Tasmanian Labor leader Dean Winter apparently only ever opens his mouth to change clown shoes. When you’ve just been belted in an election brought on by your own amateurish political stunt which blew up in your face, going right back and pulling the same stunt is bad enough. When the election returned a hung parliament, launching an attack on the very cross-benchers you’d need to have a hope of grabbing government is monumentally worse.
But that was the first sour grapes reaction from a petulant Winter when it became clear the cross-bench wasn’t going to support his renewed no-confidence motion in re-elected premier Jeremy Rockliff.
Labor leader Dean Winter has accused the crossbenchers of abandoning public sector workers by announcing they would not be supporting his no-confidence motion.
He said the next parliament will be built on policy trade offs by Premier Jeremy Rockliff.
What did he expect from a hung parliament?
If he was expecting an endorsement from the cross-bench, he had another think coming.
Liberal MP Jacquie Petrusma has been elected as the new speaker of the Parliament of Tasmania […]
Ms Petrusma, who represents the electorate of Franklin, won the vote 25 to 10 against Labor's nominee, Jen Butler, who represents the seat of Lyons.
In the context of the numbers in the Tasmanian parliament, that vote is very telling. The Libs have 14 seats, Labor 10, Greens five, independents five and Shooters, Fishers and Farmers one. Given that it’s likely the 10 Labor MPs all voted for the Labor candidate, the maths tells us that not just the 14 Liberals, but all 11 cross-benchers voted for the Liberal.
That was just the beginning of Winter’s humiliation on the first day of the new parliament.
How the cross-bench would vote on the no-confidence motion became clear when Greens leader Rosalie Woodruff announced the party would vote against the no-confidence motion.
Even former Labor leaders were sticking the boots in. David O’Byrne, who in a rare show of parliamentary decency refused any appointments from the Liberals in return for backing their government, bluntly told Winter:
“You don’t have the numbers in this case,” Mr O’Byrne, a former Labor leader, said […]
Mr O’Byrne says Tasmanians did not want another election so soon after the 2024 poll at which the Liberals were elected, albeit in a minority.
Another independent MP, Kristie Johnston, blamed Labor intransigence for off-siding the crossbench. Even scruffy hippy Craig Garland indicated he would follow the Greens’ lead. Newly-elected independent Professor George Razay also voted against the motion.
Just to show how deep Labor is in the poo, even a former ABC luvvie was sticking the boots in.
“Labor set about undermining the very notion of collaboration and compromise as it sought to lead a minority government,” [Peter George] said.
“In my years of reporting politics, which stretch back to the Whitlam years, never have I come across an opposition party less ready for government.”
The no-confidence motion was duly defeated on exactly the same lines as the Speaker vote: 24–10 (the speaker didn’t need to cast a vote). Which means that the entire cross-bench, including the Greens, chose to back the Liberals.
In the end, Winter was reduced to impotent, unedifying heckling from the sidelines. It was all schoolboy stuff, which only underlined that Winter simply cannot be taken seriously: not by voters, not by his parliamentary colleagues.
If he survives as leader past the new few weeks, it will only show that the juvenile rot runs right through Tasmanian Labor.
