Tasmania Senate 2025: Prospects and Guide

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SUMMARY: 2 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 JLN unless something very unusual happens

Tasmania's list of Senate candidates has been released.  Tasmania has 33 candidates in 12 groups with one ungrouped, down from 39 candidates in 14 groups plus two ungrouped in 2022.  Of the groups that ran columns last time, one has disbanded voluntarily (Local Party/Network), one isn't running, and two have in a messy sense merged forces.  One group that didn't run last time is running (Australian Citizens); they ran as Citizens Electoral Council in 2019.  FUSION had declared a candidate but for whatever reason didn't nominate.    

This piece gives some basic information and views about the parties and lead candidates, and some general background to the contest.  The party candidate section includes a lot of opinions about candidates and parties, and it is normal for this article to display more whims, snark and subjectivity than some of my other guides.  Parties that are not what they seem and candidates who don't impress me will be called out as per normal.   More content will be added in as time permits, so it may be worth checking back before voting to see if I've added any more details re candidates.

For advice about how to vote in the Senate see How To Make Best Use Of Your 2025 Senate Vote.  I am listing how-to-vote recommendation cards for the Tasmanian parties as they come out, but I strongly recommend ignoring all Senate how-to-vote cards since following any Senate how-to-vote card that doesn't number all boxes will weaken the potential power of your vote.  

A Section 44 section will be added to the foot of this article if (or should I say when) any candidates appear to be ineligible.

Interstate interlopers

It is common (and irritating to many voters) for minor parties to run non-Tasmanian candidates for Tasmania Senate.  There is no residence test for being able to run in a particular state so it is up to the voters to decide whether to vote for such candidates.  

Background

Tasmania currently has four Liberal, four Labor, and two Green Senators plus Jacqui Lambie and Tammy Tyrrell.  Lambie was first elected as a candidate for the then Palmer United Party in 2013 but left it and formed her own Network.  Tyrrell was elected under the Network banner in 2022 but has since quit it in still murky circumstances and has registered her own front party name which is not contesting this election.  As recently as the 2011-4 term Labor had six Tasmanian Senators, but one seat was lost to Lambie in 2013, and another to the Liberals in 2019 (as a result of a combination of system quirks that saw the Liberals only defending one of their four seats at that election - see 2019 edition).  The Liberals have since lost that seat to Tyrrell.

Not up at this election are Tyrrell, Labor Senator Helen Polley, Liberal Senators Jonathan Duniam and Wendy Askew and Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson.  These will next face the voters in late 2027 or early 2028 should they contest (unless there is a double dissolution sooner).  The sixth member of the slate is Labor Senator Anne Urquhart, but she has quit to run for Braddon, creating a casual vacancy that has not yet been filled.  

Labor preselections attracted controversy affecting their incumbents in 2016 and 2019 with Lisa Singh shoved down the ticket (she still won on below the line votes in 2016) as did the Liberals' in 2016 and 2022 (Richard Colbeck and Eric Abetz demotions).  However there's been none of that this time and significant below the line voting for down-ticket major party candidates won't be a thing for the first time since Senate reform.

The Tasmanian Senate contest could be a bugbear for the Coalition in the currently unlikely case that they form government.   It's a state that tends to return a 3.5-2.5 left-right result (being very generous to the right here by classing Lambie in the middle).  My overall Senate prospects article (written when the Coalition was polling much better and about to be revised) points out that a narrow Coalition Reps win could leave the Coalition so hamstrung by the Lambies of this world that they raced to a DD early in their term.  

Prospects

This section is in large part lifted from my recent Senate Prospects article, which isn't much affected by the Government's improvement in the polls for Tasmania specifically since Tasmania tends to do its own thing.  

As with last election, Tasmania looks like a boring contest if the Lambie Network vote stays high.  It becomes interesting if this is not the case.  The only reason it might not be is the Network has been a shambles in this term, but I doubt most Lambie voters will have noticed that or care.  Lambie's personal brand remains strong although her effort level is not quite as high as it has been.

These were the leading primary totals in quotas (a quota is a seventh of the vote) last time:

Lib 2.241 Q

ALP 1.893

Green 1.084

Jacqui Lambie Network 0.605

ON 0.271

LCP 0.212

LDP 0.136

UAP 0.114

Local Party 0.101

The Liberal vote was slightly inflated by a below the line campaign for then Senator Eric Abetz, who lost his seat after being demoted to third (he has since been elected to state parliament).  13.6% of Abetz's BTLs or 0.04 quotas leaked at 2 so were not really Liberal-ticket votes.

The gap between the top four is so wide here that a very great deal has to change for a different result.  After preferences JLN defeated One Nation 1.045 Q to 0.626 Q with some Liberal votes remaining that also favoured JLN, so they were running away with it.  For JLN to lose to any of the micro-parties they would have to lose at least half their primary vote, probably more.  The non-Green minor parties have generally very little campaign presence so far though  the announcement of Lee Hanson as the One Nation candidate has captured some media attention.  

