is there no sign of a crap-detector when Flanagan discusses threatened species issues, for instance, but there is rarely any sign of anything but crap.) 

However even here Richard is barking up the wrong tree by flogging the theory that Lennon nobbled Simon Cooper, when the accusation since produced by Nigel Burch is that Lennon was trying to intervene in Mr Cooper’s favour!  A similar confusion level has been present in many Green comments about the saga, which increases whatever chance there is that the matter will just blow over - the public may just get too confused to make head or tail of it all.

Hang on, isn’t this the same guy (Lennon) who ordered two of his staffers to drive all the way from Hobart to Burnie to turf out a Government advisor for daring to criticise him and his government?  And now he wants peace with Flannigan.  A piece of Flannigan more like it!

Trevor \|/

Dr Bonham, it is highly arguable that ‘Lennon intervened in Cooper’s favour’. I would hate to think that you are indulging in establishing what you believe to be true, rather than what is true, as fact.

My reading of the situation is that Lennon instructed Kons to appoint Cooper Magistrate to get him out of the RPDC. Nigel Burch says, in his account of events posted elsewhere on Tasmanian Times:

http://tasmaniantimes.com/index.php?/weblog/article/what-nigel-burch-said/

“Mr Kons had on a number of occasions previously, complained to me about the Premier interfering in the Justice portfolio. He had also previously told me that he had been directed by the Premier to appoint Mr Cooper in order to remove him from the RPDC.”

That is, Lennon wanted to remove a nuisance from a position that had caused the government severe embarrassment—indeed, three people in the same position decried government interference in their execution of the position’s duties.

How, Sir, does it constitute acting in Mr Cooper’s favour?

Cameron,  feel free to produce evidence to the contrary, but I’d hazard a wild guess that being a magistrate is slightly more prestigious and possibly even a bit better paid than mucking around on a hamstrung RPDC.  I’d also assume that one doesn’t simply get told “hey! you! stop doing that job and go be a magistrate, now, whether you want to or not!”, but that it is something one has to actually have an interest in getting appointed to.  That is my basis for assuming that whatever Lennon’s reason for wanting to move Cooper to a different position (in the version of the story told by Burch), the outcome of that plan, had it succeeded, would have been far from devastating for Cooper.  The onus is on anyone believing otherwise to demonstrate that Cooper didn’t want to be a magistrate anyway. 

I am not saying that the Burch version of Lennon’s motives involves Lennon being *motivated* in Cooper’s favour, but I am saying it involves him effectively trying to get Cooper promoted to remove him from a position where Lennon considered him a nuisance.  Whether there is actually a shred (pun intended) of truth to these accusations by Burch remains to be seen, but trying to flog the line that Cooper was a victim of Lennon is apparently not compatible with the version of events most recently provided by Nigel Burch.

And I’m not engaged in establishing anything about the truth or otherwise of Burch’s accusations themselves.  What I’m aiming to do is to point out what those accusations are, because some of the anti-Lennon brigade seem to have failed to update their rants in light of the actual content of Burch’s post-Kons-resignation statement.

Firstly, consider why Cooper was ‘mucking around on a hamstrung RPDC’ in the first place. Consider also why the RPDC was ‘hamstrung’, and by whom.

Secondly I am easily convinced that Cooper wanted to be a magistrate—but I doubt whether he would have wanted it to happen this way. I assume that he would have wanted it as a reward for his hard work and diligence in the legal profession—not as a consolation prize for keeping his mouth shut about the critical non-compliance of the pulp mill as it appeared before the RPDC.

Thirdly, the real villain here is Linda Hornsey—but don’t think that lets Lennon off the hook. He has some very serious questions that he will no doubt continually refuse to answer.

Speaking of Hornsey, one thing that’s unclear to me in the Burch version is this: ” Shortly after this, he received a telephone call that I believe was from Linda Hornsey. He took this call in his private office and upon hanging up on this call he immediately shredded the Cabinet Minute appointing Mr Cooper.”  But if Burch’s story was entirely true and if the call was from Hornsey, then what was Hornsey saying?  My initial assumption was that Hornsey would be pressuring Kons into appointing Cooper, and that he then decided not to do so because he was tired of being told what to do, but someone else who read the same thing suggested she might have been telling him that even if Lennon wanted Cooper appointed it was actually a bad idea and shouldn’t be done.  Both these versions are consistent with Kons tearing up the appointment after the call.

As for the argument about Cooper not wanting to get the job that way, I have no way of knowing if that’s true, but it’s immaterial.  Had Kons gone ahead and appointed him, he would most likely never have known. 

(Again, I am assuming for the sake of argument that what Burch says is true and considering the meaning of it if so.  I have no way of knowing whether his claims are true or not.)

Well done Kevin, the angels have all chickened off and you’re treading in, with an opinion on; just what the hell went on here?
A question that a lot(unfortunately, not the great unwashed, who don’t know who Kons was!)of people would like an answer to. Preferably an answer derived from a process that could ask hard questions and brook no evasion from the good Linda.

Are you aware of the rumour that Cooper contacted Hornsey demanding to know why she scuppered his appointment? I have heard it from a couple of sources. If it’s true (and what the hell, let’s say it is) then it blows your assumption out of the water.

It is quite safe to assume that Hornsey instructed Cooper not to send the ‘critical non-compliance’ letter to Gunns, so regardless of her action over his appointment as magistrate, her hands are pretty dirty after this sordid affair.

See, if Lennon would answer a couple of questions, there wouldn’t be a need for all this damaging speculation would there?

Burch had the guts to write to Lennon detailing his grievances; what does such a person have to lie about, as you seem to assume? Why do you have ‘assume’ that what he says is true? It’s a first-hand account from someone on the inside. Why would you doubt what he says?

Steve, I don’t (yet) have an opinion on what went on here.  All I’m trying to do is point out that the actual meaning of the Burch revelations, if true, is inconsistent with some claims that are still being made.  I agree that a certain kind of process might be able to get to the bottom of this all, but without a clear focus from the critics the story is most likely to simply blow over.  It has probably already done so, leaving the question of what electoral impact it has had, the answer to which is most likely: not much at all.

Cameron: I actually considered my initial assumption re the content of Hornsey’s call to be called into serious question (and quite probably false) the moment someone advanced the alternative hypothesis that Hornsey was in fact attempting to scupper Cooper’s appointment. Any “rumour” you refer to, however, adds little, since “rumour” is no stronger a standard of evidence than speculation.

However, if the Burch version is true, and if Hornsey was in fact advising Kons not to appoint Cooper despite pressure placed on him to do so, then why are critics still vilifying Hornsey?

I would not assume any “insider account” to be true until it is proven to be so.  I have no reason for assuming any part of it to be false (in this case), and your claim that I “seem to assume” he is lying is bollocks. However, people in these sorts of positions can build up all sorts of political animosities perhaps unknown to us and it is wise to suspend judgement in the absence of proof, instead of assuming anything to be true just because a “whistleblower” has asserted that it is. 

For example, many people assumed the infamous “Manning beef” concerning forestry to be entirely true, but Lennon gave a detailed response to it in parliament. When I challenge posters here (for many of whom the Manning beef is some kind of sequel to the New Testament) to refute Lennon’s response to Manning it is rare that anyone even responds at all, and when they do so it is always a very superficial attempt.