Election Alert Time As Rockliff Demands Tighter Deal From Defectors

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Tuesday 13/2 Updates

All going well here, Alexander has launched a massive spray at the government accusing it of being like an "abusive partner" and referring to the departures of other female MPs.  While the departures of Sarah Courtney, Jacquie Petrusma, Elise Archer and yes Alexander are all capable of being explained without reference to gender it's not helpful for the Liberals that they have ended up with only 1 woman out of 11 in the Lower House - small sample size is a hard concept to make fly in politics.

2:00 The Liberal Party meeting is still on but journalists are reporting that March 23 appears to be on.

Sunday 11/2 Updates

The Premier is now stating he is "actively considering requesting the Governor for an early election" on the grounds of the independents having not accepted his terms, and also citing "trust issues".  Monday is a public holiday (Regatta Day), on which an election call is possible but seems unlikely.  On Tuesday there is a Liberal party room meeting, the time of which I don't have yet.  If it is early in the day, a call on Tuesday afternoon would not be surprising, assuming the independents have not capitulated in the meantime (which seems unlikely).  

Saturday 10/2 Updates

All going well here.  

Friday 9/2 Updates

6:20 The Premier is now denying that he gave any new concessions on the High Performance Centre and suggests Tucker is misrepresenting the meeting and says " I did no more than reiterate my position on these matters as outlined in my letters to Mr Tucker last Friday."

3:20 pm Today's meeting seems to have lasted about an hour with John Tucker claiming a success regarding the High Performance Centre not starting before the stadium passes the POSS process, and Jeremy Rockliff simply saying he will consider and consult with colleagues and not claiming any progress.  Tucker and Alexander say there will be a further meeting next week, most likely Friday.  

Full transcript of Tucker/Alexander press conference.

Tucker has actually said that Rockliff has agreed to abide by decisions of parliament on the POSS process and abbatoir CCTV, and that he has given nothing in return, though Tucker is still open to negotiations and may give some ground.  But Tucker has also flagged a problem with Rockliff's proposed solution: while the defectors would be unable to vote for motions moved by Labor, there would be nothing to stop Labor from writing the motions and then Tucker and Alexander could move the same motions themselves.  So it's not clear how the proposed solution really guarantees stability.  

Tucker says he has withdrawn his confidence threat following agreements from the Premier mentioned above.  

12:40 pm Ahead of a meeting with the independents which is going ahead, the Premier has ruled out calling an election this weekend, which takes March 16 off the table.  March 23 remains a live option if the issue of postal votes returning over Easter is not a dealbreaker, and could be called any time in the next week.  

Thursday 8/2 Update

John Tucker has rejected the Premier's ultimatum in no uncertain terms and has reiterated his position that he will not give the Premier supply and confidence unless the two issues he had raised are addressed, and will not agree to be muzzled. He has said he is willing to negotiate but has not made it clear what he will negotiate about.   He intends to still meet with the Premier and says he is happy with the agreement as it is.  

Link to Tucker's statement

Lara Alexander concurring statement

Link to live feed including questions

If the meeting with the independents is to be held it is scheduled for tomorrow at 1:30 pm.  Alexander has said the meeting is only half an hour long and was originally to be held online but will now be in person.  Rockliff has said his position has not changed and has restated that the meeting is on.  

A possible factor affecting the date choice is that the Tasmanian AFL team name will be announced on March 18.  

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Wednesday 7/2 Update

Nothing happened in the aftermath of Alexander's apparent rejection of the deal except that the Government continued to wheel out announceables while Rebecca White offered up another tedious statement that Labor would not do any deals with other parties or independents to form government.   (Who is she kidding?  Deals with the Greens are electoral poison but if Labor were to get close and need only say a few Indies or JLN to get over the line, and they offered confidence and supply in exchange for some policy that was compatible, Labor would be insane to not accept the deal and form government, putting White under intense pressure to resign.)  

The lack of an instant response has allowed Labor to take free hits at the Premier for going soft on the ultimatum whether this is actually true or not.  The Premier's conciliatory-sounding language in a statement where he said the independents would have their positions and he would have his at the expected Friday meeting also played into that perception.  

