Tasmania is headed for an early election for the second term in a row, with Liberal Premier Jeremy Rockliff announcing yesterday that he will visit the Governor today to seek an election anticipated for March 23. This follows a breakdown in relations with former Liberal MPs John Tucker and Lara Alexander, who reduced the government to minority status when they quit to sit as independents last May. Rockliff has spent the last week attempting to extract from them a commitment only to vote for government-backed motions and amendments in parliament, which would have rendered them independents in name only.
This unexpected development will leave parties scrambling over the coming weeks to get slates of candidate in place for an election that will enlarge parliament from 25 seats to 35. Each of the five electoral divisions (the same ones that apply in the state at federal elections) will now elect seven rather than five members under the state’s Hare-Clark variant of proportional representation, returning to the situation which prevailed before 1998.
The change lowers the quota for election from 16.7% to 12.5%, making life substantially easier for minor parties. A desire to reduce the footprint of the Greens was the principal motivation for the cut in parliamentary numbers in 1998, but the minor party environment has grown more complex since that time. Tucker and Alexander joined a cross bench which, together with two Greens members, included Clark MP Kristie Johnston, who in 2021 became the first independent to win election since 1986.
There is also the question of the Jacqui Lambie Network, which at last report planned to field candidates in every division except Clark, and which was credited with 20% support by a YouGov poll conducted over New Year. However, it must reckon with the disappointing precedent of its attempt to establish itself in state politics in 2018, when promising early polling evaporated during the campaign period and it emerged empty-handed.
I hope to have a preliminary version of an election guide up later today or tomorrow, to which further detail will be added as more candidates are confirmed. On that front, local observer Kevin Bonham is keeping a running tally of all confirmed starters on his site.
Is is reasonable to exprct that the lower quota of 12.5.% could open the gate for a few Greens, one or two Lambies, and one or two independents?
With minority government … or (shock! horror!) some sort of coalition … the most likely outcome?
If the result is unclear, Rockliff could do a Robin Gray and refuse to leave. 😉
(Gray by name, but ‘colourful’ by nature.)
I’m sticking with a Liberal minority as the likely outcome.
ALP and Greens together do not have enough votes to form government without JLN which is too opposed to wokeness to support such an arrangement.
Tasmanian Labor is totally dysfunctional and divided, a Liberal minority government is my pick too
Let’s see some polling! At this stage anything could happen.
MelbourneMammoth @ #3 Wednesday, February 14th, 2024 – 6:14 am
Given the amount of times Lambie has fired up at the Liberals in Canberra, I don’t think JLN should be assumed as a walk up starter to keep the Libs in government.
Democracy Sausage @ #4 Wednesday, February 14th, 2024 – 6:30 am
There is an early election due to a breakdown of relations among Liberal MPs. I don’t think the Libs have the superior claim to unity here.
My pick is a hung parliament because the State Liberals have the weight of a decade of incumbency, but Labor will struggle with federal incumbency and there are many options for voters to vote independent and third party.
In a way its like the 2018 SA election, a long term state Labor Government faced a Liberal opposition weighed down by their federal counterparts. Well organised SA Best pick up a decent slice of the vote. Under single member districts this didn’t matter. Under Hare-Clark with a 12.5% quota its a receipe for a hung parliament.
But a hung parliament is no guarantee of a returned Liberal government.
Democracy Sausage says:
“Tasmanian Labor is totally dysfunctional and divided”
Remind us why Tasmanians are going to the polls more than a year early?
Priceless!
Please pin your colours to the mast before making bold predictions.
I’m an active Green who would rather see the ALP in government than the LNP – at all costs.
Until I see some proper polling and some analysis any prediction is just a wish list.
Hare Clark with 35 members could produce anything – here’s hoping for Green Labor coalition!
“Until I see some proper polling and some analysis any prediction is just a wish list.”
Absolutely, MABWM.
Nevertheless, we might reasonably speculate that the increase from 5 to 7 members per electorate — and consequent lowering of the quota from 16.7% to 12.5% — would tend to favour a larger crossbench of minor parties and independents.