I suppose it is worth considering the possibility of the Liberals taking Lambie's seat but unless Lambie's vote goes down a lot, this would require a primary vote swing to the Liberals of something like 5%, and even that might not be enough as Lambie will tend to flog them on preferences.

The Greens are as usual hyping the idea that they can win two seats, but while they may do well coming off a pretty good state election result and with the benefit of Labor's pro-salmon-industry overriding of the EPBC Act, they would need a massive swing to be in the mix for that. A near 6% swing would be needed for them to equal Labor on the primary vote (just writing "equal Labor on the primary vote" is enough to see how unrealistic it is).  The only other pathway might be if they were to poll, say, 19-20% (a swing above 4%, aboout matching their all-time best achieved in 2010 in a far less crowded field) and have the Lambie vote crash by a few points, but even then either JLN or One Nation would beat them as mostly right-wing preferences pooled.

Parties and candidates: a subjective guide

Here is my guide to the parties running for this Senate election.  Mostly I include background on the lead candidate or competitive candidates only, but I will also mention any interesting/concerning minor candidates (especially since there's an argument that because of Section 44, even seemingly unelectable candidates are important). Parties are listed in ballot order.  Where opinions are offered, they are obviously purely mine, and if you don't like them feel free to go and write your own somewhere else, or  contest them in comments. I may add more links later, but I will not add or change any material on request except to correct clear factual errors that are not a result of me being obviously silly.  My 2022 guide contains some extra info re some candidates and parties.  

Opening the batting again is Sustainable Australia, and I am very used to running a certain line re this party in my guides.  I'm used to spelling out how in many respects this appears to be an environmental party similar to the Greens, but that its arguments for immigration restrictions and against "over-development" leave it open to claims of mostly covert xenophobia and rich white urban NIMBYism.  

But this time there's a twist because the party has embraced (including in its name) Universal Basic Income. UBI is an idea that one avoids the bureaucracy and existential harm of unemployment welfare by simply paying everyone an income whether they need it or not, separate from whatever they may earn through work.  I am not economist enough to evaluate it but I do wonder whether giving even the most well-off people money they don't need  is just inflationary (unless you raise taxes as well), and I am also so suspicious of this party that I wonder if the UBI bit is a gimmick.  But their policy of implementing UBI puts Sus Aus way ahead of the major parties in terms of welfare policy.  The Liberals and Labor have presided over a Centrelink regime that subjects recipients to punitive and demeaning activity tests, that puts not just recipients but their partners and parents in nefariously misguided income-testing poverty traps, that is incompetently administered (so that recipients have to spend much of their time fighting to get paid rather than looking for work) and that is frequently illegal a la Robodebt.  Both majors deserve to lose all their seats in both houses over this.

Where was I?  Yes, the funny bit.  In a hilarious due diligence failure even by micro-party standards Sustainable Australia were endorsing Fenella Edwards (see whom below) as their candidate until they disendorsed her just a few days out.  Leading their charge now to lose their deposit yet again is Dennis Bilic, a Victorian ring-in (booo!) who previously ran in the Prahran by-election.  The ABC guide to same informs me that "he works as a Senior Operations Manager for a global engineering consultancy" and has a Masters in Strategic Foresight (is that a thing? How is that a thing?)

In column B is the first of the major parties that does not deserve support because of its (large) part in the Centrelink trainwreck, and that's the Liberal Party.  Top of the ticket is first-term Senator Claire Chandler, who has had a generally successful six years and this year joined the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy and also Science and the Arts.  Chandler is however no stranger to the culture wars for her frequent advocacy against transgender athletes in women's sports, and against funding artists deemed to be anti-Israel.  Less likely to be seen in such debates is veteran moderate Richard Colbeck, Senator since 2002 except for a few years out following his 2016 demotion.  Colbeck was a Minister under Malcolm Turnbull but is now a backbencher under Peter Dutton.  In this term, Colbeck notably abstained on and severely criticised the government's social media ban for under-16s.  Third Liberal candidate (a position the party is not remotely likely to win) is Jacki Martin, a Latrobe councillor, former Commonwealth Bank branch manager for 19 years, and now staffer for Senator Askew.

Third up is Trumpet of Patriots, which is a kind of temporary merger of the former Australian Federation Party (itself a merger of too many silly right-wing parties to name) and Clive Palmer's United Australia Party, which failed to reregister under that name after deregistering to avoid filling out forms.  Contrary to myth that Palmer made up this ridiculous name, it was in fact coined by Nick Duffield in the Melbourne anti-mandates/lockdown movement in 2021; one suspects the Trump pun in the name is deliberate but who knows.  The Federation Party had already adopted this name before Palmer decamped to it.  Supposedly it's "patriotic" to mimic a US President who threatens allies with tarriffs while bootlicking the dictator of Russia.  

