How Labor Won 94 Seats Off A Modest Primary Vote. It Mostly Wasn't Preferences

Example of a 2025 election whinge meme seen on social media

In the unhinging that has followed Labor's massive victory in the 2025 federal election, there has been a lot of scapegoating of preferential voting.  Some of this may be because the landslide seat result was unexpected.  In polls this mostly looked like a close election in terms of whether Labor could get a majority or not.  Many voices in the media made it worse by claiming Labor definitely or very probably would not get a majority, and continuing to claim it after the polls (such as they were) no longer supported that view.

Labor won 94/150 (62.67%) of seats with a primary vote of 34.56%.  Many people are saying this was caused by preferential voting.  In fact, it mostly wasn't.  This article explains how this 28.11% gap between Labor's seat share and their vote share was mostly caused by other factors.   I find it deeply unfortunate and concerning that many people are in response attacking our very fair voting system and supporting instead the pointless abomination that is first past the post without bothering to understand the arguments in favour of preferences and the extent to which the result was caused by other things.  If they really care about parties getting vote shares that match their seat shares, they should support multi-member electorates.  

What I am going to do here is start from the assumption that Labor should have got about the same seat share as its party vote share and explain, factor by factor, why that didn't occur.  As I go I'll build up the share of the seat total Labor is expected to get based on each factor I add into the mix, and show that most of the gap can be explained without needing to consider Labor doing better on preferences.  This is a deliberately mathsy look at the nuts and bolts of why Labor won so many seats off such a modest primary vote and has been graded Wonk Factor 4/5.

There's Always Been A Gap

Before I start that, I should mention that while the gap between Labor's primary vote share and their seat share gap was unusually large in 2025, in recent decades there has always been a gap - the winner always gets a higher share of the seat tally than they have of the primary vote.  The last time this was close was for the Whitlam government in 1972 and 1974.  From 1972 to 2022 the average gap was 12%.  The second and third largest gaps were for the Coalition's  massive wins in 1975 and 1977, followed closely by Labor's win in 2022.  

1. Single Member Seats Disadvantage Non-Majors

At the 2025 federal election, candidates from outside the major parties polled a total primary vote of 33.62% (a record high) but won only 13/150 seats (8.67%).  This disadvantage is not caused by preferences, which in fact help non-major candidates to beat major party candidates way more often than the other way around (ie if we had first past the post and roughly similar vote shares, the non-majors would do even worse in seat terms, barring massive tactical stand-aside pacts)

It's caused by it being hard for a party with a small share of the overall vote to get enough votes in any particular seat to be able to get 50% after preferences in that seat.  In general a candidate needs at least a 20% primary vote (often much more) to have any chance of winning at all, and minor parties can poll several percent nationwide while hitting that range in very few if any seats.  As a result, while there have been 31 cases since 1972 of a minor non-Coalition party getting more than 4% of the primary vote, in only one such case (Greens 2022 winning four seats) has such a party won more than one seat, in six cases a single seat and in 24 cases nothing!   Non-majors together have always got a seat share that is only a very small portion of their vote share in the House of Reps, and prior to 1990 (the start point of the graph below) they often won no seats at all.

The picture is somewhat brighter for teal and similar independents than for minor parties as their primary vote support tends to be very concentrated in a small number of seats, meaning that they can get somewhere near to a proportional seat result (and they were hugely unlucky not to get more seats in 2025).  But still, the disadvantage for non-majors alone has become a bigger factor in recent years in major parties overperforming on seat share - as the non-major vote increases, the pool of votes that ends up with the majors after the elimination of non-majors is rising.  

Of the two major parties, Labor led by 2.74%. If we imagine preferences splitting completely evenly (and with no leakage on Coalition to Coalition transfers) that would have been a 51.37% 2PP, which as a proportion of the seats won by non-majors would have given Labor 46.92% of the seats (about 70 seats).  And that's already explained close to half the gap!

2. The Leading Major Tends To Overperform On Seats

Single-member-per-seat systems are not designed to be proportional, even between the two leading parties.  They're designed to elect local representatives, and it has happened over time that those local representatives have tended to organise themselves into parties or coalitions, with one side or the other nearly always getting a majority.  If every seat in a single member system voted the same way, the same party would win every single seat, unlike in proportional systems where the parties would win seats in close proportion to their support.  

As it happens there is a lot of variation in voter behaviour between seats in single-member systems, which is nearly always enough to see more than one party win a substantial number of seats, unless the vote share result is extremely lopsided .  But this variation generally doesn't result in the loser winning a proportional share of seats either.  In essentially two-party first past the post systems this pattern is often known as the "cube rule" - the ratio of the winners' seat share to the loser's is often something like the ratio of the winner's vote share to the loser's vote share, cubed.  So if party A beats party B 52-48 in a two-party contest (a ratio of 1.083), the cube rule predicts the seat ratio will be 1.083^3=1.271, meaning party A gets about 56% of the seats.   Various things can mess with this rule in parts of the world, including personal vote effects, campaign tactics, gerrymandering etc (some parts of the US use gerrymandering not to cheat but to try to stop heavy minorities from going unrepresented) but on the whole something like this is common.  

