Tasmanian election: Liberal premier Jeremy Rockliff declares victory as Labor loses ground after forcing early poll
The Liberal premier, Jeremy Rockliff, declared victory on Saturday night after his party secured 14 seats to Labor's nine, both short of the 18 required for a majority.
Rockliff said he would ask the governor to recommission his government, noting a roughly 3% swing to the Liberals. They had secured 40% of the vote with two-thirds of the ballots counted.
However, the Labor leader, Dean Winter, whose party experienced its worst-ever result in Tasmania with just 26% of the primary vote, didn't concede defeat.
He appeared to leave the door open to governing, if the Liberals couldn't make it work.
'The result of this election is that the Liberals will have the most seats, but it is uncertain as to how they will achieve a majority,' Winter said. 'Another election is not an option, which means we need to figure this out.'
The Greens retained at least five seats with 14% of the vote, while there are three independents, with counting potentially extending for weeks to determine four undecided seats.
Rockliff would need to work with left-leaning independent crossbenchers to govern.
Independents Kristie Johnston and Craig Garland, who both voted for the June no-confidence motion against Rockliff that triggered the election, have been returned.
Johnston urged the next premier to be more collaborative and said she wouldn't enter into a formal deal for confidence and supply with either major party.
'They need to negotiate and respect the views of parliament,' she said.
Anti-salmon activist and independent Peter George has been elected after a strong campaign in the federal election.
The state Greens leader, Rosalie Woodruff, has called on Winter to 'have a conversation' about forming an alliance with her party.
However, Winter has repeatedly ruled out doing a deal with the Greens and on Saturday night also said he wouldn't 'be trading away any of Labor's policies or our values'.
The drawn-out post-election scenario, just 16 months after the previous poll, will further delay the parliamentary approval process for a new $945m stadium in Hobart.
The venue, a condition of Tasmania's AFL licence, is supported by the Liberals and Labor but opposed by the Greens, Garland, Johnston and George.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
an hour ago
- Times
James Cleverly's homecoming is shrewd move for Tories
A s the stepdaughter of a Yorkshire Tory MP, I was brought up on ill-attended speeches in village halls and constituency wine and cheese parties. Yet although conservatism is in my blood, I haven't even considered voting for it for a decade. The mess that David Cameron and his successors made first of the country's relationship with Europe and then of the party itself enraged me. With Kemi Badenoch's failure to find a way of countering Reform, I had come to the view that the party was on its last legs. But the return of James Cleverly to the front bench makes me wonder whether there might be life in the old dog yet. Badenoch's big decision is whether to copy Reform UK's fiscal irresponsibility and flag-waving nationalism or return to moderate, ideology-free conservatism. The political tide in America and Europe is pushing her in the former direction, as is the strongest character on her front bench, Robert Jenrick.
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Justice department forms ‘strike force' to investigate Obama over 2016 election
The US justice department has formed a 'strike force' to investigate claims that the Obama administration carried out a 'treasonous conspiracy' by using false intelligence to suggest Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump. Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, announced the new force's formation after the release of a trove of declassified documents from Barack Obama's national security team by the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. On Thursday, two Republican senators, Lindsey Graham and John Cornyn, both members of the judiciary committee, called on Bondi to appoint a special counsel into what they called 'an unprecedented and clear abuse of power' by Obama's administration. 'For the good of the country, we urge Attorney General Bondi to appoint a special counsel to investigate the extent to which former President Obama, his staff and administration officials manipulated the US national security apparatus for a political outcome,' the senators said in a staement. Gabbard has alleged that Obama and his senior officials concocted a 'years long coup' against Trump – manifested in a special counsel investigation and FBI inquiries – by 'manufacturing' intelligence in the weeks after Trump's 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton that was meant to show collusion between his campaign and Russia. She has recommended that criminal charges be pressed, including against Obama embraced her argument and has said Gabbard's findings reveal 'irrefutable proof' of treason. Bondi set the scene for a justice department investigation after Gabbard presented what she claimed was evidence of a crime at a White House news conference on Wednesday. 