Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Tasmania
effective parliamentary scrutiny of government. As noted by Wettenhall, ‘questions
about patterns of relationships between executive governments and legislatures’ 18
are common in many small jurisdictions, especially island-states, where there are
disadvantages in having few ministers becoming ‘jacks of all trades’, or in having
the jurisdiction essentially run by the bureaucratic administration.
The changing political landscape
We have noted that Tasmania’s narrow industrial base and economic vulnerability
has resulted in an economy that is reliant on a small number of industries. As a
result of these concerns, Tasmanian voters have historically supported parties they
believe will deliver economic security. For much of the 20th century, Tasmania
has had Labor governments, but that changed in 1982, with the election, for the
first time, of a majority Liberal government, 19 led by premier Robin Gray, who
subsequently held office for two terms. Since then, the Liberals have held
government from 1992 to 1998 and again from 2014 to the present. 20 In between,
Labor held office for an unbroken period of 16 years (1998 to 2014), with four
successive premiers, including Tasmania’s first woman premier, Lara Giddings.
While Tasmania has also experienced three minority governments with the
Greens holding a balance of power, 21 there has been a long history of independents
or minor parties holding the balance of power. 22 Areportbyanadvisorycommittee
chaired by A.G. Ogilvie noted in 1984 that ‘history has shown independents and
minor parties have a tendency to gain representation in a majority of elections’. 23
This is facilitated by the Hare-Clark system, which enables candidates to win seats
with considerably less than 50 per cent of the vote in multi-member electorates.
However,theentryoftheGreenstotheleftoftheLaborPartyonthebackofthe
conservation debates changed the complexion of representative politics within the
state. Since the early 1980s, the Greens have won up to five seats in some elections.
Much of their gains were at the expense of the Labor Party, which recorded a record
low vote of 28 per cent and won only seven seats in 2014. In the parliament elected
in 2018, the Liberals have 13 seats, Labor 10 and the Greens two in the House of
Assembly,whiletheLiberalshavetwoseatsandLaborfourseatsintheLegislative
18 Wettenhall 2018, 124.
19 The Liberal government of Angus Bethune (1969–72) relied on the support of Centre Party
member, Kevin Lyons (Haward and Larmour 1993, 1).
20 Premier Will Hodgman was re-elected for a second four-year term in March 2018.
21 These three hung parliaments with the Greens holding a balance of power were the Field Labor
government of the Labor–Green accord between 1989 and 1992, the Rundle Liberal minority
government between 1996 and 1998 and the Bartlett–Giddings Labor government, with two
Greens in Cabinet, between 2010 and 2014.
22 Newman 1992, 198–201.
23 Newman 1992, 98.
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