In Australia, something similar to the cube rule operates (the cube of the ratio of the 2PPs is a decent predictor of the ratio of major party seats won, with occasional hiccups such as 1998) but no need to graph the cube rule when a linear relationship has about the same predictive power.  

This graph predicts that if Labor won 51.37% of the 2PP, which it would have done had preferences done nothing, Labor would have won about 54.4% of the major party seats.  That puts Labor up to 49.68% of seats, or 74-75 seats, almost a majority.  

3. Labor's Vote Was Way Better Distributed

There's a big gap, however, between the 74-75 seats expected above and the number Labor actually led on primary votes in, which was a massive 86 seats (though that included two where a Labor candidate led two Coalition candidates individually but not combined).  This number 86 is the fundamental thing those complaining about preferences do not get.  Winning from behind on preferences added only a net eight seats (or if counting Bendigo and Bullwinkel ten) to the seats where Labor was leading on primaries already, and would have won even with an even preference split.  So Labor would have won a large majority on the votes cast even had preferences done nothing, or if we had first past the post and everyone voted the same.  It seems quite amazing that Labor candidates led on primaries in 86 seats (to Coalition 57 others 7) when the primary vote gap between the major parties was so small.  

The answer is that Labor's primary vote was much, much more favourably distributed than the Coalition's.  One measure of this is the median.  While the national total primary vote gap between the majors was 2.74%, the median gap was 5.22%.  Labor's median primary was a pretty healthy 36.84%.  A small part of this is that the mean primary vote gap per seat was actually 3.16%, as a result of Labor doing better in seats with smaller formal primary vote totals (such as the Tasmanian and NT seats and also Western Sydney seats with high informal rates).  The larger part of it is that Labor just didn't waste as many primary votes in seats it was uncompetitive in.  Labor had ten seats where its primary vote share was under 15%.  All of these were Coalition vs Independent seats, seven of which the independents won (though Labor even won the indicative 2PP in two of those).  The Coalition had only four such seats, two of them also won by independents.  

Comparing Labor's worst 50 seats on primary votes with the Coalition's, Labor averaged 0.36% worse on primaries in these than the Coalition did in its worst 50.  In Labor's best 50, Labor averaged 4.77% better than the Coalition's best 50.  In the middle 50, Labor averaged 5.06% better.  

The table below shows the two sides by primary vote bands (where the Coalition ran two candidates I have over-generously added them together).  

An especially striking comparison occurs at the 30-35% range.  Labor polled below 35% primary in just 67 seats, the Coalition in 92, meaning that Labor had an 83-58 lead in terms of how many seats there were where its primary vote was over 35%.  

The focus on Labor's modest primary vote and overall small primary vote lead ignores the fact that in the middle ground seats Labor was beating the Coalition convincingly on primary votes, even though it would have still won the election easily had it only broken even in them. Labor's national primary was probably deflated by approaching 2% by competition from teals and tealoids in seats Labor mostly wasn't winning anyway.  There is a myth that increased competition from right-wing minors also splintered the vote on the right causing the Coalition to lose the national primary vote, but in fact the right-wing minors had a primary vote swing against them too (albeit only about 0.5% depending on who you count), and had a lower combined primary vote than left-wing minors.

Factors playing into Labor's superior primary vote performance in the mid-pack seats would include personal vote effects (which seem to have been unusually strong this year).  In seats in which Labor first term incumbents defeated Coalition incumbents in 2022 especially, Labor would have gained a personal vote advantage.  But it's also about the Coalition's failed strategy in which its messaging was aimed too narrowly at outer suburbia, where it didn't do all that well anyway.  

Even after allowing the Coalition to count Bendigo and Bullwinkel as primary vote leads (based on two candidates against one), Labor's better distributed primary vote still put it in the outright lead before preferences in 84 seats (56% of seats).  So we've now got from 34.56% of the vote to 56% of the seats even assuming that preferences split evenly.  

4. Wins On Preferences That Would Have Been Wins Anyway

As often noted here before, it's clueless to assume that if Australia had had first past the post at any election then all the voters would have voted the same way.  In particular, if the Greens are not competitive in a given seat, then a lot of Greens voters under first past the post would be likely to vote tactically for Labor - an issue that suppresses the overall Greens vote in first past the post systems (though they do still win seats in some of them).  Not all would do so - but the proportion who would is probably higher than the same for One Nation voters, who are more likely to dislike both majors and hence to grab the opportunity to waste their vote by voting One Nation under FPTP.  If we had FPTP, Labor and the Greens might even make stand-aside deals to reduce the number of seats where they wasted votes by competing with each other.  

