The sharks are circling embattled Labor Leader, Rebecca White, following a disastrous media event and subsequent train wreck interview where Ms White tried to mislead journalists.*
After being exposed for holding a media event claiming a house was vacant public housing property, which then turned out to be neither vacant nor public housing, Ms White doubled-down on her gaff in an effort to cover it up:
“We’ve got houses, like the one behind us, that could be maintained and provided for accommodation for somebody who’s homeless, today.” Rebecca White, media conference 30 June 2019.
Question, Guy Stayner: “You held a press conference for Tasmania to use vacant public housing to house Tasmanians in need. The house that you were in front of wasn’t vacant, it wasn’t on the public housing list. Is this a sign that Labor doesn’t really know what it’s doing?”
Rebecca White: “We were standing in front of a vacant block of land.” ABC interview, 15 July 2019.
No wonder a succession of Labor luminaries have lined up to take aim at Ms White for a lack of policy, strategy, vision, and a failure to engage and be honest with the Tasmanian community. The Labor Party is in utter disarray and its Leader is on the way out.
Even her Labor colleagues appear to be backgrounding the media about her strategic blunders, such as the coalition with the Greens to remove gender from birth certificates and failure to rule out pill testing. Coupled with her continued backflips on her signature pokies policy, internal tensions have well and truly boiled over as was witnessed last night. It seems the Left is seeking to take control of the Labor party.
While Ms White has spent most of the year trying to keep David O’Byrne at bay, even demoting him in her most recent Shadow Cabinet reshuffle, there can be no doubt that he and his allies are counting the numbers, and counting down the days until Ms White's job is made vacant.
* ABC News, Tasmania. 15 July 2019