Tasmania is a small place. It’s hard to know anyone who doesn’t know someone else you know, or isn’t related to. (Yeah, yeah, I know: cue the ‘two heads’ jokes. I’ll just point out that large swathes of NZ have a higher kinship intensity than Tasmania. And that’s not counting the sheep.)
Its political scene is correspondingly small: I often describe it as a cross between a local Rotary club and a special school. Of the major players in the drama that’s gripped Tassie politics this past week, even I’ve met and talked to all of them and I’m on first-name terms with one. It’s that kind of place.
And, like shenanigans in a small town compared to a big city, the very fact of its smallness can make even the smallest spats high political drama.
An underling gossiping and bitching about her boss, for instance.
As I reported recently, a series of leaked WhatsApp messages from (now-former) Attorney-General Elise Archer, about her leaders and colleagues, precipitated the end (for now) of Archer’s political career, and nearly that of the minority Rockliff Liberal government.
The immediate turmoil threatening to topple Jeremy Rockliff and the nation’s last Liberal government has abated, but the Premier’s next crisis may be just around the corner.
Ousted attorney-general Elise Archer had kept on tenterhooks the government of which she had, until Friday, long been an integral part […]
Supporting the premier, party and government that had thrown her so thoroughly under a bus was never going to be an option for this combative conservative.
In the end, this former blue-blooded Liberal chose not to be remembered as the woman who blew up the party’s last living administration.
In typical Tasmanian fashion, it’s hard to chuck a stone in politics or business in the state without hitting someone named “Archer”. Although, surprising as it may be to smart-alecky outsiders, not all are actually related. Nonetheless, the name is synonymous with an old-fashioned squattocracy.
Anyway, the fact remains that Elise Archer has at least kept the Rockliff government on life support. For now. Under Tasmania’s Byzantine Hare-Clark electoral system (which gives MMP a run for its money), Archer will be replaced, not by by-election, but by another Liberal selected on a recount from the last election.
This will restore Rockliff’s government to 11 members in the 25-seat Assembly, with two ex-Liberal independents providing confidence and supply.
Rockliff may be tempted to pop the House of Arras vintage, but he’d best keep it on ice.
His problems – in the House of Assembly, in the Liberal Party room, and in voter land – do not depart with his scandal-scarred ex-AG.
In terms of the Assembly, those two ex-Liberal independents – Lara Alexander and John Tucker – have made it clear they are mightily unimpressed by the shenanigans of the past few days.
While Alexander has publicly aired her preference for an election to settle matters once and for all, Tucker has told the media he’d prefer to see Rockliff dumped in favour of his deputy, Michael Ferguson.
It’s long been common knowledge that Ferguson nurses premiership ambitions, but, since Peter Gutwein quit the job early last year, he has failed to muster sufficient numbers.
In the weeks or months ahead, the party room may well decide Ferguson is their best bet to rebuild at or ahead of a difficult election.
That Archer’s most likely replacement, Simon Behrakis, is an adviser to Ferguson, and cut from similar conservative factional cloth, only adds to the pressure on the struggling moderate Premier.
The Australian
And there’s the rub: “moderate”.
‘Moderate’, in the language of the Australian Liberal Party, really means, ‘dripping-wet, blue-green wannabe’: think Christopher Luxon, but without the rigid conservative principles.
The dominance of the ‘moderates’ has been the key factor in the collapse of the party’s vote over the last 10 years. The traditional centre-right base has been betrayed by a party in thrall to rich greenies from the inner cities, while swinging voters clearly decided that it was better to vote Labor or Green and get the real thing.
Ferguson, like his fellow northerner, Guy Barnett, is at least a genuine, centre-right conservative.
With at least a light blue wind blowing through the Liberals at the federal level, and stirring in some of the other state governments, the party room may decide that the time for the ‘moderate’ experiment is long past over.
