Politics
Bartlett’s bluster
…
But that is not how government works, is not what constitutional conventions dictate, and is not how the right to govern is determined.
As political expert Associate Professor Richard Herr said this week, Bartlett’s “promise” during the heat of the election campaign that the political party that won the most seats or the most votes should be in power for the next four years is nothing more than “policy on the run”.
Herr said that, regardless of whether the Liberals end up with nine, 10 or 11 seats when vote-counting is completed next week – while Labor has 10 seats locked in – it did not give the Liberal Opposition any more or less right to form the next government.
Yet Hodgman has spent most of this week trying to “force” Bartlett and the Labor Party to repeat his “promise” to hand over the reins of power.
He too seems to mistakenly think that the spoils of electoral victory – if you could the Liberals’ meagre likely 10 seats that – are linked to which party “scores” more votes than the other. With it clear that the liberals have 39 per cent of the total primary vote and Labor 37 per cent, and both are likely to end up with 10 seats on the floor of the House of Assembly, Hodgman appears to think this is enough justification for grabbing government with both hands
He is wrong, because there is no legal justification in the “top score” scenario cooked up by Bartlett to confer the right to form Tasmania’s next government on the Liberals.
“Frankly, it is not the right of David Bartlett to give government away just because he wants to take Labor into opposition,” Herr said. “It was both politically and constitutionally invalid for [Mr] Bartlett to say what he did, imprudent and invalid.”
The issue of which party will be offered government will ultimately come down to who can prove to the Governor that they enjoy the majority of support on the floor of the House of Assembly on an ongoing, stable and continuing basis.
And until Parliament resumes, probably in late April, it is likely to be a Labor government, presumably led by Bartlett , that is recommissioned to govern by Governor Peter Underwood in the second week in April.
It will then depend on what happens when Parliament resumes and if the Liberals immediately move a vote of no-confidence in the new Labor government, presumably with the Greens’ support.
Herr said it would be a “hugely irresponsible thing” for both parties, but particularly for Bartlett, to refuse a request by the Governor to willingly govern, without first considering an effective relationship with the Greens.
“All of this rhetoric and bluster before the election should now be regarded as non-core and dispensable, and that includes Mr Bartlett’s ‘promise’ about the most seats and votes wining,” Herr said. “They all need to take a cold shower and look at where do we go from here, and in my view that means talking to the Greens.”
It is interesting that at the same time as these legal and constitutional developments are taking place, the Labor Party is starting to mutter and convulse behind the scenes about why it should want to willingly hand over power to a Hodgman Liberal government.