The only seat where Labor led on primaries but lost was Fowler, which I think they also would have lost under FPTP.  

There were eight seats where Labor trailed the lead Coalition candidate on primaries but won - Aston, Dickson, Petrie, Brisbane, Banks, Solomon, Deakin, Menzies.  They also trailed Adam Bandt (Greens) in Melbourne and won that.  Of these, in Aston and Dickson at the very least the Coalition's lead was small compared to the 2PP margin; I have no doubt Labor would have won these under FPTP.  I also think Banks and Petrie would be rather promising.  Solomon, Deakin and Menzies seem more difficult unless the Greens decided not to run.  In Brisbane the LNP were thumped on 2PP; the only way they would have won under FPTP is if both Labor and Greens voters refused to vote strategically and thereby split the vote, that said, this does sometimes happen in FPTP which is another reason why FPTP is garbage.   In Melbourne, the Greens had a large lead and were beaten on mainly Liberal preferences; the question under FPTP would be whether enough Liberal voters were willing to vote tactically to defeat Bandt, maybe not.   I'm assuming the Coalition parties would be cute enough for one to step aside in Bendigo; Bullwinkel is less certain with the Nationals not part of the Coalition in WA and thinking that they were in the mix.

I'd therefore put Labor on at very least 87 seats (58% of seats) under FPTP.   The maximum share of Labor's victory that I think can be put down to preferential voting is therefore 7 seats (4.67%), which is about a sixth of the gap between Labor's primary vote share and Labor's seat share.

Labor getting a seat share way higher than their vote share was therefore mostly not caused by preferential voting.  And we can see that the same thing happens in FPTP systems.  In the UK 2024 Labour (albeit with a much larger primary vote lead over their main rival) got 411/650 seats (63.2%) off 33.7% of the vote.  Leading parties winning a far higher vote share than their share of the primary vote is a general property of single-member seat systems.  It is silly to blame preferences for that, and it needs to stop.

Hare-Clark! Why Do We Have It? Are There Any Alternative Approaches?

It had to happen and was always going to happen sooner or later after the 2025 election; in fact I'm surprised it has taken so long.  The Tasmanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, or at least its chief executive Michael Bailey, has seen fit to call for the abolition or modification of Tasmania's Hare-Clark system.  I could just as easily see fit to bluntly suggest that they stay in their own lane.  I wouldn't expect to be taken seriously if I declared myself an expert in business regulation so I'm not sure why they expect to be so on this subject.

In the article in question, which is paywalled, the call is made to either replace Hare-Clark with single-member preferential voting or to switch from five seats of seven to seven seats of five.  

7x5, a zombie bad electoral take

Seven seats of five is an old chestnut that was roundly disposed of during the process of restoring the House from 25 to 35 members.  As the concept of restoring the House to 35 seats gained traction in the 2021-4 term there was some support for doing it by going to seven five-member electorates instead of going back to five seven-member electorates.  There was at the time only one Independent elected as such in the parliament, so the main motivation was to make things hard for the Greens.  Anyone who is remotely familiar with that debate would be aware of the TEC's discussion paper that showed significant problems with the 7x5 model.  One thing wrong with it is that it would require Tasmania to uncouple from the federal electoral boundaries and have its own state electoral boundaries process at an expense estimated at $2.5 million plus $300,000 per election.  Being almost as large as the federal divisions and overlapping with them extensively the state boundaries would then cause a lot of voter enrolment confusion; the TEC also suggests it would be difficult to avoid severely splitting up communities of interest by drawing a line through Hobart City.  (This said, it would get rid of the across-river divide in Franklin for state but not federal purposes, and drawing the boundaries of Clark in a completely sensible manner is getting more tricky anyway; more on this down the track).  

While still very proportional compared to single-member electorates, five-member electorates are a little bit more granular than seven and, all else being equal, tend to make minor parties and independents slightly less likely to be elected.  But only slightly.  As my ongoing 25 vs 35 seats comparison piece shows, the percentage of crossbenchers elected off the same vote shares under a 5x5 system and elected under a 5x7 system based on the same vote shares are actually very similar.  To consider current vote shares, in both 2024 and 2025 I estimate the 5x5 system would have elected 7/25 crossbenchers (28%); the actual elections elected 11/35 (31.4%).   It's a trivial difference and the nature of the parliaments formed would be much the same.  Whether that difference would even happen at all is debatable because in a 7x5 system there would be more scope than in 5x5 for an independent to win by having a high profile in a modestly sized area.  (I further discussed this in a 2022 submission here.)

