Greens withdraw support for Labor’s bid to form minority government

The Tasmanian Greens have withheld support for Labor leader Dean Winter's bid to become Premier citing key policy differences.

Transcript

00:00The battle to form government in Tasmania continues more than three weeks after the

00:07state election. Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliffe has been sworn in as Premier. He's also had

00:14his ministers sworn in yesterday, but there's a battle. Labor will move, a no-confidence

00:20motion in the government and a confidence motion in a Labor minority government next

00:25week when state parliament resumes. So far, there's been a whole lot of posturing and

00:30negotiations between both major parties and the crossbench. Labor's bid for power was delivered

00:36a blow earlier today when Greens leader Rosalie Woodruff said at this stage that she can't

00:42support the Labor's motion because of a lack of negotiation and compromise between Labor

00:47and the Greens, but also no policy compromise on some of the issues that the Greens campaigned

00:52on, like the Macquarie Point football stadium. She says, like, budget repair, although Labor

00:59says that is one of their priorities. So it leaves Labor in an interesting position now,

01:04looking like they need to budge to be able to get the numbers that they need for that

01:08no-confidence motion to work. They have 10 members on the floor of the House of Assembly

01:14in Tasmania. That means they need eight more MPs on board. That requires the five Greens.

01:20So we'll wait and see. But at the moment, Dean Winter is refusing to bend and saying that

01:26his party is the best to deal with the challenges being faced by the state budget and crossbenchers

01:33should opt for it. Here's what Dean Winter had to say a little bit earlier.

01:37Well, the Greens have a choice. They have a choice between Jeremy Rockleaf and Erica Betts,

01:41who want to cut two and a half thousand public sector jobs, and Labor, who wants to work together

01:46with the community sector, unions and business on a mix of revenue and expenditure options.

01:52Every single crossbencher has told me that the budget is their number one priority, and

01:56I share that number one priority. So the question for the crossbenchers, who's best to deal with

02:01this? Is it the Liberals who've wrecked our budget and have a plan to sack two and a half thousand

02:06public sector workers? Or is it Labor, with Ruth Forrest in the Cabinet, working together with unions,

02:11business and the community sector to fix our budget? Rosalie Woodruff's statements were all full of

02:16at this stages, and she's left the door open for Labor to negotiate and get the Greens on board in

02:22the future. It feels like the early stages of the AFL or NRL trade week at this stage. A club puts a

02:28really hefty price on a player's head, and the other club refuses to pay anywhere near it, and eventually

02:34they end up meeting in the middle. Let's see if that's what happens this time around. The Liberals are

02:40saying that they're negotiating in good faith with the crossbench as well. They've already announced

02:44a plan to ban greyhound racing from 2029. It'd be the first Australian state to do that, and then

02:51also wind back a plan to log up to 40,000 hectares of previously protected forest as well, in a bid to

02:57win over the crossbench. So there's lots happening, and we won't really know what the outcome's going

03:02to be until next Tuesday, when State Parliament resumes.