Tasmania’s Labor leader has declared he has “no confidence” in Premier Jeremy Rockliff ahead of Parliament resuming today and made his party’s position on potential no-confidence motions known.
Dean Winter has confirmed Labor won’t support any no-confidence motions unless they originate from within the Labor Party itself.
“The first no-confidence motion that Labor will support is the one that we move,” he said. “We are not going to entertain frivolous motions from Independents or Greens in the Parliament this year.”
“Obviously I don’t have confidence in Jeremy Rockliff. I think he is one of the worst Premiers we’ve ever had. Everything he touches appears to go bad.”
“And we are frustrated at being in opposition. But my job is to connect with Tasmanians, to present an alternative vision for this state so that when we do go to an election we can finally turf this government out and elect a strong, stable Labor government.”
Winter criticised the Greens and independent MP Kristie Johnston for what he called “absurdity” in their approach to minority government.
“They’re the ones that say minority government is great and yet as soon as we’ve got one, they’re trying to blow it up with no-confidence motions,” he said.
“There might be times where there’s a public interest requirement or a public interest in having a debate. And of course we reserve the right to have the debate.”
Premier Rockliff expressed confidence about Parliament’s stability, noting that Johnston had previously voted no confidence in him last year.
“Not much has changed,” he said. “But of course Miss Johnston wants to sit down with me on working through how we can get through her legislation through Parliament to make Tasmanians lives better according to Miss Johnston.”
“This is about everyone working together and last year’s Parliament, every quarter of the Parliament got a win. Labor Party got a win. The Greens got a win. Miss Johnston got a win. Mr O’Byrne got a win.”
“Do we want to blow up a parliament that is largely functioning well?”