The Australian paraphrases a particularly silly argument for 7x5: "He said currently some electorates were so socially and economically diverse, it was difficult for MPs to adequately represent everyone within their boundaries."  Um er what?  No MP has to represent everyone within an electorate as there are seven MPs in each electorate!  Indeed Tasmania has the lowest ratio of voters per lower house state MP of any state in the country, a ratio that is of course the same under 7x5 as it is under 5x7.  Since we went up to 35 seats we are now even slightly more represented per head of population than the ACT - and we have upper house MPs to represent us too!

I wish this to be the last that is ever heard of the 7x5 proposal in the history of debate about our system.  It has been debunked many times now but the same suspects keep supporting it.  Apart from a voting formality benefit that could (and urgently should) also be obtained through better savings provisions, the proposal is nothing but expensive and confusing system vandalism.   It's disappointing that the TCCI, having floated this nonsense and had it shot down in 2023 are still at it.  Do they bother to follow debates they are engaged in?  Are they receptive to the evidence presented in those debates at all?  

35x1, zzzzzz...

The TCCI's alternative proposal, and a pretty common one over the years, is to switch to single-member electorates (at present this would be 35), elected by some form of preferential voting (usually compulsory preferential is supported).  This appeals to those who think the natural state of a lower house government is to have a majority, as is normally the case in other states and territories and federally.  Simply changing the lower house to such a system without changing the upper house would be a particularly bad idea, since the electoral systems of the two houses would be too similar, which weakens the upper chamber's status as a house of second opinion, and means substantial minority groupings might have no MPs in either chamber.  However, supporters of this change will sometimes support changing the upper house to a single statewide proportional chamber or a Hare-Clark chamber, so that there is still a proportional aspect.  This would bring Tasmania into line broadly with the mainland states except Queensland, and with the federal system, and would end the history of Tasmania having an "upside down" system compared to most of the other states.

Given the number of chaotic and/or unpopular minority governments Tasmania has had in the last four decades, making Tasmania's lower house system more like other states and moving minority representation to the upper house may seem to have a lot of appeal.  Proportional representation is very democratic in representation terms but can have drawbacks beyond chaotic minority parliaments.  It can lead to disproportionate power for crossbench parties and can result in parties that would have clearly lost a two-party preferred vote becoming the government. However there are several specific problems with a single-seat system for Tasmania as compared to other states.  Those who think we could just transplant the lower house system in say Victoria into Tasmania with similar results are at least as misguided as those who think nationwide Hare-Clark would be a good idea.  

Firstly, the electorates would be tiny.  Each MP would represent about 11,800 voters; some seats would be little more than a few adjacent suburbs.  This would make each Assembly seat less populous than 13 current Tasmanian councils, which is really saying something given that Tasmania has 29 councils, which is widely considered too many.  Seat contests would be prone to intense localism and would tend to have a large crossover with local government areas and voting.  We have seen this in the Legislative Council where the overlap with local government is such that prominent members of local councils are often elected, usually as independents.  Particularly given the general decline of major party support, it is easy to believe that local independents would win in such a system.  Indeed, the Legislative Council, which is 15 single-member electorates, has been majority independent for its entire history but for a recent hiatus of a few years.  Voter support for having independents in the house of review rather than it being a party house plays into that heavily, but it is by no means the only reason.

I also don't think this system would be effective enough for the majoritarians' liking in getting rid of Greens and the more Green-adjacent independents.  It would surely reduce their numbers from the current eight but they would quite reliably win a few seats within the Hobart City part of what is now Clark, at least, and could well be competitive elsewhere (parts of Franklin, inner Launceston perhaps).  I think there would still be hung parliaments in this system - not as deeply into minority, but I doubt they would be rare.  Of course if we saw landslide vote share results on the scale of 1992, 2002, 2014 and 2021 then that would lead to big majority governments (and possibly with oppositions all but wiped off the map, in itself not ideal).  However a contributing factor to some of these results was Hare-Clark itself (some voters vote for the side that can win a majority and this produces vote share blowouts).   

The 35x1 system also has the same problem as 7x5 in that it would require Tasmania to have its own redistribution system instead of using the federal one for free.  The confusion might be less though if every federal electorate was carved up into seven.  

35x1 would be bad for ensuring all parts of the state have local major party representatives.  In even mediocre years for Labor they would not win many seats across the north - for instance in the current Braddon on 2025 vote shares they would probably win one seat around Upper Burnie and no more.  In a bad year for Labor they would win almost nothing as they would be squeezed out by Greens and independents in some of their strongest two-party areas.  In bad years for the Liberals they would be lucky nowadays to get any of the seats in Greater Hobart at all.  

What I especially dislike about 35x1 is that it it is BORING! It would throw away the rich within-party contests that rejuvenate the major parties even in elections where nothing happen, and replace them with pocket personal fiefdoms, turning our electoral system into a bad copy of the Northern Territory's, and meaning an MP's security was determined by their ability to get selected for a safe seat more than by how voters viewed them against their ticketmates.  No thanks; I think critics need to find a better alternative.  

Many others have been suggested down the years.  For instance the idea of a Senate-style system with ordered party lists was disposed of in the lead-up to the adoption of Robson rotation.

What is the problem here?

The problem with Hare-Clark is supposedly that the system "does make things very difficult and I’m not certain that Hare Clark has delivered in the last few decades the results that Tasmania wanted when they went to the polls."  But I think what business lobbies mean when they say Hare-Clark makes things difficult is that Hare-Clark makes majority government harder. Business lobbies like majority governments partly because business then knows exactly who it has to talk to in search of outcomes and partly because majority governments have less impetus to be transparent.

 Actually what Hare-Clark has done at the last few elections is reflect what voters wanted extremely proportionally, while single-seat elections become if anything more disproportionate.  What then results from that reflection is in the hands of the parliament.  What Tasmanians want is not at all a monolithic thing, and is probably as confused and diverse right now as it ever has been.  Broadly speaking over a quarter of voters these days have political views somewhere in the green/enviro/teal/left spectrum and are voting for the Greens or candidates like independents Peter George, Kristie Johnston and Craig Garland.  The rest run a gamut including conservatives, pro-development types, the remains of the labor movement, the alternative right and some voters who are very disengaged.

With the parliament now as complex as it is, the overall result of the elections is not currently being determined by the system itself or the votes cast.  It's the decisions and tactics of the people elected that determine who will even form government, what kind of government will be formed, whether it will last or otherwise.  If governments govern as if they are in majority when they are not, then they should expect a bumpy ride.  It shouldn't be too much to expect that governments learn within reason not to do that, and that oppositions also shouldn't aspire to the same condition.  This need not be about major policy concessions; it can also be about approach.  A major factor in the 2024-5 parliament's collapse was the government squandering the chance to work sensibly with the non-Green/left crossbenchers by treating the newbie Lambie MPs with distrust. The post-2025 election fallout happened because Labor took advantage of the Government leaving itself open to collapse (which caused the election), but then polled poorly and had no plan B they were willing to execute.  While Labor's "attempt" to form government after the election did often (though not entirely) merit the label of "farcical", there is nothing unusual in PR systems about a post-election phase of negotiating to see who will form government.  

The origins of Hare-Clark

There are a few myths about why we have Hare-Clark.  One that has popped up in the present debate is that we have it because of our smaller population. That isn't really a factor that caused us to have it from the start, but I do agree that Hare-Clark works better in a small jurisdiction with high candidate and electoral awareness.  I don't recommend exporting it to Western Sydney.  

Another I have seen is that Andrew Inglis Clark would not have anticipated such multi-party chaos as we have now when he promoted the system, which hadn't been implemented statewide until after his death.  (1909 was the first statewide Hare-Clark election).  However, there were trials of a forerunner of the modern Hare-Clark system in Hobart and Launceston at the 1897 and 1900 elections, and these elected a diverse group of candidates including from two parties and independents.  Hare-Clark was removed prior to the 1903 state election, but the creation of five single Tasmanian federal electorates presented an opportunity for Tasmania to save money by no longer drawing its own boundaries.  During much of the period leading up to Clark's death, the federal House of Representatives had a three-party system.

There is a widespread suggestion that the Evans Government's desire to enact Hare-Clark during the 1906-9 term was fuelled by a desire to stymie the growing Labour Party, which had gained seats in the 1906 election.  I am still investigating whether this was actually true and if so on what basis.  Perhaps if so the argument would have been that under first past the post (used in 1903 and 1906) Labor was benefiting from vote-splitting.  The suggestion that there was a partisan motive apparently comes from Wikipedia, which traces it to a 2003 Aynsley Kellow book chapter, which in turn sort-of traces it to Townsley's "Tasmania: From Colony to Statehood, 1803-1945" which I have yet to read, though Townsley and Reynolds' "A Century of Responsible Government in Tasmania 1856-1956" contains no mention of a partisan motive.  The Kellow chapter claims "The move failed, and at the 1909 election the Labor [sic] Party won twelve seats and John Earle was invited to form the first Labor administration, a minority government which lasted a week before being defeated in a vote of the Assembly".  