Twelve and a half percent is still a very high bar. For comparison, countries using MMP like Germany and New Zealand usually have a threshold of just five percent, and still only a few parties make it.
As for the likely outcome, can anyone remember the last time an election in Tasmania produced a majority government and the next election produced a majority government for the other side? Has that ever happened?
Remember that this is Tasmania, and a Labor-Greens Coalition is an electoral non-starter, and a Greens BOP could conceivably cause a bit of a constitutional crisis if (as is likely) neither major party wants to govern in a minority that depends on their votes.
I would tip JLN to back Labor over the LNP in a hung parliament situation, though it could obviously go either way. But the smart money would also be on JLN tanking as they did in 2018, especially given that they haven’t sorted out many preselections, and those they have preselected are low-profile.
It’ll be interesting to see how well the Greens do under Rosalie Woodruff after Cassy O’Connor’s controversial tenure. Woodruff has always come across pretty well from the little bit I’ve seen from the mainland and seems sensible, and she’s replacing arguably the worst state leader the Greens have ever had anywhere.
Labor probably needs JLN and Kristie Johnson-like progressive independents to have a good night to govern without an ugly 2010-but-worse-style standoff. Though the odds of said standoff happening if JLN don’t do well seem pretty likely.
EightES says:
“Twelve and a half percent is still a very high bar.”
It’s lower than the 14.3% bar for half-Senate elections, which often elect a few fringe players.
To be fair, that 12.5 percent is after preferences, and exhaustions mean the last candidate in each division can be elected with less than a quota, so an apples-with-apples comparison with MMP should really have the (de facto) threshold at about seven or eight percent.
Even so, not many parties will get there.
Oliver Sutton
There was an academic commentator (political scientist) on the ABC news this morning who thought a minority government highly likely, whichever side won.
He also agreed the odds of more Greens, independents and Jacqie Lambie candidates being elected was quite high.
Thanks, Soc. Those prospects seemed pretty obvious to this layman, but nice to have confirmation from an actual political scientist.
Only a Liberal could see a thread where the Liberal Premier is about to call an election because the Liberal Premier couldn’t manage the House with 13 members vs 11 in the opposition, and then exclaim Labor are the group that are “dysfunctional and divided”.
Tasmanian politics is a basketcase in general – the state Libs are a mess, state Labor is also pretty much a mess, at least until very recently so were the Greens (given that they only have two MPs and the terrible one just quit parliament), and Lambie’s party’s previous attempt at state politics collapsed in a heap. Being dysfunctional and divided isn’t a “winner take all” thing.
White got ousted by her own caucus and then they had to take her back because the only person said caucus saw as an alternative collapsed in disaster. She still deserves to win given the shemozzle of a state the Libs are in, but the before and after of the last election was a complete car crash by any reasonable measure.
Still think its a Liberal win. Tassie seems to be a more Liberal state than ever now.
Can anyone give me a profile of O’Connor and what makes her particularly terrible?
Joeldipops @ #19 Wednesday, February 14th, 2024 – 3:07 pm
We had a mutual friend in the 90s and I met O’Connor a number of times in social settings. She is one of the strongest willed people I have ever met and I had a secret crush on her. A brilliant individual who rose to the top of a political party, and shared powered in government. That’s probably enough for most people to damn her.
March 23 confirmed.
Mostly Interested at 3.16 pm
Meanwhile Dr Bonham has a lot on the voting system, the background to instability and the issues:
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html
He’s got 10 issues, starting with the Stadium fiasco, and ending with his personal favourite:
‘* Real Time Metro Bus Tracking: This is my guide and I can impose an election issue if I want to! It is an absolute joke that in 2024 we still do not have real-time tracking of Metro buses in Tasmania, especially as those bus services still running after recent “temporary adjustments” that removed several services can be unpredictably early or late. Real-time tracking has been on the drawing board for years and is supposedly coming in as part of a new ticketing system. Parliament should be doing everything in its power to ensure the process proceeds quickly and is funded to make the system as good as it possibly can be. I want to be able to load up a map on my mobile phone and watch a bus icon disappear into the underground bus mall the Liberals promised in the 2018 election.’
