2018 Tasmanian Election Preview

Updated

After four years securely in government, Tasmanian Liberal Premier Will Hodgman goes to the polls on 3 March with his government's majority on the line.

In 2014 Hodgman became only the fifth Liberal to serve as Tasmanian Premier and only the third to do so leading a majority government. In 2018 he is campaigning to become only the second Liberal Premier re-elected leading a majority government.

The Liberal Party holds 15 of the 25 seats in the House of Assembly and is the only party that can realistically hope to form majority government. The loss of only three seats would be enough to produce another period of minority government. Polls indicate the government will lose at least two of those three seats.

The Hodgman government faces four scenarios after 3 March. The first is the Premier's preferred result – the Liberal Party is re-elected in majority.

The second is the government loses its majority but finishes with more seats than Labor. Would Hodgman try to stay on as Premier, or would there be a repeat of 1996 election when Ray Groom resigned and a new Liberal Premier took office in minority? Or despite denials, would Labor and the Greens co-operate to defeat and replace the government?

The third scenario is that the Liberal Party finishes with the same number of seats as Labor, or less likely fewer seats, but Labor finishes short of a majority. The Premier could argue the Liberal Party had lost its mandate to govern and ask the opposition be appointed to government. Yet the precedent of 2010 stands when Governor Peter Underwood declined Labor Premier David Bartlett's attempt to pass the reins of government to Will Hodgman in similar circumstances.

The fourth and least likely scenario is that the Labor Party wins a majority in its own right. Despite the surge in Labor support since Rebecca White replaced Bryan Green as Leader, the vagaries of Tasmania's proportional Hare-Clark electoral system makes it highly unlikely that Labor can go from its current seven to 13 seats and form majority government.

If the Liberal Party returns as a minority government, Tasmanian politics could see a repeat of previous hung parliaments where a minority government attempts to govern for as long as possible before calling another election.

The state's last four periods of minority government have all been followed by elections with big swings that transferred the opposition to majority government.

Tasmanian Liberal Premiers - a Rare Breed

The Liberal Party has contested 21 Tasmanian elections, but only six of those elections produced Liberal governments, and only four produced majority Liberal governments.

Angus Bethune became Tasmania's first Liberal Premier in 1969, his minority government lasting until 1972 when the mysterious resignation of Deputy Premier and sole Centre Party member Kevin Lyons brought the government down.

Robin Gray became the Liberal Party's second Premier and first majority Premier in 1983. With the Labor Party still suffering splits in its base vote over the Franklin Dam issue, the 1986 election resulted in Gray becoming the only Liberal Premier re-elected to majority government.

Gray lost his majority in 1989, allowing Labor's Michael Field to form the state's first minority government with Green backing. It was an unhappy experiment, producing an early election in 1992 when Ray Groom became Tasmania's second majority Liberal Premier.

Groom's government lost its majority at the 1996 election and Groom resigned to honour his promise not to govern in minority. Labor declined to negotiate with the Greens, resulting in Tony Rundle forming a minority Liberal government.

Rundle's minority government ended at an early election 1998 when Labor under new Leader Jim Bacon won a majority. A possible Green balance of power was short-circuited by the major parties reducing the size of the House of Assembly from 35 to 25 seats.

The Labor Party was to govern for 16 years after 1998, for most of its last four years in coalition with the Greens. It was a period in office only matched in recent decades by the last Labor government in NSW. And as with their NSW brethren in 2011, 16 years in office for Tasmanian Labor ended in savage defeat.

In 2018 Will Hodgman will be the first Tasmanian Premier since Jim Bacon to last a full term and face re-election. Hodgman's three Labor predecessors came to office mid-term, Paul Lennon leading Labor to majority re-election in 2006, David Bartlett returning Labor to minority government with the Greens in 2010, and Lara Giddings left leading Labor to defeat in 2014.

The 2010 and 2014 Elections

The 2010 election produced political stalemate, both the Labor and Liberal Parties falling short of 40% vote share and electing 10 members. Support for the Greens rose to a record 21.6%, electing five members for the first time since the House of Assembly was reduced to 25 members in 1998.

The Labor Party was the clear loser of the 2010 election, shedding a quarter of its vote and four of its 14 members. Three seats were lost to the Liberal Party and one to the Greens.

If the election's loser was clear, determining the winner was more problematic. Around 7% of Labor's lost votes drifted right to the Liberal Party, but another 5% went left to the Greens. The new House of Assembly was a perfect deadlock, 10 Labor, 10 Liberal and five Greens.

