Last year Mr Aird said: "I will not be serving in any government that has Nick McKim or Kim Booth, or any other Green, in it."
Today Mr Aird was sworn in as treasurer of the new Labor-Green government.
Backflips and accusations of misleading the public are nothing new with the Treasurer.
Last year members of the racing industry told a Parliamentary Committee the Treasurer lied to them about the sale of the state-owned betting business Tote Tasmania. Mr Aird has consistently rejected the claim.
The Treasurer was also accused of making contradictory statements to Parliament.over the governments abandoned plans for a television series to promote Tasmania.
And of course Mr Aird was one of the biggest betrayers of the Tasmanian public in the Bartlett governments complete failure to deliver on its pulp mill line in the sand
In September last year it was revealed that the Premier had secretly re-focused his Government as willing lobbyists for the pulp mill via a secret letter written to the Gunns boss, John Gay, in May 2008.
Soon after, Gunns also blew the whistle on the Tasmanian treasurer Michael Aird when the company put out a media release "thanking" Aird for "agreeing to lobby a prospective pulp mill partner" during a $50,000 taxpayer-funded trip to Europe. Aird had only recently vowed that "the State Government would not interfere on behalf of Gunns".
In a startling turnaround, the Treasurer was forced to admit to a stunned Tasmanian public that he was travelling to Europe to help Gunns secure project finance. Even after intense scrutiny from political opponents and media, Aird withheld the details of his taxpayer-funded trip.
It later came to light that Aird and John Gay travelled together in Scandinavia, visiting various European pulp mills and attending several meetings to attempt to finalise finance for the mill project.
Tasmanians are almost — but not quite — desensitised to being conned by their political leaders over the Gunns pulp mill.
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I wonder if part of the desensitization is that people are not expecting the pulp mill to get built anymore. I'm certainly not. So even though the scheme fell through, or seems to be falling through, solely because it's a bad idea from a business point of view and Gunns can't persuade investors otherwise - and not because of any remarkable honesty from the Labour government - it may be difficult to keep people angry at Aird when his best (worst?) efforts to get the mill built were futile.I don't know. Is it harder to remember a scam that fails? I think so. Anyways, Aird's a turd, and you're right, he should quit.
ReplyDelete(Now that I've said that I bet tomorrow's ASX is going to have an announcement about APP/Sinar Mas jumping in on the jv and the mill will be up and running by the end of the year. Just to make me look dumb.)
A politician keep his promise? One that will do him out of his job? They have a hard enough time following simple principles like honesty and integrity. Quitting over a statement made "in the heat of the moment", as I bet will be the excuse, would be considered quite unnecessary. And how could Bartlett and his fledglings survive without Airdy there to tell them how many millions are left in the bottomless pot?
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