The second issue, “Stability”, seems to be a contest of superficialities:
‘* Stability: There is a history of minority government avoidance auctions in Tasmanian campaigns, in which leaders threaten to do increasingly gruesome things to their career should their party fail to win a majority. The problem for the Liberals is that after twice winning a majority yet failing to deliver a fully stable full-term government, any further noises in this area will be just like that old song, “won’t you take me back and try me one more time?” Meanwhile Labor is continuing to tell us that it loves being in opposition so much it won’t deal with anyone to get out of it. (Deals with the Greens have in the past been electoral poison, but for instance the Lambie Network?) . If past elections are any guide expect any number of potential crossbenchers to explain how they will use the balance of power sensibly and responsibly, before issuing mid-campaign threats to bring down governments that have never existed.’
Those who want reliable polling in Tassie are on a fairly strict diet:
‘The Polling
Polling in Tasmania is scarce. At the start of the campaign the most recent EMRS poll had the Government on 39%, Labor 29%, Greens 12% and unnamed others 19%. The Government had been as low as 33% after the departure of Tucker and Alexander but had largely recovered to its previous support level.
A YouGov poll had Liberal 31 Labor 27 Greens 15 IND 7 and Lambie Network an improbable 20.
Commissioned uComms polls by the Australia Institute Tasmania are seen now and then but the pollster was very unreliable at the 2021 election with a 7.4% underestimate of the Liberal Party primary. No explanation for this failure has been presented by uComms.’
NB: that pollster was the one responsible for Teal seat polling that got excitement on the open thread.
There’s much more, and more to come over the next 5 weeks, but Dr Bonham likes the gaffes most:
‘* Defending against the charge that the Liberals have a problem with women, their sole remaining female lower house MP Madeleine Ogilvie gave an interview that used the word “I” nine times in four sentences starting with “I’m a big fan of women and, you know, I am one”. If you think that sounds silly wait til you see the video.’
Ms Ogilvie is a Labor rat, from an old Labor family. The 28th Premier, Albert Ogilvie, lasted 5 years.
See also the next section:
‘Scratched/Disendorsed Candidates Tally:
Since Election Called: 0 (watch this space)
Before Election Called: 3 (Labor 2 Liberal 1)’
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html
Rocky says they will only govern quote”alone or not at all”.
He thinks his fighting bullwinkle.
This type of arrogance to the electorate usually means a hung parliament in reality meaning no liberal can negotiate and a labor government.
IMO Cassy O’Connor is a poor public speaker, but a nice person and a sensible negotiator in the parliamentary context. I prefer her to her partner (or is he her husband nowadays?) Nick McKim, who I’ve always found to be rather smarmy and smug: in keeping with the ponytailed advertising agent that he used to be. Although, to be fair, she has always seemed to be happy with him and I’m told that he has been terrific with her four kids from her first marriage.
Mostly Interested, if I was ever going to have a crush on a Tasmanian Greens politician, I reckon it would be the graceful hippyish Rosalie rather than the more dour Cassy, but to each their own.
Pied Piper at 4.10 pm
At the election Rockliff will be the shortest serving modern Liberal Premier of Tassie. See the list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_premiers_of_Tasmania_by_time_in_office
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html 2024 Tasmanian State Election Guide Main Page
(Some parts still under heavy construction)
EightES:
“As for the likely outcome, can anyone remember the last time an election in Tasmania produced a majority government and the next election produced a majority government for the other side? Has that ever happened?”
This happened once ever so far. Labor won 20/35 seats in 1979 and the Liberals won 19/35 in 1982. However Labor had lost its majority during the term; it lost one seat in a by-election and then two when Premier Doug Lowe was rolled and moved to the crossbench with a colleague, causing the government to collapse.
Unfortunately a lot of the commentary that comes out of Tasmania from academics and the like is what I call Hung Parliament Club stuff – biased in favour of minority parliaments. Especially there have been some suggestions that the Governor should have/could have sent the Premier back to the House to test his confidence on the floor that completely misunderstand how confidence operates and that confidence and workability are different.
