The Premier’s integrity is already in tatters, but every time he opens his mouth he makes it worse.
Yesterday Jeremy Rockliff continued to claim that “legal barriers” prevent him answering questions about taxpayer-funded legal fees – while simultaneously refusing to seek advice from the Solicitor-General about what he is able to say on these matters.
This contradiction adds a new level of absurdity to the clownish approach the Premier took in Budget Estimates.
In Estimates, Premier Rockliff said on a number of occasions that he was “unable to comment” on these matters. The following week he told us the opposite, when he confirmed there had been no legal basis for his claim.
Now we’re hearing him say he won’t say anything inside Parliament that he can’t “lawfully say outside Parliament.”
That comment raises a further glaring problem . . . The Premier doesn’t actually know what he can lawfully say outside Parliament, because by his own admission he hasn’t sought legal advice about this.
We expect Premier Rockliff would have enough sense to know there are certain things he definitely can’t say about certain legal matters – but nobody is asking for him to outline the finer details of a court case.
We maintain there are many more questions the Premier could, and should, be able to answer.
Would it be breaking whatever confidentiality requirements are in place for the Premier to say if these matters related to actions taken by ministers in the course of their duties?
Would it be a legal issue if he said within which portfolio these proceedings relate?
Can he really not tell us when Cabinet first made the decision to grant these MPs taxpayer-funded legal assistance?
It may be that the Premier is unable to address these areas. However, he’s refusing to seek legal advice from the Solicitor-General, so how would he know for certain?
We can only conclude the real reason Jeremy Rockliff won’t ask for this legal advice is because he doesn’t want it. Such advice would likely tell him he can say a lot more to Tasmanians about these matters than he wants to.
The Premier needs to stop the pretence and urgently seek advice from the Solicitor-General, so he knows what he can and can’t reveal regarding the hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer-funded legal fees that he approved.