Before the 2010 election, Premier David Bartlett had indicated that Labor would give up office if the Liberal Party won more seats. After the election Bartlett attempted to hand back his commission as Premier and advised Governor Peter Underwood to appoint Will Hodgman as Premier.

Bartlett's advice was viewed as being constitutionally improper. The Governor would have appointed a new Liberal government with no guarantee it could survive the first parliamentary sitting. The Liberal Party and Greens did not discuss government formation, and Labor declined to offer the Liberal Party any minimum period of support. The Governor took the constitutionally proper course of re-commissioning Bartlett and leaving the House of Assembly to resolve if a change of government should occur.

Bartlett then negotiated a governing agreement with the Greens. For the first time at state level, Greens were given Cabinet responsibility, with first Nick McKim and later Cassy O'Connor joining Cabinet. The remaining three Green members generally supported the new government, though Bass Greens MP Kim Booth took a consistently more critical approach to the new government.

After Bartlett resigned as Premier in January 2011, Lara Giddings continued with the Labor-Green government. There was no repeat of the instability that dogged previous balance of power parliaments, but the continuation of Labor in office after its chequered record between 2006 and 2010 damaged the standing of both Labor and the Greens. The return of tougher economic times, in parallel with the rise and decline of the Gillard government, added to Labor and Green woes at the 2014 election.

The 2010-2014 parliament provided a stable Labor-Green coalition government. But for many Liberal and Labor voters, the Greens remained the lightning rod for political discontent. In a bid to distance Labor from the Greens, Premier Giddings sacked her Green ministers on the cusp of the 2014 election and ruled out any future Labor government including Green ministers.

The Greens may have been a significant player in Tasmanian politics for more than three decades, but the median Tasmanian voters that change and decide elections lie closer to the Labor and Liberal Parties than the Greens. Past elections have seen large rises and falls in Labor and Liberal support as median voters shift to the major party most likely to achieve majority government. When support for the major parties is roughly equal, the three-party nature of Tasmanian electoral politics delivers the balance of power to the Greens.

In 2010 the pendulum moved savagely against Labor, but not far enough to deliver the Liberals government. In 2014 the pendulum continued its rightward path, delivering a huge victory to the Liberal Party. Liberal support almost doubled Labor's though it did not reach the heights of 1986 or 1992. Labor's support plunged below its previous record low on the defeat of the Field government in 1992.

2014 Tasmanian Election

Votes

% Votes

Swing Seats

Won 167,051 51.22 +12.23 15 89,130 27.33 -9.55 7 45,098 13.83 -7.78 3 16,198 4.97 +4.97 .. 2,655 0.81 +0.81 .. 1,215 0.37 +0.37 .. 664 0.20 +0.20 .. 4,152 1.27 -1.05 .. 326,163 95.20 25 16,432 4.80 +0.35 342,595 93.49 -0.36 366,442

The Greens lost sitting members in Braddon and Lyons, Labor its second seats in Bass, Braddon, and Franklin, the Liberals gaining all five including the unexpected feat of winning four of Braddon's five seats. The table below shows the changes in representation including two retiring members.

Seats Changing Party - 2014 Tasmanian Election

The Tasmanian Electoral System

As one of the original states, Section 24 of the Commonwealth Constitution guarantees Tasmania five seats in the House of Representatives. Since 1909 Tasmania has used these five seats as multi-member electorates to elect its state lower house, the House of Assembly. Since 1998, each electorate has returned five members elected using the Hare-Clark electoral system, a form of proportional representation based on preferential voting. Hare-Clark is similar to the Senate's electoral system, except preferences must be numbered for candidates rather than parties.

Two of the five electorates are based in the state's north - Bass covering Launceston and the north-east coast, and Braddon including Devonport, Ulverstone, Burnie and the north-west and west coasts. Two seats are Hobart based, Denison in central Hobart on the western shore of the Derwent River, and Franklin covering the city's eastern shore as well as areas south of Hobart, including Kingston and the Huon valley. Lyons covers the rest of the state and is the most rural and economically diverse electorate, taking in the east coast plus the northern and southern midlands.

Under the current system of representation, the best any party can normally hope for is winning three of the five seats in an electorate. In 2014 the Liberal Party surprised by winning four of the five seats in Braddon. If a party can win three seats in three electorates and two in the remaining electorates, it will have 13 seats in the House of Assembly, a majority of one. Winning three seats in all five electorates gives a party 15 seats and a majority of 5, a landslide in Tasmanian politics.