That isn't really what happened.  Forces described in various sources as either "Ministerialist" or "Anti-Socialist" and at least in theory supportive of the incumbent Premier John Evans won 17 of the 30 seats under Hare-Clark in 1909.  Labour won 40% of the seats, but that was off about 40% of the vote.  Evans resigned as Premier two months after the election, with poor health a factor.  He was replaced by Elliot Lewis who was in the process of fusing these forces into a more formalised Liberal League (not the same as the modern Liberal Party).  This however was unstable and over five months after the election an outbreak of that on the floor of the Parliament saw Labour's John Earle installed as Premier for a week before the anti-Labour forces found a way forward and Lewis could be reinstalled.  

Overall the reason why we have Hare-Clark seems to have more to do with the convenience of using the same boundaries for state and federal elections, plus the fact that it was there thanks to Andrew Inglis Clark's advocacy at a time when a solution was being sought.  After at least one in every two elections there is whinging, and yet, thus far, the system has survived.  At this stage I am not convinced anyone has found a better alternative.  

Update: Silly Op Ed Alert!

A remarkably silly op ed by Jody Fassina, former Labor adviser, was published in the dead tree edition of the thief paper on Sep 9.  This argues that we should both go to single member seats and reduce the size of the House, ignoring that the reason the House was re-expanded is that it wasn't working particularly well even when a party won a majority.  (And no amount of plausible reduction would solve the problem of single-member electorates being too small).  This op ed is premised on the idea that the Liberals will never win a majority again (though they only missed doing so by a few percent this year) and that Labor will never outpoll the Liberals again (which is basically code for Labor are too hopeless to even get a third of the vote even when the government is a shambles, even though they were polling ahead of the Liberals early this year),  The article also blames the expansion of parliament for the great increase in the size of the crossbench; in fact the latter was largely caused by the major parties losing 11.2% of the vote in 2024 between them and not recovering significantly in 2025, and would have happened with 25 seats as well.

The article also says the Greens are now the Liberals' partners in government (if one was to argue anyone is, it is in fact the whole crossbench not just the Greens) and most extraordinarily says that "Hare-Clark has served its purpose, but is now a handbrake on strong and effective government and just allowing one side or the other to 'just get on with the job'".  What nameless purpose has Hare-Clark served that was so temporary that it no longer exists?  Do we really want to go back to a guarantee of "strong and effective" majority governments that collapsed (1979-82), sent the state near broke (1986-9), were mired in scandal (2006-10), collapsed again (2018-21), and again (2021-4) etc?  (Admittedly small proportional majorities contributed to these collapses but the NT also provides plenty of examples of instability in a 25-seat single-member House.)  

Labor beat the Liberals or Coalition on primaries in the most recent elections federally and in NSW, Victoria, SA, WA and ACT, many of which have similar issues of the fracturing of the "left" vote, but Tasmanian Labor cannot do this?  And cannot work with others to form a minority government, so we need to change our system to one in which those others will (supposedly) be eliminated with Labor getting their preferences?  

EMRS: What Doesn't Kill Rockliff Just Makes Him Stronger

EMRS: Lib 38 ALP 24 Green 13 IND 19 others 6
As Tasmanian polling overstates Independents, poll suggests no change from election
Lowest ALP primary since Feb 2014

Jeremy Rockliff has been through a lot of drama as Premier in the last two and a half years.  In May 2023 two Liberals quit the party and moved to the crossbench, putting his government into minority.  In September 2023 the government went further into minority following Elise Archer's forced resignation from Cabinet and Rockliff threatened to call an election to ward off the risk of Archer sitting as an independent without providing confidence and supply.  In February 2024 Rockliff called an early election after the relationship with the two ex-Liberals deteriorated further.  There was a large swing against the Liberals but they managed to form a minority government with confidence and supply agreements from four crossbenchers.  In August 2024 the Lambie Network collapsed and in the fallout Rockliff no longer had reliable confidence and supply guarantees.  In October 2024 Deputy Premier Michael Ferguson resigned over the long-running Spirit of Tasmania saga to ward off a no-confidence motion.  In November 2024 a crossbench no-confidence motion in Rockliff failed after Labor voted against it when their attempt to remove the crossbench's preferred reasons for it failed.  In June 2025 Labor moved their own no-confidence motion, which passed, and in theory Labor could have taken over government mid-term but they did not seek to do so, and an election was held, with a looming deficit crisis now more evidence for critics of the government to run on.  The Government somehow got a 3.2% swing in its favour.  The newly elected parliament (with very similar numbers overall) still included 17 seats worth of previous no-confidence voters plus two new MPs who were highly critical of the government, and could in theory easily have backed Labor.  

Not-A-Poll: Australia's Worst Opposition!