'The Department of Justice is proud to work with my friend Director Gabbard and we are grateful for her partnership in delivering accountability for the American people. We will investigate these troubling disclosures fully and leave no stone unturned to deliver justice,' Bondi said in a statement. Fox News cited a source close to Bondi's strike force as saying no serious lead is off the table. However, any moves to prosecute Obama are likely to be stymied by last year's US supreme court ruling granting presidents broad immunity from criminal prosecution for acts committed in the course of their presidential duties. The ruling was widely viewed as favoring Trump, who has faced criminal investigations for acts committed in his first presidency – including the retention of classified documents. Ironically, it may now form an obstacle to Trump's stated desire to pursue 'retribution' against his political opponents. Obama's office issued a rare statement on Tuesday, calling the allegations 'outrageous' and 'ridiculous'. Several others named in Gabbard's document could be targeted. They include James Clapper, her predecessor as director of national intelligence, John Brennan, the former CIA director, James Comey, who was FBI director until he was fired by Trump, Comey's former deputy Andrew McCabe, ex-national security adviser Susan Rice, John Kerry, the former secretary of state, and Loretta Lynch, the then attorney general. Brennan has already been the subject of a criminal referral by the current CIA director, John Ratcliffe. Kash Patel, the FBI director, has opened a criminal investigation into Brennan and Comey, according to Fox News, although its scope is unclear. During his first presidency, Trump publicly accepted the FBI's findings that Russia had sought to interfere in the 2016 race, although he also publicly accepted Putin's denials of the US intelligence community conclusions at a 2018 summit in Helsinki. An 1,000-page Senate intelligence committee report in 2020 also found that Russia had intervened on Trump's behalf, noting that Trump's campaign chair had regular contact with a Russian intelligence officer. But in Wednesday's White House appearance, Gabbard unveiled the declassification of a 2020 report from the House of Representatives' intelligence committee which she said showed that the goal of Russian meddling was to undermine faith in the US electoral process rather than to help Trump. The report found that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, did not plan to leak the most damaging material about Clinton until after the election, Gabbard said. These included revelations of 'possible criminal acts' and emails from a hacking of the Democratic national committee (DNC) showing that she suffered from 'psycho-emotional problems', and 'uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness'. She was also supposedly on a daily regimen of 'heavy tranquilizers'. Gabbard also alleges that an intelligence community assessment of Putin's efforts deliberately excluded 'significant' intelligence that contradicted the key findings of Russia's purported preference for Trump. Clinton has previously suggested that Gabbard – a former Democrat member of Congress – was being 'groomed' by Russia as a possible presidential candidate. Gabbard, who has no prior intelligence experience, has also been criticized for repeating Kremlin talking points, including after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Her report appears to misrepresent aspects of the intelligence agencies' assessments of Russia's meddling in the 2016 race. The assessment found that Russia did not conduct cyber-attacks against election infrastructure to change vote tallies, but hacked and leaked documents from the DNC to damage Clinton's campaign – activity that Trump publicly encouraged at the time. While Obama's national security officials have remained silent on the matter, some intelligence veterans have criticized Gabbard's effort. 'The Trump Admin's politicization of the 'intelligence community' is very troubling. Every admin wishes they could do it, and several succeed, but this cohort is off to a flying start,' Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA analyst and national intelligence officer, wrote in an email. 'It's not an entirely new trick – books have been cooked for decades – but it's now institutionalized and, as Tulsi's behavior shows, encouraged.'
The National
an hour ago
- The National
Glasgow councillor seeks to block 'deportation' march
Greens councillor Dan Hutchison wrote to Glasgow City Council's chief executive, Suzanne Millar, and Director of Legal and Administration, Mairi Millar, to ask that an order is made to stop the march on the grounds of protecting public safety and order. 'I believe the actions and words of the organisers are an incitement to violence and a risk to public safety and order on our streets', Hutchison said. READ MORE: World's tallest cinema in Scottish city 'at risk of closure' 'Ukip use phrases like 'these streets are our streets' and 'we will protect ourselves'. Well, they aren't their streets, they belong to the people of Glasgow. And we don't want fascists calling for our friends and neighbours to be deported.' The party's newest leader, Nick Tenconi, organised what the party billed as a 'mass deportations tour' in cities across the UK, including Nottingham, Liverpool, Newcastle and London. Campaign group Stand Up To Racism have organised a counter-protest in response, with a march planned through several city centre streets such as West Nile Street, George Square North and South, High Street and Nelson Mandela Place. The group re-issued a letter of complaint to Glasgow City Council on Thursday after reportedly being told by officials that 'there wasn't clear evidence' that the Ukip march posed a risk to public safety. READ MORE: Safety has become the defining instinct of Scottish politics After referencing evidence of the party's affiliation with far-right agitator Tommy Robinson and a video of Tenconi saying 'these streets are our streets' outside of a home burnt out during the anti-migrant riots in Ballymena, the letter states: 'This is the politics of the people who have been given permission to march through Glasgow on July 26 as part of a 'mass deportation' tour. 'They chant the same racist and Islamophobic hatred that led to the far-right riots last year and we, the co-signers of this letter, urge Glasgow City Council to withdraw the permission to let a fascist-led organisation to march through the streets of Glasgow.'