Labor was elected to office in 1998 after the size of the House of Assembly was reduced from 35 to 25 members, five members elected per electorate instead of seven. This lifted the quota for election from 12.5% to 16.7%, making it harder for the Greens to win the final seat in each electorate and in theory making it easier for one of the major parties to win a majority. The change certainly had that impact in 1998, delivering Labor majority government where under the former 35-member Assembly the Greens would have retained the balance of power.

After being reduced to a single seat in 1998, Green support has since recovered. The Greens won four seats in both 2002 and 2006, though the collapse in Liberal support meant the Greens did not win the balance of power. It was not until the Labor vote fell further in 2010 that the Greens won the balance of power for a third time.

The balance of power parliaments elected in 1989 and 1996 did not last a full-term. The 2010 election produced another hung parliament, but rather than govern in minority, Labor chose to forge an agreement producing a Labor-Green majority government that lasted nearly four years. Despite the lack of crisis surrounding this experiment in coalition government, the outcome was the same as in previous hung parliaments – the 2014 election delivering majority government to the opposition.

The Hodgman Government's First Term

The Liberal Party's landslide victory was followed by an extended honeymoon for the government. Improved economic conditions did not require savage pruning of government services, and the election left the Labor Party and Greens significantly weakened.

Hodgman as Premier headed a nine member Cabinet, with Deputy Premier Jeremy Rockliff as Minister for Education; Vanessa Goodwin MLC Attorney-General, Minister for Justice and Corrections; Peter Gutwein Treasurer and Minister for Planning and Local Government; Michael Ferguson Minister for Health; Matthew Groom Minister for Energy, Environment, National Parks and Heritage; Rene Hidding Minister for Police and Infrastructure; Jacquie Petrusma Minister for Human Services and Paul Harriss Minister for Resources.

Goodwin, Groom and Harriss have departed the ministry since 2014 for different reasons. Elise Archer as Minister for Corrections, Justice, the Arts, Environment and Parks, and Guy Barnett as Minister for Building and Construction, Energy and Resources have joined a ministry reduced by one.

Lara Giddings resigned as Labor Leader after the election defeat and was succeeded by veteran Braddon MP Bryan Green, Michelle O'Byrne becoming Deputy Leader. The loss of David O'Byrne and Brian Wightman weakened the caucus, and the replacement of Michael Polley by David Llewellyn in Lyons added little to the Opposition's fire power. Despite some urgings, Giddings did not resign to allow David O'Byrne an early path back to parliament in Franklin.

The Greens were weakened by the loss of two MPs at the election, and further weakened by retirements in 2015. Kim Booth took over from Nick McKim as parliamentary leader, but resigned May 2015, Cassy O'Connor taking over as Leader and Andrea Dawkins as MP for Bass on countback. Nick McKim resigned in August 2015 to replace Christine Milne in the Senate, replaced on countback in Franklin by Rosalie Woodruffe.

The new government had problems meeting some of its election promises. Attempts to change the World Heritage Listing over parts of the south-west and undo the Tasmanian Forest Agreement met with resistance from the signatories. Toughened laws against forest protests and related changes to defamation laws allowing corporations to sue individuals met opposition and constitutional problems. The financial collapse of Gunns left little scope for reviving the woodchip industry. Another law and order policy to end suspended prison sentences ran into implementation problems, but the government met its promise to increase police numbers. Attempts to allow more tourism developments in national parks met the usual resistance.

The major domestic problem to strike the government concerned power supplies. Low rain falls through 2015 left the state's hydro-storage dams well down on normal levels, with suggestions too much water had been used to generate power for sale to the mainland. The problem became a crisis in December 2015 when the Basslink power cable under Bass Strait failed. As the drought continued into 2016 and the Basslink failure remained unresolved, the state was forced to bring the Bell Bay gas power station out of mothballs and import diesel generators. The drought eventually broke in early June, perversely causing floods in the north of the state, and Basslink was also repaired in June 2016 as the power crisis subsided.

The resignation of Paul Harris as Resources Minister and member for Franklin caused a ministerial re-shuffle. Nic Street was elected at a re-count, but the appointment of Braddon MP Adam Brooks to cabinet did not prove successful. His close association with the mining industry caused him to resign over conflict of interest issues. He was eventually replaced by Lyons MP and former Senator Guy Barnett. May 2016 saw Labor's Josh Willie win the Legislative Council seat of Elwick from Labor-leaning independent Adriana Taylor.