We will get a lot of cheerleading for both majority and minority governments but the reality here is that many of both types have been unstable.
KB: “We will get a lot of cheerleading for both majority and minority governments but the reality here is that many of both types have been unstable.”
Yep. The argument that majority government is always more stable has been seriously damaged by events of the last 12 months or so. But I’m not quite sure whom the electorate thinks is the most to blame for that.
Even if they think Rockliff is to blame, Labor is still incredibly weak and seemingly has no prospect whatsoever of winning majority government. So I’m anticipating larger than usual votes for independents and minor party candidates.
O’Connor was always a bit prone to controversy about wacky stuff that was unpopular with the sort of actual voters who tend to consider voting Greens, as opposed to the usual “water is wet” attacks on the party.
There were a couple of really bizarre incidents, such as wading into the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard stuff in favour of Depp and her cooked-intensity anti-China stuff that put her way to the right of Labor and at some points being reasonably belted by both state Labor and Liberal parties for coming out with bigoted right-wing nonsense. She also had a tendency to go off a bit half-cocked a bit even when she had a point, like calling Gutwein’s decision to open the borders as COVID was winding down “eugenics at work”.
Woodruff always came across as considerable more measured and reasonable, and I’m certainly never seen Woodruff come out with something that made me think “you absolute buffoon” – which I certainly did about O’Connor at times.
Pied Paper: Rebecca White is being equally belligerent about governing in majority or not at all, so while in any other state or federally that would probably be true, it’s not going to be the case here. It’s going to be fascinating to see what happens in the very likely event that they wind up with neither major party being able to form a majority and both major party leaders having categorically ruled out governing in minority.
MB, I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll.
Also keep an eye on Andrew Wilkie, scuttlebutt is he may throw his hat into the ring. The outcome of that is unclear, he may knock the incumbent indi out of Clarke or he may take a seat off Labor. Either way if he enters the race and wins he’d make a good speaker.
Why would Wilkie run when he’s already backing an independent (and has another independent MP that he’s previously backed in other campaigns)? He’d hand his federal seat to the major parties and risk just unseating a like-minded state independent.
Because he’s sick of the travel and Canberra.
Elise Archer is running as an indie: https://www.themercury.com.au/news/tasmania/former-mp-elise-archer-will-run-in-clark-in-the-state-election/news-story/f6c22dd76b82b6cec13b5e3e95815ae0
Typical Murdoch newspaper lumping the campaign launch of Labor and the Greens into a single article. Like they dont have enough bytes to have it on two separate pages. This of course plays in to the trope that you vote Labor you get Green. To be fair it is what Labor did with the Nats at the last election, vote Scott get Barnaby.
https://archive.md/DrswB
The Archer story in archive https://archive.md/OCyYt
You cant read the BTL comments on the archived pages, but the Mercury puts the same stories up on their Facebook page where you can see comments. Not a lot of love for Archer.
I was wondering about the ex-AG’s strategy coming back as an independent, in my mind the solid play would have been to resign from the party but stay in parliament like the other ex-Libs to maintain a high profile. But I thought about it this morning, maybe she didnt want to be tagged with the traitor label. I dont think it would have mattered either way. She did get the top vote count for the Libs in Clark last election, so she might have a chance. But that 7th seat is getting very very crowded, and perhaps why the JLN didnt put up candidates in Clark.
Interested to know what Tassie posters think about Clare Glade-Wright’s chances as an indie in Franklin.
As deputy mayor at Kingborough, she should have some pre-exisiting profile?
Elise Archer is now out. Winner of the Mal Meninga Award 2024
The Mercury – https://archive.md/PlEr0
List of current candidates as of today
https://archive.md/EKM4l
Isle of Rocks @ #37 Thursday, February 15th, 2024 – 1:48 pm
The seat of Franklin’s geographical distribution and the LGAs it covers would impact her name recognition. About a third of Franklin covers the LGA she was deputy mayor for. Some people in Kingborough would know her name, zero in Clarence and Huon valley would know of her.
