Comments on: Paul Lennon just couldn’t bring home the Bacon

By: John Hayward

John Hayward — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Lennon will be rightly reviled by all, including his former remoras, for a truly atrocious regime. But he also deserves thanks for finally making the corruption of Tasmanian politics obvious to nearly everyone

Blessed with only modest skills as a huckster, but almost almost free of an effective opposition or critical press, ex-BLF masher Jim Bacon posthumously became a hero to many Tasmanians.

The sublimely charmless Lennon managed to shed close to 50% of Bacon’s approval rating in the following four years, while maintaining a constant stream of ham-fisted scandals. The clumsy PR efforts to ingratiate him with the public invariably ended in embarrassment.

Like a dose of smelling salts, Lennon seems to have temporarily roused a state being handed out the back door to Gunns Ltd. The question now is to whether the moderately competent salesman succeeding him can return the realm to its normal stupor.

By: Venise Alstergren

Venise Alstergren — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Paul Lennon, that blundering mustache said it all, trod in Jim Bacon’s footsteps. Does this mitigate his behaviour?
Ever since the days, perhaps before, of the HEC Tasmania has been as corrupt as QLD under the iron hand of the even more corrupt Joh Bjelke Peterson and NSW under Robin aka Bob Askin.
Now the island state has the chance of cleaning up its act. Will they? Yeah, as soon as the Victorian Liberal Party becomes devoid of factionalism.
If the Gunn’s paper mill project is stopped dead it ins tracks, the whole of Australia will be forever grateful.

By: Tom McLoughlin

Tom McLoughlin — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Mike Smith as CEO of ANZ, formerly point man in Asia for HSBC, was reported in the AFR glossy recently as having survived, in ripping yarn tones, an angry mob in Argentina after currency meltdown under ex president Menem (notorious sell out leader). If memory serves Smith decamped in a car backwards down a narrow lane, or some such thing, but also more seriously took a bullet for his trouble in the leg. Those rabid lefties. Heroic Smith escapes to carry on and take the helm at ANZ master and commander of his ship on the wild capital seas of the Orient. But here’s the point of the story - Smith must know in his marrow when people start making grievance about sell out of sovereign govt to big business, albeit a credit crunch and all, he must know that it all ends in tears - for the market, for the government, for the public. Good decision Mr ANZ. Thank you for not buying into this awful project.// More here The Standard 18 Dec 2006: Tempers flared and ordinary, yet enraged people took their household DIY hammers to the bank doors.

Buenos Aires was on the boil.

Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp chief executive Michael Smith remembers 1999 in Argentina, not the least for a bad experience.

I survive, he says, matter-of-factly.

At the time, he was CEO of the largest foreign bank in the country.

Amid the political tension in Buenos Aires, he says he became a target.

It was about seven years ago. I got ambushed on my way home one night and my car got shot at.

Smith had his own driver but he was off for the night, which was fortunate.

[If the driver was there] they would have gone straight for his gun and killed him and I would have left in the car without anywhere to go [and] they would have got me. I used my own car as a weapon and I smashed through them, says Smith.

But he was not unscathed. One bullet pierced through the car door penetrating his thigh.

Two years later, when the masses rallied and vented their anger against the countrys political class and the banking class, he was trapped in an HSBC branch, also in Buenos Aires. A mob waited outside.

But no one was hurt. It was amazing, he says.”