Treasurer
Minister for Local Government
Minister for State Growth
Liberal Member for Bass

Labor leadership chaos spills into the public
 

14 February 2019

Today’s shuffling of the deckchairs in the Labor Shadow Cabinet signals the final death throes of Rebecca White’s leadership.

A panicked, under-siege Opposition Leader has moved to desperately try to secure her leadership by promoting her supporters, handing out prizes to everyone while simultaneously demoting the O’Byrnes.

Just like last week’s pokies backflip, this reshuffle is all about trying to save her own leadership by taking senior portfolios off David and Michelle O’Byrne while promoting others whose votes she needs to delay the inevitable.

Shuffling the deckchairs won’t stop her leadership going down.

Tasmanians know that the problem for Labor is what they stand for, not who sits where in the Shadow Cabinet.

It’s nobody’s fault but Ms White’s that she stumped everything on a pokies policy she clearly didn’t believe in, continued to insist Labor would stick with the policy up until two weeks ago, and then ditched it to help out Bill Shorten.

It’s Ms White’s failure to deliver a coherent and consistent policy platform which has opened the door for David O’Byrne to undermine her leadership. This is now the fourth Labor reshuffle since Ms White took the leadership, yet they still retain policies such as opposing mandatory sentencing for serious child sex offenders.

There’s a growing inevitability about David O’Byrne’s ascension to the Labor leadership, and it’s very clear that his election day statement of support for Ms White was, just like the pokies policy, another ‘point in time commitment’.