Tuesday 9:40 A quick fresh post of where we are at ahead of today's sitting of State Parliament, much of this being a distilling of last week's article. I will have some commitments during the day today and tomorrow so updates may not be instant if things happen quickly.
Last week the House of Assembly passed a motion of no confidence in the Premier Jeremy Rockliff with the support of ten Labor MHAs, five Greens, independents Kristie Johnston and Craig Garland, and Andrew Jenner who was with the Jacqui Lambie Network (or as I am now calling it, Notwork) then but has since been dumped.
This early in the term a Governor should seek to appoint a replacement Premier if one can be found who can satisfy Her Excellency Barbara Baker that they will have the support of the house on confidence and supply matters at least for a reasonable time. However there has been no signs whatsoever of such a replacement emerging.
In the Governor's absence, the Lieutenant-Governor Chris Shanahan determined last week that Parliament is to sit again today for the purpose of passing interim supply for paying frontline workers, following which the Premier will meet with the Governor. At this stage, Jeremy Rockliff is set to remain Premier and leader of the Liberal Party going into that meeting, at which he will advise that an election be held assuming that Dean Winter is unable or unwilling to form government instead. It is not known whether the Lieutenant-Governor's decision mirrors Rockliff's specific advice on the way forward, if any.
While there has been any amount of Hung Parliament Club nonsense suggesting that the Governor might command Dean Winter to take over against his will or send him back into the House as Premier just in case he might have the numbers, it is more in keeping with convention that the Governor should only appoint Winter if he is willing and clearly able to command confidence and supply. There is no sign that Winter will make any attempt to demonstrate this in the form of providing letters of support from the Greens especially. As Anne Twomey notes in The Veiled Sceptre, in the recent several decades Governors and their equivalents have become less easily convinced that they should appoint a new Premier mid-term unless it is clear that that new Premier has support on supply and confidence.
There is also no public sign so far of any pathway to a different Liberal leader taking over. Indeed assuming that Rockliff doesn't resign, any alternative would need to have their foot under the door in the form of a leadership challenge mighty soon, never mind the challenges of navigating a new agreement with rhe crossbench.
There continue to be claims that Labor don't know what they are doing and didn't expect to be here. The claim that Labor didn't expect their motion to pass is simply not credible given that the Greens had been chomping at the bit to dispose of the Government for months. There is also a claim that Labor were simply trying to get rid of Rockliff and didn't expect the Liberals to back him and risk going down with the ship, but that too gives them very little strategic credit (it's not that difficult to work out that any alternative would have to make major concessions for a fragile peace with the crossbench perhaps leading to a heavier defeat not far down the road).
I'll add updates as or shortly after things happen. Assuming there is an election I intend to post my main election guide page tonight, with unrolls of state pages in coming days.
10:00 ABC reports Rockliff will address the parliament for 10 minutes at the start of the session.
10:05 No sign of that yet - the Supply bills are now being introduced and "debated".
10:25 The first Supply bill has been passed by the Assembly.
10:30 As has the second. Speaker Michelle O'Byrne is now advising, as expected, that she will retire at the next election whenever it is held and she is now giving a valedictory speech.
10:40 All done and the House is now adjourned, off to the Council which sits at 11 am.
11:07 The Legislative Council has introduced the Bills and is suspended for a briefing.
11:48 This could be a blink and you miss it resumption (I'm not completely sure it hasn't already happened), what I expect is the Council will pass the Bills sometime before too long then the Premier will soon be off to Government House.
12:50 And ... there is apparently at least one error in the supply bills which is causing a delay. The Mercury has reported the error was found during the briefing of Legislative Councillors. A question here is the way forwards and whether the Council can amend the Bills or whether the Assembly will have to reintroduce them. Welcome to Tasmania where the Government cannot even collapse in an orderly fashion.
2:45 Debate is on in the Legislative Council now. The error was in figures for the Department of Premier and Cabinet, a typo where 26862 was entered as 28862. Ruth Forrest is raising concerns about the lack of provision for Marinus Link to proceed among other matters.
4:05 The first Supply Bill has passed the Council with a request to amend.
4:11 As has the second. The sitting is suspended - I believe this has to go downstairs and then may have to return to the Council for approval as the Council cannot amend supply.
4:23 We're back downstairs ... for about two minutes. The amendment has been approved.
4:49 And the ping-pong game is over and Jeremy Rockliff is on his way to Government House. While we wait for further word, worth noting that Michelle O'Byrne's departure leaves Labor's most senior MHA as Shane Broad (elected 2017) or arguably Josh Willie (elected to the Legislative Council in 2016). This is the first time Labor have ever had nobody with a decade's service since the party had been in power more than a decade. Of the seven Labor MHAs elected/re-elected since 2014, Bryan Green, David Llewellyn, Scott Bacon, Lara Giddings and now O'Byrne have all retired, Rebecca White has gone federal and Madeleine Ogilvie is now a Liberal.