I've started a new Not-A-Poll in the sidebar where readers can vote on who is Australia's worst Opposition.  The exasperating behaviour of Tasmanian Labor over the last few days (weeks, months, several years ...) has drawn comparisons to the Canberra Liberals and Victorian Liberals and suggestions they are now a forever opposition.  I was thinking about this as I struggled for words to explain to some rusties just how unready for government Tasmanian Labor have just shown themselves to be.  It suddenly occurred to me in a flash that we are living in a golden age of dreadful Oppositions.  Not all Australia's nine current Oppositions stick out as terrible but in any normal time most of these would go straight to the bottom of the pile, if not the sea.  

What we have at present is surely the worst average quality of oppositions that has been seen for decades, and this is bad for democracy as some of the governments they are up against (by no means all) are very mediocre.  So in round 1 of this Not-A-Poll, which will run for two months in the sidebar, voters can vote on which of the current Oppositions is the worst.  In round 2 we will vote on how many of them are actually going to win!  A reminder, if viewing on mobile you can scroll down and click "view web version" to see the sidebar and participate in Not-A-Polls.

In considering the dreadfulness of a state or territory Opposition, this poll is mainly about their performance in state and territory politics, but efforts of the local branch in screwing up federal and local performance can also be considered.  

Our contenders, sorted by time in opposition ...

Tasmania 2025: The Endgame Live

RESUMPTION OF PARLIAMENT FOLLOWING JULY 19 ELECTION

Labor has moved constructive no-confidence motion to transfer confidence of the House from Jeremy Rockliff to Dean Winter

Motion failed 10-24, attracting no crossbench support.

WEDNESDAY: Labor leadership now under consideration (UPDATE: Josh Willie replaces Dean Winter)

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This is an updates thread for what should be, for now, the end of the 2025 Tasmanian election aftermath with the resumption of Parliament today.  The result is likely to be decided either by Labor moving a foreshadowed motion of no-confidence that fails to pass, or by Labor deciding not to move it.  In either of these cases the Rockliff government will have survived for now and won a fifth consecutive election.  However I am keeping an eye on things in case something unusually unusual happens.  (This is Tasmanian politics.  Normality is relative.)

Over the last few days David O'Byrne, the Greens and Kristie Johnston have all announced that they will not support Labor's proposed motion to express no confidence in Jeremy Rockliff and confidence in Dean Winter (see my confidence position tracker).  The Greens have also said that they will not abstain.  On this basis if the motion is put it will get at most 14 votes.  Labor would need three out of George Razay, Peter George, Craig Garland and Carlo Di Falco to demonstrate that the Greens' decision to back the Liberals had decided government, rather than the crossbench being so averse to Labor's attempt that the Greens could not have put Labor in government anyway.  This seems unlikely. [Update: George has just said no as well.]

Based on the order of business there will not be action on Labor's motion (if it goes ahead) until after 2 pm (I am not sure if the motion can go ahead between 2-3).  If the motion does go ahead there is potential for the debate to go for several hours and perhaps go into tomorrow though this will depend on how many MPs want to speak and for how long, and also whether the House chooses to adjourn around 6 pm or continue into the evening until it is finished.  

At this stage there is no sign of it being likely that anything will happen with Labor's motion (if it goes ahead) other than it being put, debated and lost - but there is always the scope for amendments and procedural motions.  There has been speculation on social media and talkback about the two parts of Labor's motion being uncoupled but I think we all know where that could end up.  (I also covered this idea in the introduction to my historic recap of the first day of Parliament in 1989).

Tasmania 2025: What Went Down When Gray Met The House In 1989

The State Of Play

It's been a rather slow lead-in to Tuesday's resumption of parliament following the as-yet not-firmly-resolved 2025 Tasmanian state election.  Although it has been known for eleven days now that parliament will be resuming on Tuesday, it took til today for any of the seven crossbench units (David O'Byrne for Rockliff) to clearly state support for one side or the other.  Three (the Greens re Labor, Craig Garland and Carlo di Falco re Liberals) have so far said at some stage that they weren't backing one side or the other unless something changes, but all have left the door open for the target of their disappointment to come good.  (See my confidence position tracker for a summary of who has said what.)

An apparently major issue for Labor's foreshadowed constructive no-confidence motion that would be designed to replace Jeremy Rockliff with Dean Winter is the position of the Greens, although it's not clearcut that the motion will pass even if the Greens support it.  There is an impass here in that the Greens are saying they cannot support Labor's motion without concessions on key policy areas but Labor is saying it won't provide any because it went to the election with a clear platform of doing no deals with the Greens.  I'd suggest that the two parties badly need a neutral mediator here except it's not clear these positions can be mediated, and presumably Labor would consider any outcome of a mediation to be a deal with the Greens.  (I have devised a magnificent scheme in which it would actually be a deal with the mediator, which the margin of this page is too small to contain etc ...)

