Winter puts asset sales at heart of Labor campaign

Labor leader Dean Winter has put the government's abandoned policy of asset sales at the centre of his party’s election campaign.

Labor leader Dean Winter kicks off state election campaign for 2025 in Hobart. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Labor leader Dean Winter has put the government's abandoned policy of asset sales at the centre of his party’s election campaign.

Mr Winter was flanked by MPs and party faithful at his first press conference on his campaign in Hobart on Thursday.

Nine of the ten sitting Labor members in the House of Assembly will recontest their seats. Member for Bass Michelle O’Byrne announced last week she would not seek preselection.

One week since his no-confidence motion sparked a political crisis, Mr Winter said Jeremy Rockliff could not be trusted to resist selling off government-owned assets — despite the Premier emphatically reversing course on the idea last week.

Budget management and public sector job cuts are also expected to feature heavily in Labor’s campaign.

“They said — because they couldn’t manage their own government businesses — they were just going to sell them,” Mr Winter said.

“And they said, because they built up so much debt, that was the way they’re going to pay down the debt.

“Both of those things were huge mistakes. Government businesses in this state do really important work.

“We can’t let this Premier use our government businesses to prop up his budget.”

Labor leader Dean Winter kicks off state election campaign for 2025 in Hobart. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

Mr Winter ruled out forming government without the Greens, but did not say whether he was confident of Labor winning a majority in the 35-seat house, instead aiming for “as many seats as possible”.

He also did not rule out governing in minority with the support of others.

“We will be campaigning for government. We won’t be doing any deals with the Greens.

“We’ll be campaigning as hard as we possibly can,” he said.

“We’ll be campaigning to win. Tasmania needs a Labor Government to win at this election.

“Tasmanian Labor will be campaigning on a really strong and positive platform.”

And Mr Winter said he was not concerned about a voter backlash for precipitating an early election — saying the no-confidence motion was inevitable.

“The reason we are here is because Jeremy Rockliff won minority government and he signed deals with the crossbench and those deals fell apart.

“There’s only one person responsible for that, that’s Jeremy Rockliff.

“This is an opportunity for Tasmania to finally get a competent government, to get rid of the Liberals that have stuffed up our ships.

“This is a government that has fundamentally failed on the basics.”

Labor’s candidates have not yet been finalised and are expected to be announced in the coming days.