6:38 The Premier has left Government House. An announcement of unknown content is expected soon,
6:45 The Governor will not make an immediate decision. She is right to be exploring all options carefully even if as currently seems to be the case an election cannot be avoided. In particular she will need to hear from possible alternative Premiers, at the least including Dean Winter. The Governor will meet with Premier (for now) Rockliff again before the week is out.
Wednesday 2:25 No signs of activity today, just the odd attempt from Labor to rattle Jeremy Rockliff into resigning. The Mercury reported Rockliff had "steadfastly refused to follow the long-established convention of resigning in the wake of losing a no-confidence motion" but that convention only applies when there is a path forwards under someone else. A defeated Premier is entitled to request a dissolution when there is not a clear alternative Premier and is entitled to await the Governor's decision. If the Governor rejects the dissolution with the intention of appointing someone else then the Premier should resign; if they would not then resign the Governor would sack them.
3:15: Dean Winter has met with the Governor at her request and "reiterated my position that Labor will not be doing a deal with the Greens".
4:40 No other exciting news this afternoon yet. I have not yet covered the text message saga in which a Labor staffer (black) had this exchange with an unknown observer (blue) that was then leaked to the Liberals and has now been reported by the ABC and confirmed. I haven't seen any more context and am not sure what "this exercise" is (anybody know?) It's also not clear if "turfing Rockliff" refers in context to Labor's no confidence motion (with an overconfident assumption that Rockliff would go as leader) or to hypotheticals about the Liberals turfing Rockliff. Anyway the messages are damaging for Labor and are being used to argue that Labor's intention was to cut off the head for their own benefit.
5:10 The Australian's interpretations of this saga have been of a fairly low quality on average but they are reporting that a "senior cabinet minister" repeatedly requested a meeting of the PLP, which was not held, with varying claims as to whether the minister accepted the meeting was unnecessary or the Premier was seeking to dodge a possible challenge. So there is a degree of backgrounding going on, as well as talk about the prospects of Eric Abetz and Michael Ferguson (understood to have signified potential willingness to take over) as well as Felix Ellis (who has not been reported as making any such plays). Abetz is trying to troll Labor claiming that Shane Broad has confirmed Dean Winter intends doing a deal with the Greens when in fact Shane Broad reposted Winter's statement noted above.
5:40 The Premier is heading to Government House! That sounds decision-shaped; I'd speculate that either the Governor has decided to grant the Premier's request for an election, but that's not the only possibility. Others include that she may be seeking to persuade him to resign or that Labor may have secretly assembled a tranch of unilaterally assembled confidence and supply letters from people it isn't doing deals with. Neither of those seems likely to me, we will see!
6:20 It's reported the Premier is going to Government House to finalise an early election but there is a paperwork related delay.
7:00 July 19 confirmed. My main guide page will be up later tonight.
And when Labor has a thumping victory and finds that it _still_ has only 15 members out of 35, what's it doing to do? Accept confidence and supply support from the Greens, or nobly reject it and dare the Libs to form a government that's just as stable as the present one? Hmmm? It's time they grew up and accepted the reality of forming government in a proportionally-elected Parliament.
ReplyDeleteIn that case the question would be will there be enough non-Greens crossbenchers to go around the Greens. There's a particular stigma here in working with the Greens that might not apply to even a Craig Garland who in a lot of respects is similar to them.
DeleteCan there be an Independent commissioned as the next Premier? What are the chances that that is an alternative option for the Governor to explore?
ReplyDeleteAn independent can in theory be commissioned as Premier but the Governor would have to be satisfied that person would have support on confidence and supply of the House. That would in practice require support on confidence and supply from one or the other major parties, which would be very unusual indeed.
DeleteOn Tuesday, the Premier still acted as Premier even though a no confidence motion was passed last week. WHY!! Also what would happen if the Greens and Libs passed a no confidence motion in Dean’s leadership. Would he have to resign.
ReplyDeleteThe Premier in doing so was acting with the approval of the Lieutenant-Governor given that interim Supply needed to be passed and given that the Governor was absent. This is not unusual in the circumstances. If Winter was appointed as Premier and the Parliament then passed a motion of no confidence in him then he would be in the same position as Rockliff is currently in. The Governor is unlikely to appoint Winter as Premier without being satisfied that that would not be the immediate result. (If they pass a motion of no confidence in him as Opposition Leader that doesn't have any effect.)
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