Lead candidate for TOP is another interstate ring-in in NSW-based Wayne Moore, a long time UAP persona and tyre centre owner who was "appointed Shadow Assistant Treasurer" in 2019 as part of the UAP's fiction that people outside the parliament could hold shadow portfolios.  (However, TOP's second and third candidates Matthew Kelly and Gregory Smith are Tasmanians.)  We all know what we'll get with this latest Palmer political golf buggy - loud yellow ads full of random populist gibberish, but at least they're no longer falsely claiming to be the party of Hughes, Bruce and Menzies.  They are instead claiming to be the party of Trump, which is worse.  I've also noticed that in their clueless attempts to harness the anti-transgender movemement they've unwittingly endosed the pro-trans position that adults can decide their own gender.   

In column D is Legalise Cannabis, again headed by disability support worker and cannabis oil extractor (and fifth-time candidate for the party) Matthew Owen, who still has a big beard and ... that's about all I've got! The party is surging nationally and holds seats in upper houses in NSW, Victoria and WA, and quite often embarrasses the Greens by outpolling them in by-elections.  However like all single-issue parties its candidates have been a mixed bag; in 2021 in WA it elected two candidates who both pushed discredited views on vaccines among other things. 

They're followed by Animal Justice Party, headed by Casey Davies, a zoology graduate studying Protected Area Conservation and with a passion for "insects, tattoos, gaming, and hitting the gym."  I must stop quoting this bio, it is starting to sound cool.  Their past experience includes working as a pet store and studying Complete Invisibility as the party's candidate for Clark in 2022.  I've seen nothing to revise my previous call that AJP are "philosophically radical (in what I find a simplistic way) and oppose practically all killing of animals, humane or not (including when for environmental control reasons) as well as the sale of pets "other than from shelters or rescuers"". The party's approach to Protected Areas is that not killing feral pests trumps ecological values, which when applied to Tasmania's rampant feral deer problem does not sit well with me.  (Speaking of which, the number of confused AJP voters who preference the Shooters second will never not amaze.)

Next up is the Australian Greens, with a line-up of all previous Green candidates (at some level or other) headed by Nick McKim, Senator since 2015 and former Tasmanian state party leader and minister.  Do I have anything new to say about Senator McKim after all this time?  I doubt it.   I have however learned that running mate for the second straight election, lawyer Vanessa Bleyer, wrote a poem about wedge-tailed eagles when she was 10!  It's a long way down from there to speaking for the Australia Institute.  Tarkine crusader Scott Jordan has somehow nabbed the not remotely coveted #3 position despite having a net satisfaction of -94 in most of Braddon (OK I made that up), and Equality Tasmania board member and party organiser Trenton Hoare is number 4.

In Group G is the Jacqui Lambie Network, which has had a bumpy ride the last few years.  Not only did Senator Tyrrell quit the party but so did two of its three state MPs, a situation for which I in substantial part blame Lambie.  This hasn't stopped her making her second attempt to make her party nationally successful, the first in 2016 not breaking 0.5% in any other state.  Lambie is the lead candidate, aiming to be elected for the fourth time (once later disqualified) for what she says will be her final term.  Lambie's shouty and folksy political style and mix of left (education, economics, health) and right (national security, gender, Islam) positions has been mentioned here before but a new one in the mix is her opposition to salmon farms in Macquarie Harbour, a position she shares with the Greens.  At this election Lambie has been running a "Make Australia Make Again" campaign re making things in Australia, but seems that until recently didn't apply to JLN merchandise.  

Next up is the Libertarian Party (the former Liberal Democrats) and yes another mainland ring-in!  Chrysten Abraham is an employee relations specialist with a business degree from RMIT who was the party's candidate in Flinders in 2022.  This party has a lot of form in imposing north islanders on the Tasmanian Senate ballot down the years and it does raise the question of why they run in the state at all if they can't find authentic libertarians who live in it and want to be candidates.  A possible explanation is that the party is struggling to find authentic libertarians who'll run for it and not away from it anywhere.  It seems lately infested with Trumpists, pandemic conspiracists and people who fell off the nasty wing of the Liberal Party, and to be somewhat less principled (however simplistic those principles are) than it once was.

Next to the Libertarians (amusing in terms of failed coalition negotiations between the two) is Pauline Hanson's One Nation, its candidate being Lee Hanson, Pauline's Tasmanian-resident daughter.  Lee Hanson works in human resources and organisational change management (including trying to simplify bureaucratic structures at UTAS, good luck with that, the work of Hercules).  Amusingly she's now a candidate for a party that's so struggled to manage its own organisation that almost everyone ever elected under it at state or federal level has eventually quit or been disqualified or sacked.  Hanson Jnr has marketed herself as a new generation candidate for a party in some need of image renewal.  She's claimed to have "her own convictions" but in explanations of this so far I've seen no real sign of political distance from Hanson snr.  This is an interesting attempt because Hanson jnr lacks the eccentric baggage of Steve Mav yet is high-profile enough already to tee off at Lambie and be noticed.

