No confidence motion in the Tasmanian Liberal party set to fail

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A no confidence motion in the Tasmanian Liberal government is set to fail. The Greens have confirmed they will not support The Labor opposition's no confidence motion when Tasmania's parliament returns tomorrow.

Transcript

00:00Parliament is returning tomorrow and that follows the election on July 19 which delivered

00:06a hung parliament. So the Liberals have 14 seats, Labor 10, the Greens 5 and the remainder

00:13of the 35 seat parliament is made up of other cross benches. And so Labor was and maybe

00:21still will put forward a motion of no confidence in the Liberals to try and seize power. But

00:28in order for that to pass, the Labor Party would have needed the support of the Greens,

00:35all five members of the Greens plus three other cross benches to get it over the line.

00:40And over the past couple of weeks or a few weeks since the election, both of the major

00:44parties have been trying to court the cross benches with different ideas and proposals.

00:50And the Liberal Party has put forward more policy concessions certainly than the Labor

00:57Party, things on salmon farming, on forestry, on greyhound racing that really attracted members

01:04of what is a largely progressive cross bench. Now Labor's been unwilling to budge on any of

01:12its current policies and instead the only thing that it put forward of note was saying that

01:19they would have an upper house independent upper house member as treasurer if they were to secure

01:28government. Now the Greens have said over the past week or so that they weren't happy with

01:33Labor's resistance to offer any concessions. They said last week that at that stage they wouldn't

01:39provide support. And today on the eve of this crucial vote in parliament, the Greens leader has said,

01:46that's it, we're not going to provide support to the Labor Party.

01:50What is clear is that Jeremy Rockcliffe obviously understands the minority parliament dynamics that

01:56he's working in and Dean Winter does not. And so it is with great disappointment and frustration

02:06that the Greens have come to a united decision that we do not have confidence in Dean Winter's

02:13Labor being the next government for Tasmania. And if, and to be very clear, neither do we

02:19have confidence in the Liberal government. So if Dean Winter does move the motion that he's

02:26foreshadowed in parliament tomorrow, a motion of no confidence in the Liberal government and

02:31a motion of confidence in himself, then the Greens will be voting against that motion.

02:36Well, essentially it means status quo if things proceed as we're hearing. We have seen a statement

02:44that Labor has put up on Facebook. We haven't yet heard from them directly or been able to put

02:49specific questions to them. But what they've said on Facebook is, quote, the Greens have just sided

02:54with Jeremy Rockcliffe and Erica Betts to form a Liberal Green government. Now, whether or not they

03:00proceed with their intended motion of no confidence or some other form of language, some other form of,

03:06motion tomorrow, we have to wait and see what they have to say. But at this stage, it appears that the

03:13Liberal minority government led by Jeremy Rockcliffe will continue to govern in Tasmania. And it'll have

03:20to implement those concessions that it had provided to the crossbenchers. So those things like a moratorium

03:27on any expansion of salmon farming in Tasmania while a review takes place into the industry. Also, there's

03:37the phase out of greyhound racing over the next four years, plus that forestry policy that they're no

03:45longer going to proceed with. So tomorrow, parliament will resume and the first order of business will be the

03:52election of a speaker. And then it'll probably be in the afternoon sometime that we find out exactly how

03:58Labor handles whether or not they're going to proceed with this motion of no confidence given that they

04:05would not win it if they put it to the parliament.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended