Labor secrecy hurts democracy: Charles Wooley

The question is, how to rebuild the wreckage of the Tasmanian Labor Party into a valuable and viable player to the advantage of our democracy, writes Charles Wooley.

WHAT is happening within the Tasmanian Labor Party is beyond the comprehension of most of the electorate.

The sins of the Liberal Party (and there are plenty of them) have been cast into the shade of the O’Byrne Affair.

We have completely forgotten about all the questionable dealings of the Liberal government as the state ALP descends into turmoil and chaos over a sexual harassment allegation against the shortest serving Labor leader in our history. Mr O’Byrne has denied the allegation.

There is always a tendency for such matters to resurface, so the complaint from the year 2007 should not have been completely unexpected. But given the messy and incompetent way Labor fielded it, that was how it looked.

Engaging the professional services of a top lawyer, Barbara Deegan, so the Tasmanian ALP could investigate itself must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Ms Deegan has considerable credibility as both a former Commissioner of the Commonwealth Industrial

Tribunal and as a former Fair Work Commissioner.

David O'Byrne, Parliament question time. Picture: Richard Jupe

But despite the qualifications of Labor’s independent investigator, the Deegan Inquiry’s apparent exoneration of Mr O’Byrne did nothing but inflame both public outrage and feminist fury.

With some torturing of the English language (as lawyers are inclined to do) Ms Deegan concluded that her inquiry was “unable to be satisfied” that Mr O’Byrne “sexually harassed the complainant as defined in (Labor) policy.”

Consequently, she recommended that no finding to that effect should be made against him.

Remember this was not a civil nor a criminal trial and Barbara Deegan as an independent expert had to frame her inquiry in the terms of an esoteric ALP rule book.

So that you wouldn’t have to, I read the ‘Tasmanian Labor Bullying, Harassment (including sexual harassment), Victimisation and Discrimination Policy’.

Section 7.1 of that document says, “Sexual harassment is unwanted or unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature in circumstances where it is reasonable to anticipate the recipient will feel offended, humiliated or intimidated.

It is irrelevant whether the person committing the acts intends to sexually harass the recipient.

Sexual harassment is not interaction, flirtation or friendship which is mutual or consensual.”

You might read that as loading the rules in favour of a complainant. The offence is defined by the feelings of the victim and not the intentions of the accused.

I’m not sure that’s fair but that’s how ALP policy reads.

My business is only the English language and not the Law but as many times as I read that clause, that’s still how it looks. No wonder the complainant Rachel Midson and her supporters were shocked by the exoneration of the man she so deeply felt was her harasser.

Rachel Midson speaks in relation to Labor member for Franklin David O'Byrne and his alleged behaviour towards her. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

The public perception was that Labor’s ‘independent Inquiry’ looked like a case of setting Caesar to judge Caesar, as internal reviews so often do. That is not to impugn the judgement of the highly qualified Ms Deegan whom we can assume was just performing a paid job of work as best she could.

But in the real world, from which the Tasmanian ALP seems so divorced, who would really have expected a private in-house inquiry to clear the air, especially now the political stench is so strong?

And how could they have forgotten this is Tasmania where the global theory of six degrees of separation does not apply? Try one or two degrees at the most.

Rachel Midson, the complainant in the O’Byrne case has a sister in Tasmanian parliament, the recently elected independent, Kristie Johnston.

Under Parliamentary Privilege, Ms Johnston was able to raise even more damning allegations against David O’Byrne. Allegations which if previously published anywhere in the media might have attracted defamation suits.

But fairly reported from the proceedings of parliament those allegations are now common knowledge. Again, Mr O’Byrne strenuously denied the allegations.

Kristie Johnston MP in the Tasmanian Parliament. Picture: Chris Kidd

Parliamentary privilege is often called “Coward’s Castle” because the conferred immunity can be so easily abused.

But it is also an invaluable device in our democracy, to prevent litigation lawyers from becoming the gatekeepers of what the public should and should not know.