In other policy areas, Human Services Minister Jacquie Petrusma faced several high profile issues in the child welfare system. There were also disputes over intensive salmon farming, with locals and environmentalists on one side and producers on the other. Disputes between producers also made the issue more difficult for the government to manage.

The Federal election result on 2 July 2016 was bad for the Tasmanian Liberal Party. The party lost the three lower house seats it had gained in 2013, and won only four of the 12 double dissolution Senate seats. Internal wrangling over pre-selection resulted in the state's only Federal Minister, Richard Colbeck, being defeated after demotion to number five on the Liberal Senate ticket.

Looking at the government's poll ratings below, the impact of Federal politics is clear. Through the first year of the Hodgman government, Liberal support declined in line with the federal Coalition's following the Abbott government's first budget in May 2014. The state government received a matching boost in support following Malcolm Turnbull's appointment as Prime Minister, support then following the Turnbull government's slow poll decline through to the July federal election.

Source: Enterprise Marketing and Research Services (EMRS)

(Campaign Update: The above graph now includes the final EMRS poll released on Tuesday 27 February. It revealed a big swing back to the Liberal Party and suggesting the Hodgman government government could retain its majority. The figures were similar to a ReachTEL poll published in the Hobert Mercury on Saturday 24 February.)

In May 2017 Labor's Sarah Lovell gained the Legislative Council seat of Rumney from independent and former Liberal Tony Mulder. In April 2017, Attorney-General Vanessa Goodwin was forced to retire after being diagnosed with terminal brain tumours. Matthew Groom took over as Attorney-General, but resigned from Cabinet in September 2017 after announcing he would not contest the 2018 election. Elise Archer was elevated to cabinet in another re-shuffle. Following Goodwin's October resignation from Parliament, Labor's Jo Siejka won Goodwin's Legislative Council seat of Pembroke, lifting Labor to four seats in the Legislative Council.

The most significant event of 2017 occurred in March when Bryan Green resigned as Labor Leader. It followed the release of an EMRS poll where Hodgman led Green 57% to 20% as preferred Premier. Green was replaced as Leader by 34 year-old Rebecca White, and as MHA for Braddon by agricultural scientists Shane Broad.

At the 2010 election White was elected as a member for Lyons in a major upset, defeating long-serving Labor MP David Llewellyn and fellow MP Heather Butler. White had run her own campaign focussed on 'renewal', and attracted attention with a television advertisement where she swept a Polly Waffle wrapper into a bin, an unsubtle dig using a nickname for fellow Lyons Labor MP Michael Polley.

White gave birth to her first child in November 2017, and her election as Labor Leader four months later caused an immediate shift in opinion polls. The graph below of EMRS preferred premier ratings show her doubling Bryan Green's final rating and polling ahead of Will Hodgman in two later polls.

Source: Enterprise Marketing and Research Services (EMRS)

(Campaign Update: The above graph now includes the final EMRS poll released on Tuesday 27 February, showing Will Hodgman regaining the lead as Preferred Premier. Rebecca White's surge in 2017 has been reversed by the election campaign..

While White won the beauty contest as preferred Premier, the boost in Labor vote was less impressive. It is unusual in state politics for an Opposition Leader to out-rate a Premier. White's initial ratings may be a sugar-hit that subsides under the greater scrutiny of an election campaign.)

White has had eight years in parliament, a brief stint in the ministry and less than a year as opposition leader. She will be 35 by election day, a year younger than Will Hodgman when he became Liberal Leader in 2006. Rebecca White faces an opponent with 16 years in Parliament, 12 years as party leader and eight as Opposition leader before his current four years as Premier. And Will Hodgman carries a famous name in Tasmania politics through four generations, his father, uncle, grandfather and grandfather's uncle all having been significant players in the state's politics.

Where the 2018 election will be decided

The recent decline in government poll support increases prospects of the government losing its majority. The government has 15 seats. The loss of two seats would leave the government with 13 seats and a one seat majority. The loss of a third seat would produce minority government.

