Wooley: Tirade struck the right note on the street

Wilkie’s take-down of the state government suggested uncomfortable truths about incumbency and passion, Charles Wooley writes.

Independent MP Andrew Wilkie hit out at Tasmanian government this week. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

He might not have made the front page nor led the television news bulletins, but last week was Wilkie’s week.

Everyone in town was talking about Clark independent MHR Andrew Wilkie’s take-down of both government and opposition as “liars and clowns”.

Had our news services not been swamped by weather reports from Queensland he might have got more attention in the media, but in the pubs and coffee shops and in streets of town — his tirade against almost everyone in Tasmanian politics — struck the right note.

Hobart, which some call “nipaluna” is a nice little electorate often said to be the “greenest electorate in Australia”.

Which might be why we are renaming the joint. No one ever asked me and although I hold no brief for Robert Hobart, 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire, who distinguished himself oppressing Catholics in Ireland, still it would be nice to be asked.

Excuse the digression

Should I ever develop the necessary “nipa-lunacy” to stand for politics it would be in the manageably small electorate of Clark. Where it is possible to get the impression that I know everyone and everyone knows me. The Ancient Greeks reckoned the ideal size for a town or a ‘polis’ as they knew it, was one small enough that you never go to town without encountering someone you know, but big enough that you will always find someone you didn’t know.

Our town is a little further up the familiarity scale than the Greek ideal but in the street last week all the nipalunatics were telling me how Wilkie had nailed it.

(Just a tip if you are considering politics, don’t stand against Wilkie.)

There are about 75,000 electors, though Labor claims plane loads of young voters have been leaving every week for the land of opportunity to the north where they will double their wages and their mortgages.

Most of Clark is happily and tightly ensconced between the mountain and the river. Apart from vandals, litterers and a few town planners and architects, most people love their salty old sandstone town even if they don’t love what is happening to it.

Traffic congestion worthy of a much bigger city commonly infuriates all Hobartians.

Traffic on Macquarie Street in Hobart. Picture: Linda Higginson

Wilkie was stuck in traffic on his way to a press conference, I presume about many things, when he blew his stack about one.

“It took me three-quarters of an hour to get into my office this morning from a nearby suburb,” the federal member fumed. (I won’t tell you where he lives, or you’ll all be banging on his door in agreement).

“Just about everything in this state is broken,” he raged to the assembled media, none of whom disagreed.

“The health system is broken. The public education system is broken. Regulation of the aquaculture industry is broken. Everything is broken.”

Wilkie was as angry as Moses when he came down from the mountain (Sinai not Kunanyi) to find his people worshipping a golden calf.

We don’t have a golden calf and if we did Rocky would only flog it off to pay down debt so we could have a stadium in which to worship a golden footy.

Like an angry Old Testament prophet Wilkie pointed the finger of scorn at the nearby Executive Building containing the government ministers and their advisers.

“I don’t know what the clowns are doing up there in that building — they sure aren’t running this state effectively, they sure aren’t managing the finances.”

Unashamedly I reuse passages from the Book of Wilkie if only because, like almost every journalist not working for the government, I wholeheartedly agree.

The Labor party was not spared excoriation. It is their fault he said that “we are treated like mugs… because in this state we have no effective opposition except for some cross-benchers …. and it upsets me and upsets a lot of Tasmanians to see the jewel in this nation’s crown so appallingly governed.”

Andrew Wilkie. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

It was just like the apocalyptic Book of Revelations where the sea had turned into wormwood and dead salmon were washing up on the shore. “We have this terrible secrecy around the industry where we can’t find out what’s going on, where we have an EPA that is under-resourced and has limited legislative powers, and a state government, and a state opposition I would add, that are running a protection racket for these aquaculture industries.”

I wholeheartedly agree with Wilkie’s scathing assessment but would quibble over the term “protection racket” if only because the bad guys in such nefarious business are usually meant to make a profit. I don’t think our pollies are that savvy. They are not on the take. Incompetence and negligence are more appropriate words that spring to mind with particular reference to the ferry fiasco.

And while enjoying Wilkie’s righteous wrath I also want to be reasonable enough to recognising the capable and good politicians on both sides, whom I won’t damn by praising here. Spare a thought for the participants who believe in the proper process of Parliamentary Democracy and must suffer seeing their temple collapsing around them.

Clearly we need an election, but who will stand other than the same people who over decades have got us into this mess?

Andrew Wilkie should direct his rage towards the next state election and use his influence and connections to encourage a new political force of Tasmanians from every walk of life other than politics. And sign them up, in their own blood if necessary, to stay only two terms.

That should limit the damage.

*Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist