It is futile to speculate on the final outcome of the Tasmanian election because there are at least three permutations that have quite different implications. As of today, it is 10-9-4 to Labor with two seats uncertain (in Denison and Braddon) but Labor can win neither.
Perhaps the final result is already irrelevant. The real story of the Tasmanian election is that voters were unprepared to elect a Liberal government. For the Liberals to poll less than 30% in the blue riband Hobart electorate of Denison demonstrates that they have been unconvincing as an alternative government.
That Liberal powerbroker Senator Eric Abetz could tell a TV audience on the night of the count that anything over nine seats for the Liberals would be a bonus was an indictment in itself. He was admitting that the Liberals were probably not strong enough to win two seats in each of the five electorates. Therefore, how could they win an election?
On Saturday night, Greens’ leader Nick McKim described the result as one for “the new believers”, those who deserted the major parties for the Greens. The majority of those people are not new believers. They have not been converted. They had found themselves homeless.
McKim also claimed that, with a hung parliament, a weight had been lifted from Tasmanians’ shoulders, presumably the weight of a failed Labor government. But a new weight had been added. How does a parliament of this size and configuration work?
An incoming minority government has to find nine ministers, a speaker and a deputy speaker. In the Utopian model, power is shared, but how and how does Cabinet operate? What happens to the concept of commercial confidentiality when investors want to deal with a government of many colours?
The Liberals are eager to govern, even in these circumstances, because their 12-year drought continues.
It may be in Labor’s long-term interests not to accept government under these terms or not to have government thrust upon them. It regroups, out of office, allows its new MPs to learn the ropes of parliament and make mischief with the unholy alliance of the Liberals and the Greens. Labor cedes the election and waits for the next one.
There is another force at work here. The Hare-Clark voting system was not designed with a strong third party in mind. It was certainly not designed to deliver 10-10-5 parliaments in which every government MP is a minister.
Increasing the size of the House of Assembly to 35 seats at the next election, as it was before 1998, eases the problem but does not solve it.
Extrapolating Saturday’s poll result to a 35-seat House (of seven members per electorate) gives a 14-14-7 outcome. It doesn’t produce a majority government but it does provide a larger pool of talent.
So, what have we ended up with — Utopia or a dog’s breakfast?
Bruce,
The Hare-Clark voting system was not designed with any number of parties in mind. In 1909, Atorney General Andrew Clark persuaded the House to to use the Hare-Clark system ‘in order to blunt the emergence of the Australian Labour Party’ (which had won all of eight seats in the 1906 election) Every change to the Tasmanian electoral system in the last 120 years has been designed to entrench in power those who see themselves as having the right to rule. Between 1909 and 1937 governments were almost always a loose coalition of members of various parties, as well as independents. Labor ruled for 45 years from 1937, and so started the ‘majority government is essential’ meme.
This is a pretty bizarre criticism of Hare-Clark. Voting systems aren’t supposed to be designed to deliver particular outcomes. If they were, there would be no need for actual voters. Hare-Clark has given the Greens roughly a fifth of the seats, and given that roughly a fifth of the population voted for them, that seems just about right. The size of the House of Assembly has nothing to do with the Hare-Clark system.
Utopia or dog’s breakfast? Neither but it delivers in no uncertain terms a message to the main parties. They need to take on board some of the Green’s policies or at least concerns. With Labour loudly saying, just prior to election day, they would not work with the Greens shows that they shot themselves in the foot, and of course continue to be in the pocket of Gunns.
One doesn’t have to be a deep Green to be gratified with the Hare-Clark system, even if Lib-Lab have tried to pervert it by reducing the impact of Green votes, when it enables a valid expression of 25% of the electorate. I wish we had Hare-Clark throughout Australia.
What’s the betting they reduce the House of Assembly by four seats (those of the Greens). That’s the way they did it before. Why not again. Good ol’ Tasmanian democracy at work.
Sometimes, my dog is given left-overs from the night’s previous meal, for breakfast. And sometimes, I’ll reheat the same leftovers for lunch and, like a good casserole, it’s even better than the night before.
It’s a false dichotomy to suggest that a dog’s breakfast can’t be utopian. The Tasmanian electors have gone for a lower house that asks a lot of the MHAs, but does anyone really think the two-party system is the best of all worlds? And “investor confidence” is not guaranteed by majority government. Just ask Gunns.
What was, and is in the process of being delivered, is the sort of openings that democracy can sometimes produce. Let’s not swamp these in pessimism, cynicism and glibness or false dichotomies.