Speak up at your peril in Tasmania

Elise Archer’s decision to block two top lawyers from tribunal sends a powerful message about the career-limiting consequences of speaking your mind in Tasmania.

Attorney- General of Tasmania Elise Archer. Picture Chris Kidd

ATTORNEY-GENERAL Elise Archer’s decision to block highly-qualified candidates from tribunal appointments strikes some familiar notes from the grand refrain of Tasmanian public life: around here, speaking up comes out at a political cost.

Some states would embrace the enthusiasm of candidates of like Greg Barns, SC, and former Anti-Discrimination Commissioner Robin Banks to serve on their courts and tribunals. Not so Tasmania.

Ms Archer has broken no law but we might have cause to hope that those appointed to public office were fearless and forthright advocates for rights and justice, unafraid of speaking out or taking a stand against wrongdoing.

Ms Archer’s justifications in parliament this week suggest she regards such qualities as negatives — her claim that she could not trust candidates vetted by the tribunal chief and others to comply with its code of conduct is not based on any evidence.

Attorney- General of Tasmania Elise Archer. Picture Chris Kidd

Disdain for dissent — of even the potential for dissent — is an attitude that is woven into the very fabric of government in Tasmania — and it is holding us back.

The Attorney-General’s words will do nothing to dim Mr Barns’ or Ms Banks’ passion for justice.

But she reinforces the message to every candidate for employment and would-be campaigner or advocate or whistleblower or civil society group in this state: speaking up comes at a cost.

But they knew that already.

This is the state that will put a whistleblower through an endless round of medical assessments for daring to make a workers’ compensation claim.

This is the state that will fight lawsuits from victims of childhood sexual abuse tooth and nail.

This is the state where there is no price for failing to act on allegations of abuse, for bullying in political office, or for the endless cover-ups and the needless secrecy, or for misleading the house, but those who speak up are deemed unsuitable for employment and damned from the floor of the Parliament.

This is a place where well-paid advisers and spin doctors prosper and dissidents and dissenters are damned.

Such is the Tasmanian malaise. It has to change.

Premier Jeremy Rockliff might well say “we see you, we hear you”. But they cycle goes on. Ms Archer has said the quiet part out loud: in this state, speaking up comes at a cost.

It is a cost we all pay when there are doubts about whether the uninquisitive and unimaginative and the compliant are being favoured over our best and the brightest, doubts about whether this tribunal is a snapshot of a bigger picture of offices stacked with political appointees rather than those who we can trust to do what is right over what is most convenient for their paymasters.

It is a cost we pay in dollars to the victims we fail, and apologise to, then keep on failing.

It is a cost we pay in the lost aspiration to be the best place we can be.