A no-confidence motion, an election and now another no-confidence motion. What happens next?

Australia Broadcast Center

3 days ago

It's been a wild two months in Tasmanian politics.
Premier Jeremy Rockliff was brought down by a no-confidence motion in June, but his unwillingness to step aside and Labor's refusal to govern with the support of the Greens sent the state to an early election.
It was an election held more than two and a half years earlier than expected.
After a lacklustre election campaign, Tasmanians voted for who they wanted to take the state forward.
The only catch? The make-up of the new parliament is essentially identical to the one elected last year, with the Liberals on 14 seats and Labor on 10 seats, both well short of a majority.
Mr Rockliff was re-commissioned as premier by Governor Barbara Baker on Wednesday, but it really only guaranteed him two more weeks in the top job.
On August 19, it will be déjà vu all over again, when Mr Rockliff faces a motion of no-confidence moved by Labor.
Is Labor really trying to form a government with just 10 of the required 18 seats?
They sure are.
Labor received a statewide first preference vote of just 25.9 per cent, a drop of 3.1 per cent.
And its leader Dean Winter received less than a quota in his own right, elected fifth [out of seven seats] to the southern seat of Franklin.
But that hasn't been enough to stop the party from dreaming of being in government for the first time since 2014.
Because the Liberals haven't signed supply and confidence deals with enough crossbenchers to lock in support on the floor of the lower house, Mr Winter has started aggressively courting the independents himself.
He argues Tasmania is better off under a Labor government.
He says Labor has a plan to restore the state's budget, rather than a Liberal government that until extremely recently had not even hinted there was a problem, despite Treasury's pre-election financial outlook predicting net debt would rise to almost $13 billion by 2027–28.
In short, we don't know.
The Greens, who supported the no-confidence motion in Mr Rockliff in June, said publicly they'd prefer to work with Labor than the Liberals.
But they've been largely frozen out by a Labor Party that keeps insisting it won't do deals with the Greens.
That lack of communication means there remains uncertainty about how the five elected Greens MPs will vote.
"We have to do our job of fighting for the people that put us in parliament and voted for us. They want change from business as usual."
If the Greens are on board, Labor needs three more of the remaining six crossbenchers to agree in order to form government.
Independent MP Craig Garland has previously said he would vote for a no-confidence motion in the re-elected premier, blasting the Liberals' "arrogant" approach over the Marinus Link undersea power cable project, but said late this week that the door wasn't completely shut on the Liberals.
"The Liberal Party may stand up. They may come to the table and say we got this wrong, we're willing to compromise, we're willing to sit down and make these concessions, and if that's the case, I'll support them," he said.
"If Labor want to do it, I'll support them."
The four other independents – Kristie Johnston, David O'Byrne, Peter George and George Razay — as well as incoming Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MP Carlo Di Falco have all yet to make up their minds.
Lots of the crossbenchers are calling for the major parties to compromise on policies, something they've so far flatly refused to do.
Every member of the lower house knows this parliament needs to last for the long term.
So the motion, likely to be moved by Labor, will do two things:
First, it will move no-confidence in Mr Rockliff's government.
Secondly, it will move confidence in a Labor government.
It's a bid to replace the government, not to send the state to another election.
The Liberals made some big changes this week as they try to neutralise one of the key issues for the crossbench: the state of the budget.
Deputy Premier Guy Barnett has been moved on from the treasury portfolio and replaced by former federal minister Eric Abetz.
Mr Abetz's first act was to announce a new multi-partisan budget panel, which will consult with all MPs and stakeholders about their plans to put the budget back in the black, and rein in the debt.
And while Mr Rockliff and Mr Barnett insisted the budget was "on a sensible pathway to surplus" and the debt at sustainable levels, Mr Abetz was much more circumspect.
His press conference on Friday was littered with phrases such as "budget repair" and bringing "the budget back into shape".
"Clearly the situation does require rectifying … I think all of us understand and realise that there is a budget imperative that needs to be addressed and that will be my challenge," Mr Abetz said.
Labor met with the five independents on Thursday, and is pointing towards policies it has in common with most crossbenchers, spruiking its new suite of policies to include integrity in politics, including replacing the Integrity Commission with a new anti-corruption commission, and strengthening right-to-information laws.
The party intends to release its plans on other policy areas in coming days.
It's likely we won't know which party has convinced enough crossbenchers to side with it until state parliament resumes on August 19.
And the nation again watches closely as parliamentarians debate who should lead the state going forward.