Paul Lennon
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Paul Lennon (born 1956), Australian politician, has been Premier of Tasmania since 21 March 2004. He is a member of the Australian Labor Party.
Lennon is rare among modern Australian politicians in that he does not have a university education and comes from a genuine working-class background. He worked as a storeman and clerk before becoming an organiser with the Storemen and Packers Union in 1978. In 1980 he became Tasmanian State Secretary of the union and from 1982 he was Senior Vice President of the national union.
In 1984 Lennon became Secretary of the Tasmanian Trades & Labor Council, and also a member of the Executive of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.
Lennon was elected to the Tasmanian House of Assembly in 1990 and immediately became Deputy Leader of the Labor Party. He was Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations, Workplace Standards, Workers' Compensation, Public Sector Management, Forests, Mines, Racing and Gaming, and Leader of Opposition Business in the House of Assembly.
On the election of a Labor government under Jim Bacon in 1998, Lennon became Deputy Premier, Minister for Infrastructure, Energy and Resources and Minister for Racing and Gaming. Following the re-election of the government in 2002, he became Minister for Economic Development, Energy and Resources, and Minister for Racing and Sport and Recreation.
In February 2004 Bacon was diagnosed with lung cancer and stood down as Premier to begin treatment. Lennon was Acting Premier until 21 March, when Bacon resigned and Lennon was sworn in as Tasmania’s 42nd Premier. He is also Treasurer.
Lenon and Bacon were close friends as well as colleagues and Lennon was emotional as he assumed the premiership with Bacon watching on. "It's hard to describe how you feel when someone who has been that close to you also happens to be your boss," Lennon told an interviewer. "It was a very tough time. A very tough time indeed."
Lennon is known as a strong defender of Tasmania's forestry industry, including the felling of the state's "old growth" forests, which has made him very unpopular with the Greens and others on the left. He represents a long tradition of conservative, pro-development Labor leadership in Tasmania.
In an interview in January 2004, Lennon said: "Many hundreds of jobs in Tasmania are directly related to the harvesting of mature trees in Tasmania... The Australian Bureau of Statistics have reported that the number of people employed in the timber industry in Tasmania... has increased by 2,600. The Wilderness Society, Doctor Brown, Christine Milne, Olivia Newton-John and everybody else... might not care about Tasmanian families in this industry, and people working in this industry, but the Tasmanian government does."