Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Australian Politics and Policy
In Tasmania, the Labor and Liberal two-party system 17 generally prevailed
at the state level between 1949 and 1982, with continuous Labor governments,
occasionally with the support of independents, only disrupted by a one-term
minority Liberal government between 1969 and 1972.
By the early 1980s, a proposal to dam the Franklin River became the focus of
politicaldebatebothinTasmaniaandnationally,atatimeofhighunemployment
in the state. The Liberal opposition in Tasmania supported the scheme while the
Labor government was torn between maintaining its commitment to industrialisation
and the demands of an increasingly vocal and influential green movement
who were determined to save the Franklin. Labor Premier Doug Lowe proposed a
compromise of damming an alternative river in the south-west wilderness, which
would still generate more power for industry but save the Franklin River. Lowe’s
plan failed; he lost the party leadership over the issue and moved to the crossbenches
as a Labor independent. The government continued under his successor,
Harry Holgate, who called an election six months later. The Liberals, under Robin
Gray, subsequently secured a landslide win in the May 1982 election on the back
of unprecedented working-class support. A sign of things to come, the leader of
the ‘Save the Franklin’ campaign, Bob Brown, who later became the leader of the
Australian Greens, was elected to the House of Assembly in 1983. By 1989, Green
independents were a political force in Tasmania, winning five seats in parliament
and entering a power sharing ‘accord’ with the Labor Party, enabling Labor to
return to government in 1989.
The following 30 years have seen both majority Labor and Liberal governments,
with one period of minority Liberal government and a further term of Labor–Green
power sharing between 2010 and 2014. Not only was the Liberal Party’s 1980s
strategy to win working-class votes through a pro-development and jobs platform
later echoed nationally, rivalries between Labor and the Greens for progressive votes
in the inner cities were also first evident in Tasmania in the same decade.
Cabinet and the ministry
From 1972 until 1998, the Tasmanian government had a maximum of 10 ministers.
Following the reduction in the size of parliament in 1998, this has varied up
to nine ministers. The change in numbers, introduction of better parliamentary
committee systems and the success of major parties in the Legislative Council
has seen more ministers appointed to Cabinet from the upper house. Since the
reduction in the size of parliament, however, there are concerns that there are too
few government members from which to draw a Cabinet, too great a workload on
ministers and the potential for administrative conflicts where ministers have too
many portfolios. There is also the danger of having too few ordinary MPs to provide
17 The National Party has never achieved state-level representation in Tasmania.
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