Now Tucker has announced that he will hold a press conference tomorrow at 10:30 am in Launceston.  This makes abundant sense if he is going to firmly reject the Premier's offer - he would want to seize the initiative and give the Premier a massive spray, rather than going to a pointless meeting at the end of which the Premier would zip off to Government House and hog the narrative.  He could even spice things up by stating that he had no confidence in the Government (thus giving the Governor more to think about, although I don't think it would make any difference).  However, he might also want to call a press conference if he has a more nuanced response to the Premier's demands.  

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Saturday 3/2 Update

Not much happened today except that Michael Ferguson made comments backing in the Premier and endorsing talks with the independents.   The Premier could have reacted immediately to Alexander's comments yesterday by going straight for an election but hasn't; I suspect he wants to at least see whether Alexander's position is different once they have met. If he was very keen for a pretext for an election now he could have taken it immediately, but perhaps he is trying to avoid it.  Whether that is possible or not we will see.  

Alexander last night repeated her position on Facebook: "I cannot and will not agree to this outrageous demand, which effectively reduces us to nothing more than a rubber stamp for whatever policies he sees fit to impose on the Tasmanian people."

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Original Article

Last May the Tasmanian Liberal Government lost its majority when backbenchers John Tucker and Lara Alexander quit the party, citing various disagreements including over the proposed Macquarie Point AFL stadium.  The Government formed an agreement with the new crossbenchers in which it would make the stadium a Project of State Significance (relying on parliament for both the commencement of the assessment process and final approval), but the independents would provide confidence and supply and would not support Labor or Greens legislation.  

The personal background in the leadup to the split included Tucker, a farmer, being passed over for the coveted Primary Industries portfolio in favour of Jo Palmer, and campaign tensions between Alexander's camp and the party over the lack of media opportunities for new candidates.  Many other issues have contributed to tensions including Tucker's concerns about Marinus Link and both independents' dissatisfaction with Premier Jeremy Rockliff's support for the failed Voice to Parliament referendum.

Tucker and Alexander have both continued to vote for confidence and supply, and have not voted for any Labor or Greens legislation.  However they have frequently voted with the opposition on procedural motions, symbolic motions, motions to compel the Government to provide documents and even dissents in the Speaker.  Moreover, Tucker explicitly threatened on January 4 to revoke the existing arrangement over the construction of High Performance Centres as part of the AFL team process (since if the centres are built but the stadium is not approved resources will be wasted and public land alienated).and over CCTV video monitoring in abbatoirs.  The parliament passed a motion on the latter in December but Tucker accuses the government of dragging its heels.  Despite holding the government to ransom over animal welfare and opposition to a development, Tucker has had the cheek to declare that the government is in thrall to the left.  Alexander has also made various noises over time about potentially changing her mind about confidence, some of them too contradictory for me to attempt to analyse here.  Because they have raised new potential confidence issues that were not canvassed in the original deal, the independents have been accused of shifting the goalposts.

The original deal with the two defectors was full of obvious loopholes, and the indies have been able to abide by the letter of the agreement while still fuelling no end of parliamentary chaos.  That said the government has created no shortage of its own, most notably when it recalled Parliament for an attempt to suspend Justice Gregory Geason (who is currently facing criminal charges) only to decide it was a bad idea after all, leading to the most bizarre sitting day for many years.

Under the proposed new deal (see interviews and letters here) Tucker and Alexander will not be allowed to support any Labor, Green or other-independent bills, amendments or motions at all though they will be able to move their own.  

Thi latest news comes against a backdrop of electionoid activity.  The Mercury speculated about an impending election on 18 Jan, citing billboard bookings and doorknocking activities (the TikTok link is brilliant) as well as the testing of the slogan "Doing What Matters" (unoriginally pinched from Daniel Andrews' Labor campaign in Victoria).  

How are the defectors responding?

