00:00 It's been a really turbulent few days.
00:03 So it sort of kicked off on the Thursday afternoon when news broke about bullying allegations
00:08 against former Attorney General, Elyse Archer.
00:12 Now I should note she denies these allegations and says she hasn't been given due process
00:17 to even be considered.
00:19 Now the next day we had the Premier asked her to resign from Cabinet off the back of
00:25 what he described as an unacceptable message.
00:28 And Ms Archer says this message was taken out of context and the Premier didn't give
00:33 her a chance to take that into account.
00:36 Now Ms Archer surprised them then by not only resigning from Cabinet but resigning from
00:41 the party and she announced that she would quit Parliament.
00:44 But it didn't stop there.
00:45 On Saturday we saw that message come out.
00:49 So there were more damaging leaks.
00:52 And then by Sunday afternoon Ms Archer said that actually she was reconsidering her decision
00:58 to quit Parliament and she might instead choose to stay and sit as an Independent.
01:03 But she said that if she does so she wouldn't guarantee the Government confidence to supply.
01:09 Now that's particularly important because they're a minority Government.
01:14 So Lucy what does this mean for the State Government?
01:17 Well look, put this into context.
01:20 In Tasmania at the moment we have 25 politicians in the lower house.
01:24 Now that will change in the future but for now there are 25 in.
01:27 When the Government was elected back in 2021 they won with a majority of 13.
01:32 Now back in May we saw two Liberal MPs defect and move to the crossbench.
01:37 Now the difference is they guaranteed confidence and supply.
01:40 So the Government has been functioning with 11.
01:45 If Ms Archer decides that she wants to stay on and move to the crossbench what we're going
01:49 to see, we're going to see just 10 people in the Government.
01:53 We're going to see 8 people in Opposition.
01:56 If you count the Greens in we're going to see a crossbench of 7.
02:01 That gives Ms Archer a fair bit of power to choose to vote against the Government with
02:06 a block and they could lose a vote on the House floor.
02:10 Now the Premier has come out and spoken this morning and he said that he understood the
02:15 risks when he asked Ms Archer to resign.
02:19 He understood he could lose his premiership.
02:21 He said that Ms Archer needs to, if she wants to stay in Parliament, she needs to guarantee
02:26 confidence and supply because she was elected as a Liberal and if she's not prepared to
02:30 she should make way for a Liberal who will come in and do that.
02:36 But he says he doesn't want to call an election but he has indicated the election is in Ms
02:42 Archer's hands.
02:43 So it does sound like if she decides to stay there could be an early election.
02:48 So at the moment Ms Archer has all the power and all the Government can do really is wait
02:53 to see what she decides.
02:55 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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