Lambie MPs on the brink of backing the Rockliff government, say transparency is important

The members of the Jacqui Lambie Network say they will sign up to back the Liberals to form government, however they need are demanding one key thing in return.

Jacqui Lambie Network’s new MPs say they will sign up to back the Liberals to form government — and make the terms of the deal public.

The government needs the support of at least four other members of the House of Assembly to be assured of prevailing in votes of no confidence and passing budget bills.

The JLN’s three new MPs Andrew Jenner, Miriam Beswick, Rebekah Pentland may not have set foot inside parliament yet, but are already thrashing out a deal.

Member for Lyons Andrew Jenner of the Jacqui Lambie Network. Picture: Linda Higginson

Mr Jenner said the party was intending to sign an agreement to guarantee confidence and supply to a Jeremy Rockliff-led government.

“We’re all new to this. It would be naive of us to try and come in and go ‘we want this or that’ and it not be feasible,” he said.

“We’ll work with them to put something in the document that is actually best for everybody, that works for us and works for the government.

“We have got a real interest in making this work. You know, obviously, Labor threw in the towel quite early.

“We couldn’t form a government with them anyway. It was either work with Jeremy and work with him well, or go back to an election, which I’m sure nobody wants.

“There will be a remit that there’ll be certain things that we will ask for.

“We haven’t signed it yet. That will be made public and once that’s made public, you will see what we’ve actually asked for.

“We want to obviously make it transparent and accountable. We want to be able to work with Jeremy Rockliff for Tasmanians

“We obviously don’t have access to any of the accounts, any of the books, anything that went on behind the scenes, we will have now and when we’ve got that, then we can come back to you and say this is how we wanted it to go ahead.”

Member for Braddon, Miriam Beswick of the Jacqui Lambie Network. Picture: Linda Higginson

Having only been declared elected at the weekend, the MPs said they were yet to develop positions on key issues, including the proposed Macquarie Point AFL stadium, Ms Beswick said.

“We’re all very pro-team but we definitely do need to look at the deal with the stadium and we need to get that right and it needs to be a win-win for AFL and for the Tasmanian people,” she said.

And she said the party would be sticking to its guns on forestry and aquaculture.

“We have our discussion paper that we put out during the election period and that was very clearly stating that Tasmanians don’t really want more native logging happening, most of us want to preserve our habitat.

“And so we just really, you’re really want to be pushing for encouraging a sustainable timber industry.

“We need to make sure that we have long-term industries, not destroying our environment, we need to make sure that these are sustainable, but not just for the next five years, they’re sustainable so that our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren have those opportunities for employment.”