The government looks certain to lose a seat in the north-west seat of Braddon. In 2014 the Liberal party won four of the five seats, the first time a party had done so since five member seats were introduced. The Liberal party polled 58.8% of the vote, 3.53 quotas, with the even split of vote between candidates allowing the Liberal party to grab the fourth seat. Fourth Liberal Joan Rylah will struggle to win re-election, with one of Labor's candidates favoured to gain the seat. Braddon has been the hardest electorate for the Greens to win a seat and the Jacqui Lambie Network may poll strongly in the region.

In Franklin at the 2014 election, Will Hodgman polled more than two quotas in his own right and more than two-thirds of the Liberal vote. Jacquie Petrusma and Paul Harriss polled well and were elected, but Harriss has since retired to be replaced by Nic Street at a re-count. Street's seat is highly likely to be won by Labor. Former Labor Premier Lara Giddings is retiring in 2018, which means former MHA David O'Byrne will return to the Assembly, along with a second Labor member. The Greens polled a quota in 2014 and Rosalie Woodruffe should be returned, but she was originally elected at a re-count and may not have the personal vote of the man she replaced, Nick McKim.

Liberal prospects of majority government will then come down to Lyons. The Liberal party polled 51.9% in 2014, 3.12 quotas, with Rene Hidding, Guy Barnett and Mark Shelton polling strongly and easily elected. The conservative vote may be split with the Jacqui Lambie Network nominating Glamorgan Spring Bay Mayor Michael Kent. The high profile of Labor Leader Rebecca White will see her win the majority of Labor's vote, but with David Llewellyn retiring, will the remaining Labor candidates bring enough to the pool of Labor votes to allow the party to win a third seat?

Bass is probably stronger for the Liberal Party than Lyons, with ministers Michael Ferguson and Peter Gutwein certain of re-election, leaving Sarah Courtney battling to hold the third Liberal seat. Labor's Michelle O'Byrne will be re-elected, but Andrea Dawkins faces her first election leading the Greens ticket following the retirement of Kim Booth. If Labor is to elect a second MP, the question is whether it will be at the expense of the Greens or the third Liberal.

Denison was the only seat where the Liberal party did not elect three members in 2014. The party will be disadvantaged by the retirement of Matthew Groom, its highest polling candidate in 2014. The party has a high profile recruit in Hobart Lord Mayor Sue Hickey. Greens Leader Cassy O'Connor will be re-elected, as will Labor's Scott Bacon, but the second Labor MHA Madeleine Ogilvie will be challenged by high profile Labor recruits Tim Cox and Ella Haddad,

(You can find out more about the hinge seats that will decide the election here.)

Tasmania's History of Labor Dominance

The Labor Party governed Tasmania for 45 of the 48 years between 1934 and 1982, a record that surpasses the party's performance in any other state. Labor's dominance was built on decades of commitment to hydro-industrialization. But beginning with protests over the flooding of Lake Pedder in the early 1970s, the commitment of precious capital works funds to allow the Hydro Electric Commission (HEC) to dam rivers began to be questioned.

The last victory in Labor's golden era was in 1979, when Premier Doug Lowe won a landslide victory with 20 of the 35 seats in the House of Assembly. Over the next three years his government fell apart. Battles following on from the expulsion of Brian Harradine increased factionalism within the party, and there was a growing divide between the party's organisational and Parliamentary wings.

The death knell for the Lowe government was its questioning of the HEC's proposal to dam the Franklin River. Rather than the HEC's Gordon-below-Franklin dam, Lowe proposed the Gordon-above-Olga alternative, along with an energy conservation program. The Legislative Council insisted the HEC's Franklin Dam be built, and with significant opposition within the Labor Party, the government fractured. Lowe was dumped as Premier, replaced by Harry Holgate, on 11 November 1981, just a day after Robin Gray had been elected new Leader of the Liberal Party. With Lowe and one other Labor member resigning from the party, Holgate prorogued Parliament while a referendum on which dam to build was conducted. There was no clear result, with one-third of the electorate opposing any dam by writing "No Dams" on the ballot paper. As soon as the Parliament met again, the government was defeated. In May 1982, Gray led the Liberal Party to majority government for the first time in its history.

As the graph below of Tasmanian election results since 1972 shows, Labor's vote nose-dived in 1982 and sank further over the next decade. It was only in the mid-1990s that Labor's stocks finally turned around, but by then a third force had arrived on the Tasmanian political scene.

