So, it’s been… checks calendar… nearly three weeks since the Tasmanian state election, and we’ve finally got a result. Fourteen Liberal seats, 10 Labor, five Greens and six independents. Jeremy Rockliff is still premier.
Which is exactly what we had before the election. Tasmanians are fully entitled to ask what the whole damn point was and why we wasted millions on a stupid stunt by Labor that went pear-shaped on them.
And fully entitled to be mad as cut snakes if they go right back and do it again.
Tasmania’s governor has reappointed Jeremy Rockliff as premier but says it will be parliament that ultimately decides whether his Liberal minority government survives.
In other words, depending on whether they compound their idiocy by pulling the same stunt twice.
Governor Barbara Baker AC released a statement on Wednesday morning explaining her reasoning after meeting with Mr Rockliff at Government House.
She said her decision to reappoint Mr Rockliff was in following the convention of incumbency.
We all knew this within days of the election. It was clear that Labor had no mandate to form government. Not only did they fail to win a single new seat, their primary vote plunged to a record low.
“In a hung parliament, where no one clearly holds the confidence of the majority of the House of Assembly, the incumbent has the right to remain in office in order to test the numbers in the House of Assembly and for parliament to have the final say in who should be premier,” Her Excellency said.
“I consider the convention of incumbency applies in the current circumstances. I shall reappoint the premier.
“It is better for confidence to be determined inside and not outside the parliament.”
Mr Rockliff and his cabinet will be sworn in at a ceremony at Government House early next week.
The Liberal Party’s hold on government to face its first test when parliament returns on August 19.
Let’s see if Labor’s Dean Winter has learned a single thing from this election.
If Mr Rockliff is recommissioned as premier, Labor’s pathway to power would have to be through a no-confidence vote in the premier when parliament resumes.
Which is exactly the stunt they tried a month ago – and it blew up in their faces when Jeremy Rockliff, like Robin Gay in 1989, dug in his heels, forcing an election. In ’89, Labor didn’t win a single new seat, either – but the Liberals lost two, resulting in another hung parliament. Then Labor did a dirty deal with the Greens and slithered into power.
If they try the same stunt again, Tasmanian voters, already peeved with Labor’s shenanigans, will be incandescent. Labor will dare such a move at their own peril.
Meanwhile, the result is certain to shake up Tasmanian politics in other ways.
Newly elected Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party MP Carlo Di Falco says gun law reform will be one of his bargaining chips in the next Tasmanian parliament.
Mr Di Falco claimed a seat in Lyons with 6.7 per cent of first-preference votes.
He said the party’s priorities on gun law reform included amendments about silencers, mandatory three-month sentences for those who steal guns, and to extend the ability to hunt feral animals.
He said deer-culling programs involving helicopters and aerial shooting were not the best way to control fallow deer.
“It makes more sense to allow shooters to go in and clean up the same deer with one or two shots, and not only that, so the meat’s not wasted,” he said.
All of which seems perfectly arguable. But it challenges the cosy orthodoxies of the left, so expect plenty of pushback.
Stephen Bendle, an advocacy adviser for the Alannah & Madeline Foundation said gun violence was still an issue in Australia.
Which is odd, because we’re continually lectured that the Howard gun laws were a stunning success. This is yet another case of the adage that a problem solved is an existential crisis for an activist. And that laws made in knee-jerk haste are very often bad laws. The idea that such laws are beyond ever being re-examined is an affront to democracy.