In parliament this week Ms Johnston attempted to put her sister Rachel Midson’s historical harassment allegation into a more contemporary context by claiming that between 2007 and 2020 at least five other women had similar stories to inform against O’Byrne. The implication was that the bloke “had form”, as Cassie O’Connor also told the parliament.

This had become a “Me Too” moment.

Ms Johnston told parliament the complaints were all remarkably similar. “Vulgar and unsolicited text messages of a sexual nature, abhorrent sexually explicit comments, physical advances that make them feel uncomfortable and inappropriate touching of a sexual nature.”

And driving home the point that in Tasmania there might be as little as 1 degree of separation she threatened, “And each of these women know others.”

It’s a fair bet there might have been perspiration on both sides of the house.

Untried in court or in a properly constituted parliamentary inquiry Mr O’Byrne’s fate has been to be tried in the intemperate echo chambers of social media and public opinion.

Even an ordeal by a well-moderated parliamentary debate this week, left him sitting alone and looking like a broken man. He appeared flushed and despondent. His characteristic jauntiness and swagger were gone.

Labor David O'Byrne MP in the Tasmanian Parliament. Picture: Chris Kidd

We can only imagine the enormous stress he and his family are enduring.

But we don’t need to imagine the damage the O’Byrne Affair has done to the ALP. It is clearly apparent and worse, most of it was self-inflicted. Unless the party mends its ways on a host of issues it will be in the political wilderness for a long time.

Premier Gutwein has observed that a functioning opposition is vital to the working of our democracy.

Given his German background that might have been a case of ‘Freudenschade’: a German expression for the joy you experience from another’s misfortune. (And who could blame him?)

But Gutwein is nevertheless correct about the failure of the Opposition. Labor has few policies and where it does, it too often goes back on them.

Conspicuously it fails to warn and caution, allowing the Premier to embarrass himself (I hope he knows) when he described the Brazilian company JBS, with its well-known history of bribery, as “a generous corporate citizen”.

The question is, how to rebuild the wreckage of the Tasmanian Labor Party into a valuable and viable player to the advantage of our democracy?

To do that we would need to speak to the people who run the party. And those are not necessarily the same people Tasmanians have elected as labor members of parliament.

A good man who resigned from the Tasmanian Parliamentary Labor Party this week, Dr Bastian Seidel said it all. “It is sad and depressing and too often I felt that I’ve just been a pawn in somebody else’s stupid game.”

Tasmania's Opposition health spokesman Bastian Seidel has resigned from Parliament. Picture Eddie Safarik

You might think regional Tasmania needs a country doctor more than it needs a disenchanted politician.

But without good people in our parliament, we can’t fix our health crisis or any of our other problems.

As Peter Gutwein philosophised, good opposition is an essential part of good government.

Within the ALP it is the Tasmanian Labor Administrative Committee that runs the show. They

wrote the fifty-three-page rule book which includes the terms under which Rachel Midson’s allegations against David O’Byrne were heard.

The committee consists of twenty-two (mostly publicly-unelected) people whom the Liberals like to call “Labor’s faceless men”. They are the ones who voted 18-4 to block popular Kingborough mayor Dean Winter. They are the ones you need to convince that Labor has lost its way and that you won’t be voting for them until, for Tasmania’s sake, they get their party’s act together.

In New South Wales you can easily find the Labor Administrative Committee online. Not in Tasmania.

But why they are so bashful I have no idea.

Eighteen of them are from the Left faction (to which David O’Byrne belongs) and only four are from the Right.

Just to get you started on a nonpartisan program to fix the ALP, here are some of the names you need to speak with. You might not know all of them. You might only know a few. But in our one or two degrees of separation, certainly you will know at least one of them.

Jeanette Armstrong, Jacob Batt, Carol Brown, Adam Clarke, Julie Dick, Ben Dudman, Tim Jacobson, Robbie Moore, Jessica Munday, Helen Polley, Anne Urquhart, Rebecca White.

There are still a few names out there for you to discover for yourself, because saving democracy should be everyone’s job.

But if you think Labor is beyond saving then you better start working on a new party.

Because without an opposition we don’t have a democracy.