In Column J is the Australian Citizens Party.  This is formerly the Citizens Electoral Council, a bunch of Lyndon La Rouche (he's dead) affiliated conspiracy theory addicts which is one of the most uncompetitive parties in Australian electoral history.  Lead candidate Darryl Staggard has worked in quite a lot of things and thinks we're "staring into the furnace of a hot war with China".  Second candidate Ray Williams ran for the same party in 2019, then for Shooters, Fishers and Farmers in 2022 when it wasn't on the ballot, and has now returned to run for them again.  

The Australian Labor Party might hope they're so far down this ballot that I've forgotten I won't vote for them for reasons stated above.  Lead candidate is Carol Brown, Senator since 2005, an attempt by unionist Jess Munday to dislodge Brown having been withdrawn.  There's new and notable blood in the second spot with the selection of Richard Dowling, an internationally experienced economist and public policy executive who was a senior advisor to Lara Giddings in the early 2010s.  At around this time Dowling's Twitter profile and some media mentions noted him as the "driest economist in town", though I am not sure which version was the chicken and the egg in that story.  Labor is the only ticket running six candidates (I think for reasons of formality) with plenty of youth down the ticket too.  Filling out their list are Bailey Falls (Young Labor President), Saxon O'Donnell (a young baritone singer), Greg Luckman (a retired ag scientist and pharmacy director) and Amelia Meyers (said to be Australia's youngest candidate).   

The rear gunners on the group list are the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, led by Phil Bigg, an energetic social media presence who has run for the party at state level and has already been seen complaining about beard references.  Bigg is the President of the Tasmanian Shooters Union and is a tradesman and hunter.   The Shooters are perennial triers in Tasmanian state elections but much like the Nationals struggle to make headway here, and probably for much the same reason (communities in Tasmania are more closely connected making it harder to run the narrative that the bush is neglected).  There's more overlap at times between SF+F and the Tasmanian left than one might expect, and while writing this article I came across Bigg on Facebook teeing off at the salmon industry.  Bigg has been particularly active on environmental deer culling (he wants the meat to be available for food) and laws regarding antique firearms.  Although the party makes some interesting contributions in the local space I remain very cautious: of anything that jeopardises the success we've had with gun control since Port Arthur, of "traditional user" activities that can trash reserves and of the party's support for Australia to become a nuclear arms power.  The party also embraces social-conservative culture-warring, and what that intrinsically has to do with shooting, fishing or farming is beyond me.   

The sole ungrouped candidate is mostly left-wing but anti-trans-rights independent Fenella Edwards, who must have done quite the job to get her 100 signatures and deposit up after her late dumping by Sustainable Australia. (Their website still features her UBI Rap despite her then quitting the party and declaring that they "suck lady d***").  Edwards had such a trail of bizarre social media form, which she attributes to now-cured psychosis (my 2022 coverage being a mild selection) that the answer to why did they boot her is probably an "all of the above".   Even during the last few days of her Sus Aus run she was in heated debate over generic TERF talking points in my mentions on Bluesky, which I missed until after I'd heard she had been sidelined.   

How To Vote Cards

Here I will note the how-to-vote cards issued by parties in the Tasmanian race as I become aware of them.  How-to-vote cards are recommendations put out by parties only.  The vast majority of Tasmanian voters don't follow them, and I strongly recommend not following them.  They are noted here for interest only.

Liberal: One Nation, Libertarian, SF+F, Lambie, Labor

One Nation: Libertarians, SF+F, TOP, Aus Citizens, Liberal

Sustainable Australia: Open ticket. 

Section 44 Section

Recently I noticed that the Greens House of Reps candidate for Franklin was ineligible under Section 44, resulting in his withdrawal.  There are some Senate candidates who may be ineligible, or at least their disclosure forms do not make it clear that they are not.  Or they may be in the clear.  Unfortunately the S44 disclosure forms do not require the most useful details for answering all questions.  

* Pierre Richardson (SAP #2): Both parents born in UK.  Refers to them being UK citizens their whole life.  Writes "No, I have always only held an Australian passport" (why the strikethrough?) but that's not the test.  If his parents were married when he was born he is most likely a UK citizen, but I don't know if they were.

* Matthew Owen (LCP #1): I mentioned this one in my 2022 guide.  Father born in England to English parents, mother born in Australia.  If his parents were married when he was born he is most likely a UK citizen, but I don't know if they were.