Former attorney-general Elise Archer reconsidering quitting parliament

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Tasmania's former attorney general who quit the Liberal party on Friday says she is "reconsidering" her decision to also leave parliament. Premier Jeremy Rockliff dumped Elise Archer from cabinet over what he called unacceptable messages.

Transcript

00:00 It's been a really turbulent few days.

00:03 So it sort of kicked off on the Thursday afternoon when news broke about bullying allegations

00:08 against former Attorney General, Elyse Archer.

00:12 Now I should note she denies these allegations and says she hasn't been given due process

00:17 to even be considered.

00:19 Now the next day we had the Premier asked her to resign from Cabinet off the back of

00:25 what he described as an unacceptable message.

00:28 And Ms Archer says this message was taken out of context and the Premier didn't give

00:33 her a chance to take that into account.

00:36 Now Ms Archer surprised them then by not only resigning from Cabinet but resigning from

00:41 the party and she announced that she would quit Parliament.

00:44 But it didn't stop there.

00:45 On Saturday we saw that message come out.

00:49 So there were more damaging leaks.

00:52 And then by Sunday afternoon Ms Archer said that actually she was reconsidering her decision

00:58 to quit Parliament and she might instead choose to stay and sit as an Independent.

01:03 But she said that if she does so she wouldn't guarantee the Government confidence to supply.

01:09 Now that's particularly important because they're a minority Government.

01:14 So Lucy what does this mean for the State Government?

01:17 Well look, put this into context.

01:20 In Tasmania at the moment we have 25 politicians in the lower house.

01:24 Now that will change in the future but for now there are 25 in.

01:27 When the Government was elected back in 2021 they won with a majority of 13.

01:32 Now back in May we saw two Liberal MPs defect and move to the crossbench.

01:37 Now the difference is they guaranteed confidence and supply.

01:40 So the Government has been functioning with 11.

01:45 If Ms Archer decides that she wants to stay on and move to the crossbench what we're going

01:49 to see, we're going to see just 10 people in the Government.

01:53 We're going to see 8 people in Opposition.

01:56 If you count the Greens in we're going to see a crossbench of 7.

02:01 That gives Ms Archer a fair bit of power to choose to vote against the Government with

02:06 a block and they could lose a vote on the House floor.

02:10 Now the Premier has come out and spoken this morning and he said that he understood the

02:15 risks when he asked Ms Archer to resign.

02:19 He understood he could lose his premiership.

02:21 He said that Ms Archer needs to, if she wants to stay in Parliament, she needs to guarantee

02:26 confidence and supply because she was elected as a Liberal and if she's not prepared to

02:30 she should make way for a Liberal who will come in and do that.

02:36 But he says he doesn't want to call an election but he has indicated the election is in Ms

02:42 Archer's hands.

02:43 So it does sound like if she decides to stay there could be an early election.

02:48 So at the moment Ms Archer has all the power and all the Government can do really is wait

02:53 to see what she decides.

02:55 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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