As I write, John Tucker has not made any response and it appears he wants to consider the matter carefully, but Lara Alexander has immediately verbally rejected some aspects of the proposed deal, and accused the Premier of "bullying tactics".  Alexander has said “I cannot agree to the terms [..] especially there is one term that the premier has put forward which basically makes John and I less than a backbench,"  Alexander has said she is willing to negotiate, but I doubt that the Premier wants to.  I should note that Alexander is unpredictable; she might complain about the deal today then agree to it tomorrow, but tomorrow might be too late.  

In comparison with other minority government situations the Premier's demands are indeed extraordinary.  That said, other minority government deals typically involve crossbenchers who were elected as such.  In this case the defectors were elected (in one case via recount) after running as Liberals on a team platform that stressed stable majority government.  They have no mandate to behave in the way that they have, and have done so because they can.  

Alexander's comparison with backbenchers is interesting in that Sue Hickey during the previous term not only appropriated the Speakership ahead of the Government's nominee but also then at times voted to amend government legislation, including passing gender birth certificate reforms against the Government's will.  Nonetheless the government remained a majority government in name.  It might be argued that the reason the defectors are offered less freedom than a backbencher is that they have chosen to surrender backbencher status and the liberties that go with it - which they did not have to.  In the process they destroyed the government's majority status, which Hickey did not do until she was deselected.  

Because either of the independents can generate instability by themselves, Alexander's response alone may be enough for Rockliff to go to the Governor within days.  He has a scheduled meeting with the independents on the 9th of February, but we'll see if things even get that far.  I don't see him leaving the state in suspense until parliament is about to resume on 5 March before pulling the pin.

Could the Governor say no?

Supposing that Jeremy Rockliff goes to the Governor in the next few days and asks for a dissolution for an election on, say, March 16.  (March 9 is the earliest legal date but it is a long weekend).  Some comments are being seen on social media regarding whether or not Rockliff actually has the confidence of Parliament and hence whether the Governor should accept his advice.

I covered a lot of this ground with the Elise Archer situation last year.  There is a current potential question mark over whether the Premier would still have the confidence of the House if it sat again and in theory the Governor might be reluctant to take his advice if it appeared he was calling an election to try to avoid a no-confidence motion.  However, firstly he managed to maintain control of the Parliament's adjournment at its last sitting, and has not lost any confidence votes, so at present he maintains the confidence of the House. Cases where dissolutions have been refused on the basis of doubt about whether a Premier would retain confidence generally involve them having lost the support of their party; this is not the case here.  

Secondly there is a question about whether there would be any point in trying to appoint anyone else as Premier for the sake of 14 months of Parliament even if it appeared that person would have confidence.  Even if Labor were willing to entertain the prospect and the independents were willing to back them into office, such a government would lack legitimacy in terms of both the status of the defectors and the commitments made by Labor at the 2021 election.  Tasmanian Governors can do unconventional things sometimes but I would expect that if Rockliff requests an election his request would be granted.  There is a very clearcut precedent from 1956 when the Governor accepted a dissolution request when he had the alternative of appointing a new government formed by a defection.  

Suitable Election Dates? (Expanded)

I've had a look at some possible election dates in March for potential issues with them, in case it comes to that:

March 9: Long weekend, would be unpopular.  (Especially with your host who normally competes in and helps run the Tasmanian Chess Championship on that weekend).  [EDIT: No longer possible]

March 16: It would be challenging to complete the distributions of preferences before Easter, but probably achievable with resourcing for long hours, extra staff and provisional distributions for candidates with quota.  [EDIT: Ruled out by the Premier]

March 23: Easter falls within the postal vote return window.  (This is a big fairness problem for postal voting if it results in postal votes being delayed, but by that stage there will not be all that many coming back)

March 30: Easter, definitely out.

April 6, 13:  Easter falls in the last weeks of the campaign so this may be best avoided

April 20: Would make for a relatively long campaign if called before Parliament resumes.

April 27 or May 4: Even longer.  For April 20-27 there is also the issue that the Legislative Council elections fall just after, creating overlapping campaigns with voters having to vote twice in one or two weeks.