{"id":414283,"date":"2026-01-15T09:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T09:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/414283\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T09:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T09:06:11","slug":"tasmanian-liberals-share-then-delete-image-of-two-labor-mps-at-taste-of-summer-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/414283\/","title":{"rendered":"Tasmanian Liberals share, then delete image of two Labor MPs at Taste of Summer festival"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Tasmanian Liberal Party has deleted a photograph it posted on social media that showed two female Labor MPs at the Taste of Summer festival.<\/p>\n

In the post, the Tasmanian Liberals’ account described the MPs \u2014 who did not know their picture was being taken \u2014 as “tanked”.<\/p>\n

Before it was deleted, the post on X was re-shared by the Liberals’ government communications account, RockliffTeamMedia.<\/p>\n

It was also posted and deleted from the Tasmanian Liberals’ Facebook page.<\/p>\n

The image shows Labor upper house member Sarah Lovell seated at the event and federal Lyons MP Rebecca White speaking to her.<\/p>\n

It was accompanied by a caption that read: “When you’re tanked at the Taste and someone suggests sexually rating your colleagues”.<\/p>\n

\"Premier<\/p>\n

The ABC understands Premier Jeremy Rockliff intervened and asked for the post to be removed. (ABC News: Jonny McNee)<\/p>\n

The ABC understands Premier Jeremy Rockliff requested the post be taken down.<\/p>\n

The government refused to comment further, but said the original post was not made by someone employed by the Department of Premier and Cabinet.<\/p>\n

Labor MP Meg Brown said the government should be “focusing on governing Tasmania and the challenges we face” rather than using government resources in this way.<\/p>\n

Yesterday the party’s X account posted an image of Ms Lovell and fellow Labor MP Ella Haddad at the event.<\/p>\n

The photographs appeared to have been taken without the knowledge of the MPs.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Meg Brown has criticised the government’s use of resources. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)<\/p>\n

It follows several days of criticism by multiple Liberal ministers about the alleged conduct of three Labor MPs at the Taste event, which drew a complaint from a Liberal member seated nearby.<\/p>\n

Labor MPs apologise over ‘shoot, shag or marry’ game<\/a><\/p>\n

A federal assistant minister and two Tasmanian state Labor MPs apologise after a complaint was made about their behaviour at the Taste of Summer festival in Hobart.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The complaint alleged that a game of “shoot, shag or marry” was played by Ms White, Ms Lovell and Ms Haddad about male Liberal MPs, and could be overheard by those nearby at the public event in Hobart.<\/p>\n

The three MPs personally apologised to the complainant for any offence caused.<\/p>\n

The Liberals have been pressuring Labor leader Josh Willie to confirm if he was present when the game occurred and if he intervened at the time.<\/p>\n

He said apologies had been made and accepted and that he would not comment further, while a Labor spokesperson said the party did not accept “the premise of the accusations” and rejected the specific language used.<\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

The Taste of Summer in Hobart is an annual food and wine festival. (ABC News: Maren Preuss)<\/p>\n

Labor responds with questions about ministers<\/p>\n

As the Liberals’ attacks continued this week, Labor has responded by attempting to highlight questions about government ministers.<\/p>\n

This included Labor MLC Luke Edmunds querying $120,494 in legal fees accrued by cabinet minister Madeleine Ogilvie, which was disclosed in parliament late last year.<\/p>\n

A government spokesperson said the fees were incurred “as part of her duties as a Minister of the Crown”, while Ms Ogilvie disputed it being characterised as “personal legal fees”.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Legal fees accrued by cabinet minister Madeleine Ogilvie have been queried by Labor. (ABC News: Maren Preuss)<\/p>\n

The ABC submitted a right to information (RTI) request on legal fees accrued by government ministers since mid-2024.<\/p>\n

It only resulted in an invoice for $14,926 being released, which did not include the identity of the relevant minister or government MP.<\/p>\n

The remaining legal fees were not released, with the government citing a clause in the RTI Act that means it can refuse to release information by neither confirming nor denying its existence.<\/p>\n

Details of Ms Ogilvie’s fees were not released.<\/p>\n

An earlier RTI request resulted in the release of legal fees accrued by former cabinet minister Michael Ferguson, along with several for past and present attorneys-general.<\/p>\n

Cabinet can decide to approve legal indemnity for ministers for legal matters that occur in their roles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Tasmanian Liberal Party has deleted a photograph it posted on social media that showed two female Labor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[218921,43,4273,44,44610,215755,152229,1314,24240,206287,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-414283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-bec-white","tag-headlines","tag-liberal","tag-news","tag-post","tag-rebecca-white","tag-sarah-lovell","tag-social-media","tag-taste","tag-taste-of-summer","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}