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Tasmania’s parliament has passed a no-confidence motion in Premier Jeremy Rockliff, setting the stage for the fourth state election in seven years.
The motion brought by Labor leader Dean Winter passed by the barest margin, with Labor speaker Michelle O’Byrne casting a deciding vote.
Rockliff’s grip on power was lost after a marathon two-day debate finished on Thursday afternoon.
Winter brought the no-confidence motion following the Liberal minority government’s budget, winning the support of the Greens and three crossbenchers for an 18-17 vote.
Liberal MPs yelled out “weak” as the House divided for the vote.
Rockliff, who has been premier since 2022, had conceded the numbers were against him but vowed to “fight to his last breath” and not resign.
He added that Tasmania did not want and could not afford an election.
“Be that on Mr Winter’s head. This has been a selfish grab for power. I have a lot more fight in me,” he said.
“The only job Mr Winter is interested in is mine. And I am not going anywhere.”
Winter, opposition leader since Labor’s loss last year, said Tasmanians wanted to see the end of Rockliff and the Liberals, which have governed under three different premiers since 2014.
“We are ready for an election,” he said, flanked by his caucus outside a substation in Mt Wellington’s foothills, a site chosen to press home arguments against privatisation.
“We will not stand by and let this premier wreck our budget and sell the assets that Tasmanians have built.”
The vote passed in the afternoon on Thursday.
Winter, who brought the no-confidence motion following a budget in deficit and forecasting a debt blowout of several billion, pushed back against Rockliff’s claims he opportunistically engineered the government’s demise.
“The premier did confidence and supply agreements with the crossbench when he became premier … and it was up to him to hold those agreements together.
“He couldn’t do it. Those agreements have fallen apart,” he said.
Tasmania went to the polls just 15 months ago, in an election which returned the Liberals to power in a minority with just 14 of 35 seats in the lower house.
During the debate, Labor has also lashed Rockliff for delays and cost blowouts to the delivery of two new Bass Strait ferries.
Some crossbenchers and the Greens also have gripes with a new $945 million stadium in Hobart, a condition of the Tasmania Devils entering the AFL in 2028.
Labor supports the team and a stadium, a position they reiterated on Wednesday in writing to the AFL.
The Devils fear an early election would delay the stadium project and put the club’s licence at risk. The Greens had dangled the prospect of forming a minority government with Labor, a prospect Winter has ruled out.