The Rise of Green Politics

The immediate beneficiary of the Labor Party's split was the Liberal Party, winning over a significant part of Labor's blue-collar support base by adopting uncritical support for the HEC's hydro-industrialization schemes. Having rejected Malcolm Fraser's generous offer to compensate the state in exchange for saving the Franklin, Gray embarked on building the dam. But the Federal Labor Party promised to use the external affairs power to stop the dam being built. 'No dams' protesters dogged the 1983 Federal election campaign at which the Hawke government was elected. Labor may have swept the rest of Australia, but Tasmania swung strongly against Labor.

Later that year the High Court ruled in the Commonwealth's favour and the Franklin Dam was stopped. With the Franklin issue still dominant, the Gray government was re-elected in 1986, but ran into problems in 1989 over the push for a pulp mill at Wesley Vale. Support for Green candidates rose from 5.6% to 17.1%, returning a Green Independent in all five electorates and depriving the Gray government of a majority.

Within a fortnight, Labor under Michael Field signed an accord with the Greens to form a minority Labor government, the Greens sitting on the cross benches with the right to be consulted on legislation. Gray refused to resign until the Parliament met, and embarked on a campaign calling for a new election. At the same time, Launceston media proprietor Edmund Rouse instigated an attempt to bribe newly elected Labor member Jim Cox to cross the floor and support the Gray government. Rouse later pleaded guilty to bribery and served a prison sentence. A subsequent Royal Commission did not find a link between Rouse's attempt and the former government, but a tangled web of meetings and cash donations left public perceptions muddied.

When the Parliament met, it expressed no confidence in Gray by rejecting his choice of Speaker and Gray resigned. However, while Michael Field become the new Labor Premier, he lead a party whose vote was still in decline. From 54.3% of the vote in 1979, Labor's vote fell to 36.9% in 1982, 35.1% in 1986, and an even lower 34.7% in 1989.

But things were to get worse for the Labor Party. The accord with the Greens lasted about 18 months, after which Labor proceeded to govern in minority, Field maintaining his government in office by playing off the antipathy between Robin Gray and the Greens. In late 1991 he sank Gray's leadership by surviving defeat in a vote of no confidence. By the time Field ended his minority government by calling an early election for February 1992, former footballer and Federal MP Ray Groom had replaced Gray as Liberal leader.

Field led a brave government that embarked on a sweeping re-arrangement of public finances, including scaling back the construction activities of the HEC and dealing with the debt its activities had left the state. His reforms were deeply unpopular but had a long-term beneficial impact on the Tasmanian economy. None of these long-term benefits were of use to the Field government facing a short-term electoral test. Labor's vote slumped to 28.9% at the 1992 election, the Liberal Party polling 54.1% and winning 19 seats. Labor was smashed for having dealt with the Greens, but was also punished for its unpopular measures in addressing the state's budget and debt problems.

At the time it appeared Labor may have been headed for the history books. Its party membership had collapsed, young voters had deserted to the Greens, and the traditional blue-collar vote had deserted for the Liberals. Federal intervention followed, and the next four years were to begin a remarkable electoral turnaround.

The Groom and Rundle Governments

The 1992 victory looked to have returned the Liberal Party to the dominance it had enjoyed in the 1980s. Labor's defeat raised the possibility that the Tasmanian Labor Party would shrivel away and be replaced by the Greens as Tasmania's second major party. Instead, the Greens chose to remain with their environmental base, and as the Groom government embarked on further economic reform, the old battle between Labor and Liberal re-emerged.

An early decision to change industrial relations laws to allow individual contracts backfired. Some of the state's largest industrial employers chose to make use of the new laws and major industrial disputes arose. Premier Groom was left with little power apart from persuasion as he urged the companies to compromise. The March 1993 Federal election saw dramatic swings to Labor in Tasmania, Labor gaining Bass, Franklin and Lyons, winning a majority of the state's Federal seats at an election for the first time since 1974.

The most damaging and avoidable disaster for the Groom government was its proposal for parliamentary reform. The government promised to cut the size of the parliament, a promise which was not met, though the corresponding 40% pay rise for politicians was implemented. It was deeply unpopular, especially with the increased superannuation payment the decision gave to retiring MPs.

Despite the distraction of an over-lapping Federal election, the 1996 state campaign was dominated by the issue of stability in government. Michael Field vowed that he would only form government if Labor won a majority of seats. Groom also promised he would not govern with the Greens. To avoid being seen as refusing to accept the electorate's decision, Field promised not to bring down a minority Liberal government in its first year.