I follow politics very closely – and I can name our 3 ward representatives, but only because they have been the political rump here for 10-24 years. One a loud mouth anti-pedo campaigner who doth protest too much, one a gormless ALP hack and the third a denying MAGA dude – but everyone has forgotten that. I have no idea who the mayor is.
I’m not sure deputy mayor gets you much.
I really want the Greens too get up…..
This will definitely be a
Hung parliament ..it is
Possible there can be a
Cross bench in the range of 13 to 15 out of
35.
As others have mentioned Wilkie will
Stay in federal parliament
Glade-Wright has been running for a long time and I think working pretty hard, should poll significantly, problem is if you say 3 Lib 2 Labor Woodruff and O’Byrne then there isn’t a seat for her so who in that lot does she beat?
There’s a fair bit of interest in teal-style campaigns here from political junkies and some journalists but I don’t know if there’s all that much appetite for them among voters.
Thanks for all the responses on my Glade-Wright question.
For an outside observer CGW in 2024 has shades of Kristy Johnson in Clark 2021 and even Wilkie in Denision 2010, so I thought she might be in the mix to challenge to win a seat. However I was keen for the insight of locals.
Kevin Bonham,
Thanks for the reply (which I only just got around to reading).
My observations on minority governments, generally with an occasional exception, are as follows.
If the government believes it will lose an election, it will hang on as long as decently possible, usually to full term (or nearly).
If, on the other hand, the polls give the governing party a winning lead, it will call an election early and blame the crossbench for causing instability.
Note this from Dr Bonham:
“On the Labor side there is nothing in pre-campaign polling to suggest the party will get more than three anywhere, and it would seem to be doing well to even get five threes. However, voting intention can change quickly in Tasmania.”
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2024/02/2024-tasmanian-state-election-guide.html
One indication of such a potential change is the extent to which the stadium fiasco is the major issue.
Probably, the more attention the stadium fiasco gets, the stronger the changes of a Labor resurgence.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-16/macquarie-point-stadium-dominates-election-campaign-day-one/103473124
I concur that Glade-Wright is unlikely to make it. But she seems to be relatively young, and the campaign will enable her to build up her profile a bit more and that will perhaps help her in her quest to become Mayor of Kingborough, and beyond that establish a career for herself in state politics.
Dr Doolittle: “Probably, the more attention the stadium fiasco gets, the stronger the changes of a Labor resurgence.”
There is, of course, the small problem that Albo and Federal Labor are pretty strong supporters of the stadium.
I think the issue is going to present more hassles for Labor than benefits. White will get asked lots of difficult questions about the issue by the media, as will any Federal figure who ventures down here. She will try to deflect attention towards other issues, and clear the way for other opponents of the stadium to argue it out with Rockliff.
meher baba at 5.29 pm
Only a small problem because Tassie voters know it’s a state election, and Rockliff is responsible for it.
The Libs, from day 1 of the campaign, have desperately wanted to shift attention from the stadium.
You can see why. It is the one issue that could deliver a lot of voters to Labor. Note that White has only to appear better than Rockliff, and the preferred Premier stats are already quite close.
Labor doesn’t need to have a definite solution, they just need to campaign on having a proper process. It was problems with the process, as much as the outcome, that led to broad public dissatisfaction.
White will emphasis the strong likelihood of cost overruns with the stadium proposal. That is enough to potentially resonate with voters because it then links the stadium issue to quality of public services.
Didn’t the earlier polling on the stadium show a clear majority of people around Hobart opposed?
Why would people in Lyons, Bass and Braddon support such a white elephant? Are there any credible independents standing in Lyons? Labor’s vote might improve there courtesy of White.
Is Lambie opposed to the stadium? If so, she might reinforce it as an issue, which will benefit Labor.
Note that Dr Bonham said the timing of the election doesn’t suit Rockliff. He needed an early election but the campaign (35 days) is the length of a usual federal election, so a little longer than normal.