Against my normal policy, I’ve decided to make no prediction in this upcoming election and here’s why.
At the time of writing, nominations have closed for the Tasmanian election and early voting is underway. However, I have decided to make no prediction. That is against my normal policy for elections but really is the only option in this case.
The one thing I am willing to assert is that no party will have a majority in the new House of Assembly.
The new Premier will either be the incumbent Jeremy Rockliff (Liberal) or the Labor leader, Dean Winter. Rockliff has been Premier since April 2022, succeeding Peter Gutwein who resigned. Winter has never contested an election as leader. He gained the job of Leader of the Opposition in April 2024 after the former Labor leader Rebecca Whlte failed to win the March state election. White is now the federal member for Lyons, the seat she won at the May federal election.
Last year I asked the question here: “Did Tasmanian Liberal Party really win four general elections?” My article referred to the fact that on election night, 23 March 2024, Rockliff congratulated himself on leading his party to its fourth straight victory.
Discussing his claim I wrote: “There will be a minority Liberal government so Rockliff can make his claim. I shall accept that claim if he is still Premier in April 2026 – but I very much doubt he will be. He failed to get four seats in Braddon because the independent Craig Garland beat Liberal candidate Giovanna Simpson. He failed to get three in Hobart-based Clark because the Greens performed the feat of winning two seats compared with two for the Liberal Party.”
Anyway, Tasmanians are now having yet another early election. I have been through all the records of early elections in every Australian jurisdiction and discover that this is second earliest in my lifetime. Back when I was a schoolboy there was a Queensland state election on 19 May 1956. The then Labor split caused an early election to be held on 3 August 1957. The present Tasmanian dates are 23 March 2024 for the most recent election and 19 July 2025 for the current one. The big difference is that the 1957 Queensland election was expected to create stability – in which it fully succeeded. By contrast, the current Tasmanian situation is a mess.
Historians will record this as the election no one wanted. Who, then, is to blame? And will any verdict on that question affect the way people vote? To me, Winter is to blame. He moved a successful motion of no confidence in the Premier, not the government. That was a clear case of being too smart by half. He thought that the Liberals would be so determined to stay in government they would force Rockliff to resign in favour of another Liberal. Rockliff refused and persuaded the Governor, Barbara Baker, to grant a dissolution, which was put into effect on Thursday 12 June.
How we got here
To understand the politics of how this came about one needs to go back to the result of the 2024 election. In a House of Assembly of 35 seats, the Liberals won 14, Labor 10, the Greens five, the Jacquie Lambie Network three and three independents were elected, Garland plus Kristie Johnston in Clark and David O’Byrne in Franklin. The Liberals won three of the seven seats in the Divisions of Bass, Braddon, Franklin and Lyons but only two in the Hobart metropolitan Division of Clark.
In such a result the Liberals were unlucky. But for a handful of votes they would have won four in Braddon (where Rockliff is one of the seven members) and three in Clark. With 16 seats the Liberal Party would not have been a majority but it would have been in a very strong position.
Anyway, it was not to be and Rockliff negotiated with the three independents and, more importantly, with the three members of the Jacquie Lambie Network, Rebekah Pentland in Bass, Miriam Beswick in Braddon and Andrew Jenner in Lyons. That minority government was not ideal but it seemed to provide stability for a four-year term.
There was a “Confidence and Stability Agreement” which seemed a reasonable compromise to enable Rockliff to govern while giving the six independents many of their wishes. But Jacquie Lambie started to interfere and her state party of three broke up. In the break-up, however, Jenner emerged as the one closest to Senator Lambie, but the two women broke away completely. So there was, in effect, a Lambie-Jenner faction and a Beswick-Pentland faction.
In the meantime, the Rockliff government looked less- and less-competent with mounting state debt and plagued by the Bass Strait ferry issue. The “Spirit of Tasmania” ferries are rightly regarded as a great asset to the state and the government should not be criticised for wanting new ferries. The telling criticism was that the ferries needed to be built in Europe but the Tasmanian government did not provide adequate wharfing for them. From then on the general comment was to refer to the “bungled wharf project.”
The issues at play
Historians may well describe this election as the time for Tasmanians to decide whether they really want to have an AFL team. The price for it is a government commitment for $1 billion to build a new stadium in the middle of Hobart. Many predict it will be a white elephant originally costed at $300 million – but blowing out, as so often is the case. Anyway, all the independents from outside Hobart are against it and consider it to be an unaffordable project to be built in the wrong place.
Public opinion seems to be against the stadium but the two big parties are in favour of it. My view is that the sensible outcome of this election would be a government being a coalition between the Labor and Liberal parties. While I am not making any prediction my guess is that Labor will win 12 seats, the Liberal Party 11, the Greens six and independents six. If that is the result then Winter should be Premier and Rockliff Deputy Premier. If the numbers are exactly equal (say, 10 each for the big parties and seven independents) then the two big parties could agree on a rotation of the top job as happens in Ireland whose electoral system is similar to Tasmania’s. Rockliff could stay as Premier for, say, 18 months and then be replaced by Winter.
Shaky predictions
The one prediction I am inclined to make is that the Greens will have six seats. They now have five, being two in Clark and one in each of Bass, Franklin and Lyons. My sixth predicted for them is one seat in Braddon. I have no idea who the new Greens member for Braddon would be but I confidently predict that Vica Bayley and Helen Burnet will be re-elected in Clark, party leader Rosalie Woodruff in Franklin, Cecily Rosol in Bass and Tabatha Badger in Lyons. If I am right then the Tasmanian Greens would be the most female party in Australia.
The Jacquie Lambie Network has effectively gone out of business and is not contesting this election. Consequently, Pentland is standing as an independent ungrouped candidate in Bass. However, both Beswick in Braddon and Jenner in Lyons are standing for the Nationals. They hope to perform well because they are appealing to non-Hobart voters to reject the stadium. They don’t want the Greens to get the anti-stadium vote.
Going through the list of nominations I am struck by the fact that almost every sitting member is standing again but two non-incumbent candidates should also be mentioned. The first is Liberal Bridget Archer in Bass and the second is Peter George in Franklin. Archer was the federal member for Bass from May 2019 to May 2025 and is now described as a “farmer”. George was a well-known ABC journalist who stood for Franklin at the recent federal election and performed creditably. His occupation now is described simply as a “writer”.
Finally, I draw attention to a feature of the Hare-Clark system that is commendable and should be considered for extension to the Mainland. It is best illustrated by the case of Rebecca White. She was a state member for Lyons since 2010 and Leader of the Opposition from 2021 to 2024. In order to be able to contest the federal seat of Lyons (which she won handsomely) she resigned her state seat on 12 February 2025.
The thinking behind Hare-Clark is to see how the preferences distribute between candidates who had not been elected at the general election. Consequently, the quota of votes that had elected White were distributed between those candidartes seeking to replace her. The re-count occurred on 4 March and the contest was effectively between two Labor candidates.
Casey Farrell was elected with 4,250 votes. Not elected was Ben Dudman with 4,008 votes. Farrell is one of the seven Labor candidates for Lyons on 19 July. His rival seems to have dropped out.