Premier Jeremy Rockliff needs to urgently seek legal advice from the Solicitor-General on what he can and can’t say about MPs’ legal proceedings when Parliament returns next week.
The Premier and his Ministers refused to answer many dozens of questions in Estimates, citing confidentiality requirements and legal considerations. But now it’s been revealed there was actually no legal advice to support this approach.
Given it is well-established in law that the unrestricted nature of parliamentary privilege is known to override certain legal constraints, the Greens are sceptical there is any real barrier to Jeremy Rockliff providing full answers to many of the questions being asked by us and others.
Jeremy Rockliff doesn’t need to take our word for it – he has a Solicitor-General whose job it is to provide legal advice on matters like this.
We know the Premier might be scared of the community reaction if he provides the full truth about these matters, but he has to put his self-interest aside and do the right thing by providing as much information as possible when Parliament returns. To do so, he needs formal legal advice on whether there’s anything he can’t say and what that might be.
Before Parliament returns on Tuesday, he should urgently seek formal advice from the Solicitor-General on these matters so that he is in a position to provide maximum transparency to the Parliament and the people of Tasmania.
If the Premier refuses to seek such advice, the only conclusion we could draw is that he doesn’t want to know the answer because it would undermine what he and his Ministers have been saying for the past fortnight. Such a refusal would also provide even more evidence for further investigations about this entire matter.