The Groom government lost its majority but finished with two more seats than Labor. As the party holding the reins of office, the Liberal Party remained in government as neither Labor nor the Greens were prepared to bring the government down. Groom stuck to his personal word and resigned as Premier, the cabinet re-structured under new Liberal Leader and Premier Tony Rundle.

As events transpired, politics was forced into the background two months after the election by the Port Arthur massacre, and politics as normal did not resume until 1997. By that time Labor Leader Michael Field had resigned, succeeded in April 1997 by former union boss Jim Bacon.

The 1998 Election

The Rundle government's biggest problem continued to be the state's finances. The Nixon report, produced by former Federal Minister Peter Nixon, suggested a series of major reforms including cuts to the size of the Parliament, cuts to the number of local councils, and sale of the HEC.

The Morling Commission into the size of the Parliament had recommended creating four electorates of seven members each, while Labor proposed a 25 seat chamber, retaining the five Federal electorates, but cutting the number of members per seat from seven to five.

Labor's plan was supported in principle by the Legislative Council, but opposed by the Greens. One Liberal backbencher, Bob Cheek, crossed the floor to support Labor's proposal when it was debated in Parliament, but the Greens made it clear they would bring down the government if it abandoned the four-by-seven model. Dissension on the issue in the Liberal caucus saw Rundle reverse the government's position and back Labor's proposal. He made a virtue of the backflip by promising an election as soon as the legislation was passed, avoiding the possibility of the government being brought down by the Greens.

Despite Green fury on electoral reform, the issue that dominated the 1998 campaign was the Liberal Party's proposal to solve the state's debt problems by selling the HEC. Despite an effective advertising campaign on the sale, as well as another more scurrilous one connecting Jim Bacon to former Builders Labourer's Federation boss Norm Gallagher, the Rundle government could not prevent Labor winning the 1998 election with a clear majority.

As when the Field government was defeated in 1992, the shift of voter support between the major parties can be interpreted as a move to deliver majority government. As with Labor in 1992, the Rundle government suffered electorally from having to govern with the Greens holding the balance of power. The quest for majority government to deliver certainty seemed high in the collective mind of the electorate, ignoring the very valid point raised by the Greens that most of the state's debt had been run up by majority governments. It was the minority Field government that had first moved to deal with the state's debt legacy, and the Greens pointed to how they had kept the Field government in office through this difficult period.

The Green vote fell for the third election in a row, but electing only a single member was entirely a consequence of the reduction in the size of the Assembly. Had the election been held for a 35 seat Assembly, the Greens would have won four or five seats and probably produced another hung Parliament.

The graph below shows the number of elected MPs for each party since 1972. The shorter bars at the bottom of the graph represent the smaller Assemblies since 1998.

The Bacon and Lennon Governments 1998-2006

With Labor back in state power and winning all five seats at the 1998 and 2001 federal elections, Tasmania seemed to have returned to the old days of Labor hegemony. Despite the Howard government putting considerable money into developments in the state, in part to win the critical support of Independent Tasmanian Senator Brian Harradine, the Liberal Party received little electoral reward.

Internal bickering within the Liberal Party also harmed the party's cause. Tony Rundle stayed on as leader until July 1999 when he resigned to be replaced by his Deputy, Sue Napier. She found herself leading a divided caucus and was in turn replaced by Bob Cheek in August 2001. Cheek led the party to massive defeat at the 2002 state election when he suffered the ignominy of losing his seat in Denison. Rene Hidding took over as Liberal leader, but did little better against Jim Bacon's less popular successor Paul Lennon at the 2006 election.

After winning the 1998 election, the Bacon government kept its promise of righting the state's finances while keeping the HEC in public ownership. This became possible as boom times returned for the Australian economy, Tasmania's boat lifting with the incoming economic tide. The introduction of the GST also delivered a more reliable revenue stream to the state.

Tasmania did more than just follow the national trend. The gloom of the 1980s and 1990s departed, and by 2010 the state had lower unemployment than the national average, and even the relative decline in the state's population reversed. Tasmania saw a rare housing boom, the state being discovered as the ideal place for a holiday home or haven in retirement. The emergence of international terrorism in the new millennium also saw Tasmania become more popular as a domestic tourist destination. Basslink opened new opportunities for the sale of hydropower to the national grid, and the state became connected to Bass strait gas.

