Rockliff throws out one last desperate promise in last week of Tasmanian campaign

Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff has bowled a googly at the start of the last week of the Tasmanian election campaign, announcing that if reelected with a majority, his government would pass laws to remove people from Parliament if they quit the party they had been elected as a representative of. That is bold, but Rockliff has gone further. If party members stay in the party, but go rogue voting-wise, they can be removed too. 

One of the striking things about this announcement is that it has happened at all. Tasmanian campaigns usually go dead in the last week, and people going hard can often get a hostile reaction. This loose tradition seems to be part small-town low-key custom, but also something to do with the state’s liberal traditions, and the idea that a polity is made up of individuals making up their own minds.

The second striking point is that if Rockliff is throwing this in now, he is not at all assured of victory, and is willing to throw some very risky strategies out there to try and get towards the magic 18 majority. The last poll had the Libs clearly in the lead, with a 37% primary. But the Tasmanian Hare-Clark system is optional preferential proportional, and thus ensures that seats numbers are close to proportion — and so 37% would net only 14-15 seats, three or four short of a majority, and give Labor, on 23%, 10, and the Greens four or five. That is pretty much Rockliff’s nightmare, the uncanny valley between victory and defeat, promising only weary coalition-building or minority government. 

This is despite the fact that the Liberals have run a much better campaign than Labor. A bogus campaign for sure, promising money for everything, with tax cuts and deficit reduction, but a better campaign nevertheless. Rockliff and co have been addressing Tasmanians’ key worry — that jobs will go north — with a relentless productionist program. Reopen reserved forests for logging, back the filthy, coast-destroying fish farms to the hilt, get behind the destructive coastal Robbins Island windfarm, whose turbines could be elsewhere. Keep Cadbury here by shooting them $12 million for the world’s largest chocolate fountain. And so on. 

At the same time there have been hundreds of millions promised for healthcare, while also promising half a billion to build an unnecessary Hobart stadium that the AFL is demanding as the price of creating a team in Tasmania that the AFL don’t want and many Tasmanians desperately do. None of it hangs together. They have announced they will “ban” ramping, i.e. keeping patients in ambulances at overused A&E’s. That makes no sense, but it doesn’t matter, because there’s a new announceable the next day. 

Labor by contrast has run a nothing campaign, just a hole in the airspace. Coming off a couple of years of brutal factional fighting, it had no real alternative account of how the state might prosper, leading with a promise to pay first-home buyers’ housing deposits, which felt like a bit of last-minute retail politics. The party has done the old slow bike race thing, keeping close to the Libs hoping to minimise loss, and get up as an ultra-minority government with Green and independent support. 

So the “party seat” challenge is in part a dare to Labor: do you have what it takes to go against all Westminster practice, and support a de facto corporatist notion of government, well do ya punk, well do ya? The trouble for Labor is that Rockliff’s proposal is far more possible in Tasmania than elsewhere. The state has no single constitution. Its archaic original documents from the 1850s were largely replaced by a government “constitution act” in 1934, which gives the government powers to do most of what it likes. But even in this cowboy constitutional order, it may not pass.

It’s worth noting before any considerations of political strategy that the whole idea may be a dead cat bounce thing. Deputy Premier Michael Ferguson is currently facing accusations that in 2018 he allowed a full honours funeral for a senior cop, busted for paedophilia, who had committed suicide. That is a rather specific issue, but pulls at the thread of years of revelations concerning vast cover-ups of child abuse in the Launceston health system, and Ashley, the state’s sole child detention unit.

Jeremy Rockliff wants to talk about absolutely anything but all that, which is pushing voters towards independents. He also seems to be pitching to people who really want stable party government. At the moment, the major parties are so fissiparous you never know how many are going to depart. Three of the four independents in the last Parliament are ex-majors: one Labor in David O’Byrne (briefly leader, ousted in a brutal internal struggle which saw him skewered by revelations of some unsolicited sexting of a young staffer) and two Liberal in Lara Alexander and John Tucker. They are both countback MLAs — as per Hare-Clark practice, they replaced elected MLAs who quit — and their strong objections to the stadium, and then to the party’s management style, saw them go indy, which eventually gave Rockliff an election trigger. 

With majorities usually bare in the Hare-Clark system, and parties coming apart, there’s less advantage in voting for them. Why not vote for Greg “Tubby” Quinn, scourge of the supertrawlers? At least you know what you’re getting. So a guarantee of party fidelity might bring some people back to the Liberals. Equally, it will propel people the other way, to the small parties and independents.

Beyond the Greens, there is the Jacqui Lambie Network, which has 12 candidates over four electorates, a stated position of having no policies, and with members capable of taking any stand they want. That looked slick but has pissed people off, and may have been too clever by half. They were polling between 9-13%. No-one has a clue if that will hold up and give them three seats or none. The Shooters are running a sub-low-key campaign in all five seats, but no-one, themselves included, think they’ll get up. The Local Network, a remodel of the somewhat paradoxical Local Party, is running four candidates in Clark (Hobart), and veteran green/LGBTQIA+/everything activist Martine Delaney in hippy-dippy happy-clappy Franklin (south of Hobart). 

The Animal Justice Party is running under the radar, but they often get the vote of people who despair of everything else. 

Of the independent independents, there is one other incumbent: Kristie Johnston, a criminologist from Glenorchy in north Hobart (wise choice of professional locale), former local-hero mayor, with a substantial following.  

After that, the best chance for a seat is Craig Garland, the north-west fisherman, rail thin, long grey hair and beard, half Jesus, half Quixote, who is running in Braddon, opposing salmon fish farming in bays, (where it destroys the environment and local fish), opposing the Robbins Island windfarm, and calling for a real integrity commission. 

In Bass, two former Greens are running: Launceston councillor Tim Walker, and social worker whistleblower Jack Davenport, both ex-Peter Whish-Wilson staffers. Also in Braddon, in the north-west, green-haired hemp enthusiast councillor Andrea Courtney could parlay a local and stoner vote to seventh. In Clark, there is a chance for former MLA Sue Hickey, ex-speaker, Hobart mayor, local TV star, and Miss Tasmania Quest 1979. Hickey was a Liberal renegade too, and more or less started the current run.

Then the absolute outsiders, worth ignoring if you weren’t in a seven-member electorate system. The interesting ones are: in Bass, Mark Brown is running a pure “no stadium” campaign, but is a serious Australian Christian Lobby dude, and the aforementioned Tubby Quinn, a tattooist, fisherman and former anti-supertanker activist running on an integrity and democracy ticket. In Franklin, ex-Lib upper house member Tony Mulder is interesting only because his posters make it look like he’s emerging from the sun. Beyond that there’s a bunch of boring mayors and councillors with no real chance — but more than they might have in a single-seat system.

The polls suggest six seats for small parties and independents. Kristie Johnston will get back. No-one really knows if the incumbents will triumph or all fall over. It would seem impossible that the Lambie network will not get one at least. For sheer pluralism I’d like to see Craig Garland and Andrea Courtney get up in Braddon, Martine Delaney in Franklin, and for the Shooters to fluke it in Lyons. Won’t happen but would be a wild ride if it did.

The paradox will be that the Libs will almost certainly get the call to form government, but if in minority will have to rely on either the members who dudded ’em last time, or the new class, most more oriented to Labor than the Libs (although….). All of which may prove prelude to the Libs, with Labor support, abolishing Hare-Clark altogether, subbing in single-member electorates, as a grateful public cheers. Ah well, if it’s going to be a last hurrah, it will go out with a bang.