Tasmania 2025: Confidence Position Tracker

Premier Rockliff recommissioned pending meeting the House on 19 Aug
Labor or an independent expected to move constructive no confidence motion 

If motion passes, Labor expected to form government

If motion fails, Liberals remain in office for time being

At this stage neither side has or seems likely (with current position) to get 18 votes in secured long-term confidence and supply agreements

Article current as of 19 August 5:30 pm

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Provisional tally on constructive no-confidence vote

As of 19 Aug if no changes in declared positions, constructive motion will not pass in its intended form.  

Yes: Labor (10)

No: Liberals (14)

Confirmed (8): David O'Byrne, Greens (5), Kristie Johnston, Peter George

Stated on floor (3): George Razay, Carlo Di Falco, Craig Garland

Motion was defeated 10-24 (Liberal Speaker not voting)

Tasmania 2025: Just As Hung But More Polarised

TASMANIA 2025: LIB 14 (=) ALP 10 (=) GRN 5 (=) IND 5 (+2) SF+F 1 (+1)
(Changes from 2024 result.  JLN (3 seats 2024) did not run, their former MPs running as two Nationals and one independent, all defeated)

Counting is over for an election that finished up in much the same place as last year's ... but not quite, and this will be a rather different parliament despite the big three all coming out with what they went in with.  At present, Premier Jeremy Rockliff is intending to be recommissioned to meet the Parliament (see pathways to government article), but the storm clouds have been gathering since election night as to whether he has any prospect of surviving another no-confidence motion when Parliament resumes, let alone whether he can govern with any stability.  It didn't get any easier for him yesterday with Craig Garland ruling out supporting his party and expressing willingness to vote no-confidence again, and Peter George expressing serious reservations (while also making comments that might not make life easy for Labor either).  The writs will be returned on Tuesday, kickstarting the week in which the Governor must appoint somebody, presumably Rockliff, to meet the House, preferably sooner rather than later.

The past four minority governments elected as such in Tasmania lost the next election outright, some of them heavily.  This is the first to stop that rot since the Reece Government was re-elected with a majority in 1964, and that government had spent over two years in majority during its term after picking up a seat on a recount.  The Rockliff government has not only avoided net seat losses but had a 3.2% swing to it.  And for those saying that the days of majority government are gone forever, beware, they did not actually miss one by very much.  The Liberals finishing eighth in three divisions has enabled me to determine that on swings of 0.94%, 1.82% and 2.30% from the winners, they would have won the final seats in Franklin, Clark and Lyons respectively - the first two of which would have given them the numbers for a potential government with Carlo Di Falco and David O'Byrne (assuming those two were agreeable).  In Bass, the Liberals' elimination in tenth place makes it hard to be sure what swing would have won them the seventh seat, especially as keeping the Liberals in the final seat race requires eliminating someone who didn't actually get excluded.  But I think that about a 3% higher primary vote would have been enough, meaning the Liberals could have won a majority off about 43%.  Wherever it goes from here, this was a close election.

2025 Tasmanian Election: Pathways To Government

This article is part of my Tasmanian election 2025 postcount coverage.  

Link to tallyboard thread

Links to individual postcount pages: Bass Braddon Clark Franklin Lyons

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I did write a fair amount about the formation of the next government in the tallyboard thread but it's got somewhat buried in the postcount pages and I wanted to do a new thread to discuss the different pathways to government that might occur after the election. At this time we are starting to see what I suspect will be rather a lot of gnashing and wailing on the pages of The Australian (especially if Labor keeps trying to form government) but a lot of it is clueless.  (Just a note in case anyone thinks I am part of the gnashing and wailing for my tallyboard heading "Tasmania Remains Ungovernable" - nup, it was a reference to "become ungovernable"; I am celebrating the way Tasmanians collectively refused to be told what to do and gave the major parties back another mess.)

As I start this article the numbers sit at Liberal 14 Labor 10 Greens 5 IND 4.  The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers are strongly placed in Lyons and the last seat in Bass is a multi-party scramble with five or six contenders - we will know the outcome of that around August 2.

Meeting the House

The first thing I want to underline is that whatever the numbers, whatever the deals, whatever the deal-shaped objects, Jeremy Rockliff is the incumbent Premier.  As the incumbent he has the clear right by convention to be recommissioned in order to "meet the house" and enable it to decide his destiny.  Also he clearly intends to do it.   It is common for Premiers in minority governments who appear to have lost the election (and it is not clear this is the case for Rockliff yet) to do this, because in theory an MP who was going to back the opposition might change their mind in the middle of the debate, and because decisions about whether a Premier has lost confidence should be made by Parliaments and not by the Governor's reading of MP's letters.  The widespread misreading of Johnston's 2024 letters is a good example of why confidence needs to be determined on the floor.  It is only where the office of Premier is vacant that the Governor must make a provisional decision.