Tasmanians decide today if they can fix their political mess. Here’s what you need to know
Tasmania’s election is the fourth in seven years, and no matter who wins, there will be no place for triumphalism in the political wreckage
The 19 July Tasmanian election is the state’s fourth in seven years, and comes just 16 months after the last poll, making it the shortest gap between elections in an Australian state or territory since 1957.
Here’s what you need to know.
How did we get here?
The parliament passed a no confidence motion in the Liberal premier, Jeremy Rockliff, over the spiralling state of the budget and the bungled management of new Spirit of Tasmania ferries. It wasn’t named in the motion moved by the Labor leader Dean Winter, but the Greens and some independents also cited Rockliff’s divisive plan to fund a new AFL stadium on the Hobart waterfront.
Winter declared he would not entertain the possibility of a confidence deal with the Greens while the Liberals decided they did maintain confidence in Rockliff and wouldn’t replace him.
With no one able or willing to lead the state, the governor, Barbara Baker, agreed to a snap election that no one was prepared for and nearly everyone said shouldn’t be happening.
A relatively low-energy winter campaign followed, with few big spending commitments and only a couple of substantial new policies.
What will happen?
The few available polls agree on one thing: the state is headed for another parliament in which no party has a majority of seats.
The Liberals are seeking a fifth straight term in power, and go into the election with 14 out of 35 lower house seats. If the polls are correct, they may again have the largest share of the vote. A YouGov poll of 931 voters released late on Friday had the Liberals on a primary vote of 31% and Labor on 30%. An aggregate of recent polls compiled by psephologist Kevin Bonham put the Liberals on 34.1% and Labor 30.7%.
Translating this into an accurate estimate of seats under Tasmania’s Hare-Clark system is challenging. The state has five multi-member seats – Bass, Braddon, Clark, Franklin and Lyons – and elects seven MPs in each of them. It could take days, if not weeks, to determine who wins the sixth and seventh seat in some electorates.
The general expectation based is that the Liberals could claim between 12 and 14 seats, and Labor between its current total of 10 and 12. The only certainty is that whoever leads the next government will need to work more effectively with minor party and independent MPs than in the recent past to make parliament work. YouGov suggested non-major parties candidates could win 39% of the vote – a record if it happens – with the Greens under leader Rosalie Woodruff on 16% and independents 20%.
What happened in the campaign?
Neither major party have explained in detail how they would address what some Liberal supporters described as the worst budget they have seen, with structural issues unaddressed and debt projected to rise to $13bn by 2027-28.
Rockliff’s big pledge was to drop a plan to consider privatising some public agencies and instead promise a new one: TasInsure. He says it would offer coverage for home and contents, small businesses and events, and save people hundreds of dollars a year. He did not explain how it would operate, or how the government would underwrite the potentially massive cost of a major disaster.
Labor focused on the significant failures of the state’s health system. Winter promised to resign as premier if did not create 10 “TassieDoc” publicly funded GP clinics in two years. Sceptics wondered where the GPs would come from.
The Greens and several prominent independent candidates ran on their opposition to the highly contentious plan to build a roofed football stadium at Macquarie Point at a cost that could balloon beyond $1bn. The stadium has the backing of both major parties, and the AFL maintains it must be built if the Tasmania Devils, a long-promised new club, is to enter the national competition in 2028.
Polls suggest most Tasmanians oppose the stadium, but overwhelmingly want a team – a scenario that the crossbench largely backs, but is not on offer.
The Greens and some independents, including Kristie Johnston in Clark and Peter George in Franklin, oppose the state’s salmon farming industry and native forestry logging. The major parties have been more or less united in rejecting this and backing “traditional industries”.
The election campaign has seen the resurrection of former federal MPs as state candidates. Liberals Bridget Archer and Gavin Pearce – once sharp opponents within the party – and Labor’s Brian Mitchell are considered decent chances to get elected, possibly at the expense of sitting MPs from their own parties. Most political watchers believe Peter George, an ex-journalist turned anti-salmon farming campaigner and federal candidate who is backed by campaign funders Climate 200, will join the crossbench.
How – and when – will this be resolved?
It is unlikely the result will be clear on Saturday. There have been a record number of pre-poll votes and six out of 15 voting centres will not start counting these until Sunday. Postal votes will not be counted until the second half of next week.
Working out who might form government is made more challenging by the major parties’ attitude to the Greens, who go into the election with five seats and are expected to roughly hold their position in holding the balance of power.
Winter has stressed he would not do a deal with, or offer concessions to, the Greens as he was at odds with them on logging, salmon farming, mining and energy. Rockliff has gone further, pledging to not deal with the Greens or lead a government that relied on them for confidence. Neither major party released an environment or climate change policy.
The last parliament had six other crossbenchers and many are expected to be returned. Winter has said he would be willing to work with “sensible independents that will work with a Labor government agenda”.
Rockliff has described some independents – David O’Byrne, a former Labor leader who supports the stadium, and ex-Jacqui Lambie Network MP Rebekah Pentland – as constructive, but argued others were “destructive left-wing radicals” who were “even more dangerous than the Greens”.
Most of the expected crossbench leans progressive. Despite the Liberals’ slight ascendancy in the polls, and the paper-thin difference between the major parties on some high-profile issues, observers believe Labor may be better positioned to form government if the seat count is close.
The YouGov poll found a majority of Tasmanians would favour this, with 55% preferring Winter over Rockliff if there was no clear winner and they were forced to choose. But YouGov’s director of public data, Paul Smith, said there was little enthusiasm for either potential premier. Both had negative satisfaction ratings.
Smith said it suggested voters would “somewhat reluctantly” prefer a Labor premier. “I think there was a mood for change, but Labor has not caught that wind,” he said.
The underlying message may be that there will be no place for triumphalism whatever the result, and that the goal must be making parliament work for the state. And, in Smith’s words, this should be the “last state election where the major parties continue to believe that Tasmanians will give them a majority government”.
“The data that tells us what people think – and the electoral system – keeps saying otherwise,” he said. “How many times does the non-major party vote have to increase for people to get the message?”