Of the problems of the 1980s, old-growth logging remained the unresolved issue. Both major parties continued to support regional forest agreements that allowed old-growth logging for woodchip and paper production, policies opposed by the Greens. Opposition grew to plantation forests taking over former agricultural land with associated environmental effects on water tables and on native wildlife through baiting and spraying to protect juvenile trees.

None of these issues had been resolved by the time ill-health forced Jim Bacon to resign as Premier in March 2004. He was replaced as Premier by Paul Lennon, who had been the government's strongest proponent of existing forestry policies and the controversial Gunns pulp mill proposal. Forestry may have added to the state's wealth and been a significant employer, but opponents argued the state had not received enough revenue for selling off logging rights, and also that the cost to the environment outweighed the jobs created. The closeness of Gunns to the government also raised questions of how government policy decisions were being made.

At the 2004 Federal election, Labor Leader Mark Latham infuriated Lennon by advocating an end to old-growth logging. Having forced Labor's hand, Prime Minister John Howard announced a different policy that allowed the continuation of logging, gaining considerable support from the state's forestry unions and contractors. Labor lost the Federal seats of Bass and Braddon at the 2004 election.

All of these issues added to a sense of unease about the Lennon government's direction. This permeated the lead up to the 2006 election, but a weak Liberal opposition under Rene Hidding could not capitalise on the government's problems. As the 2006 election approached, the only alternative to the re-election of the Lennon government appeared to be the Greens gaining the balance of power over a minority Labor government.

The government called the election for 18 March 2006, the same date as the South Australian election, also coinciding with the first weekend of the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. The date resulted in the Tasmanian campaign receiving little mainland coverage and few questions from pesky mainland journalists about the Gunns approval process. Final opinion polls indicated that undecided voters split overwhelmingly for Labor and the Lennon government was returned with its majority intact.

The Labor Decline After 2006

In the aftermath of the 2006 election, Will Hodgman replaced Rene Hidding as Liberal Leader, with Braddon MP Jeremy Rockliff as his Deputy. It was a youth ticket, both MPs being only 36.

Between 2006 and 2010 the Labor government was rocked by scandals and resignations. In his last two years as Premier, Lennon lost two Deputy Premiers with both Bryan Green and Steve Kons forced to resign. A run of bad opinion polls in 2008 convinced Lennon to retire for the good of the government, replaced as Premier by David Bartlett.

But the government continued to be dogged by problems of its own making. Paula Wriedt stood aside from cabinet and eventually resigned from Parliament over revelations of an affair with a government driver. Labor MLC Allison Ritchie resigned from parliament over staff entitlement problems. Labor did not even contest the by-election caused by her resignation, her seat being won by Liberal Vanessa Goodwin. There were disputes over changes to water rates and a confusing scandal surrounding Police Commissioner Jack Johnson. Government involvement in attempts by Gunns to build a pulp mill in the Tamar Valley continued to be attacked by the Greens, even though the Liberal Party gave general support to the government on the issue.

These problems led to Labor's setbacks at the 2010 state election. When Bartlett came to his agreement with Nick McKim and the Greens, calm seemed to be restored to the state scene. At the August 2010 Federal election, the Liberal Party recorded a record low vote and the Greens a record high in Tasmania, though Labor suffered a setback with Denison lost to Independent Andrew Wilkie. Labor increased its margin in the other four seats and won three of the six Senate vacancies.

David Bartlett's resignation as Premier in January 2011 coincided with the slide in Labor's Federal polling. If voters seemed to be expressing unhappiness at Julia Gillard's agreement for government with the Greens, the effect was double in Tasmania where Lara Giddings took over as a Labor Premier leading a minority government dependent on Green support. In May 2011 Labor lost another Legislative Council seat with the defeat of Lin Thorp.

As the national economy slowed, the government was forced to deal with a growing budget deficit. The new Premier reversed some of the education reforms introduced by her predecessor, but attempts to create budget savings by closing schools created a huge backlash. The financial collapse of Gunns and the sale of the Triabunna woodchip plant created major setbacks for the forestry industry. The need for cutbacks sank a cross-party proposal to return the House of Assembly to 35 members.

In January 2014 Giddings acted to differentiate the Labor party from the Greens by dismissing her two Green Ministers. She also announced a re-call of Parliament before the election to pass legislation assuring the licence over the former Gunns Tamar pulp mill site, an issue designed to create a point of difference between Labor and the Greens. Sending the Greens out into the cold on the cusp of the 2014 election might have helped Labor with its core supporters, but it made little difference the scale of the Liberal Party's election victory.

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