2025 Tasmanian State Election Guide: Franklin

This is my Franklin electorate guide for the 2025 Tasmanian State Election.  (Link to main 2025 election preview page, including links to other electorates.)  If you find these guides useful, donations are very welcome (see sidebar), but please only donate if you can afford to do so.  Note: if using a mobile you may need to use the view web version option at the bottom of the page to see the sidebar. 

Franklin (3 Liberal 2 Labor 1 Green 1 IND)

Eastern shore Hobart (Clarence City), much of Kingborough, Huon Valley, D'Entrecasteaux Channel

Urban/outer urban/treechange/rural

Candidates

Note to candidates: As the number of candidates becomes large, continually changing link and bio details could consume a lot of my time.  It's up to you to get your act together and have your candidacy advertised on a good website that I can find easily well ahead of the election.  On emailed or Twitter/Bluesky request by July 12 at the latest I may make one free website link change per candidate at my discretion; fees will be charged beyond that.  Bio descriptions and other text will not be changed on request except to remove any material that is indisputably false.   

Where a link is available, a candidate's name is used as a hyperlink.  Emails from candidates who do not understand this will be ignored.  

I am not listing full portfolios for each MP, only the most notable positions.  Candidates are listed incumbent-first by cabinet position/seniority and then alphabetically, except if stated otherwise.

Liberal

Jacquie Petrusma, incumbent, earlier MHA 2010-22, minister Health, Aboriginal Affairs, Veterans Affairs

Eric Abetz, first term state incumbent, Liberal Senator for Tasmania 1994-2022, Senate Leader for Abbott Govt, famous uberconservative, Leader of the House, Minister for Business, Transport

Nic Street, incumbent, backbencher, former Minister Housing, Sport and Rec, etc

Josh Garvin, former President Tas and Vice-President Aus Young Liberals, former staffer for Madeleine Ogilvie, 2025 federal candidate for seat (more profile here)

Michele Howlett, owner of hair salon Gloss Hair Management

Natasha Miller, adviser to Petrusma and formerly Young, cancer charity fundraiser and former logistics firm manager

Dean Young, newsagent, advisor to Guy Barnett, MP for part of previous term after being elected on recount

Petrusma will be campaigning from home this election after a significant hamstring injury.

Labor

Dean Winter, incumbent, Leader of the Opposition, Shadow Minister Jobs, Trade, Tourism, former Mayor of Kingborough

Meg Brown, first-term incumbent, formerly Sorell Councillor and staffer for David O'Byrne, Shadow Minister Transport, Heritage, Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence

Kaspar Deane, Kingborough Councillor, public school teacher

Traycee Di Virgilio, board member in building and construction industry and WHS chair St Josephs Affordable Homes

Chris Hannan, National President Aus Association of Social Workers, relationship therapist (own business), recent former Jacqui Lambie Network secretary and 2024 Franklin and 2025 Senate JLN candidate

Amelia Meyers, teaching student, reportedly Australia's youngest 2025 Senate candidate

Jessica Munday, high-profile Secretary of Unions Tasmania, President Worker Assist legal service, superannuation board member

The Liberals are disputing Munday's eligibility to be elected on the grounds of her being on the WorkCover board.  I have written an article about this here.

Greens

Greens candidates are listed in endorsed ticket order.  Link to Franklin Greens profiles

Rosalie Woodruff, Greens Leader, incumbent, epidemiologist (Ph.D.) (lead candidate)

Owen Fitzgerald, staffer for Nick McKim, organised school climate strikes 2022, federal Franklin candidate 2025 (see below)

Gideon Cordover, Kingborough Councillor, IT marketing officer, former federal Greens adviser, NIDA graduate, past candidate including Huon 2022

Carly Allen, graphic designer, marketing and events manager, 2025 Pembroke candidate, more here

Adi Munshi, Manager, Tasmanian Travel and Information Centre, tourism operator

Mark Donnellon, software engineer, President of Streets People Love Hobart

Brian Chapman, retired Physical Education teacher, former Clarence councillor, recreation consultant, veteran of original United Tasmania Group (proto-Greens party)

Fitzgerald withdrew from campaigning for the 2025 federal election after I spotted that he was ineligible under Section 44, which the party's vetting process had missed despite it being very obvious.  The party nonetheless continued to endorse him on how-to-vote-cards and he still polled 10.5%.  Section 44 does not apply to state elections and he is eligible to be elected.  

Cordover briefly left the Greens last year for purely employment-related reasons but has now returned to the party.

Independents (Own Column)

David O'Byrne, incumbent, former prominent unionist, briefly Labor leader in 2021, elected as independent in 2024

For details re David O'Byrne's forced switch from Labor to Independent, essentially over a sexual harassment incident from before his parliamentary career, see my 2024 Franklin guide.  During this term O'Byrne has provided conditional confidence and supply support for the Rockliff Government but caused the resignation of Michael Ferguson from Cabinet by withdrawing it from Ferguson specifically.

Grouped Independents - Peter George group

Candidates are listed in endorsed ticket order

Peter George, veteran former ABC foreign correspondent, reporter and producer, prominent anti-salmon-farm campaigner who made final two in seat in federal election, see more here

Support candidates in alphabetical order (profile page):

Rayne Allinson, writer, assistant publisher at Forty South, D Phil in History (Oxford), author of a book on the letters of Elizabeth I, lecturer

Louise Cherrie, WHS consultant (Cherrie Consulting), former Environmental Protection Board member, former long-term Environment Superintendent at Nyrstar, also worked at Aurora, TasPorts

Chrissie Materia, health and wellbeing consultant, PhD (Utas) in rural health, sailor and sailing administrator and tours manager/facilitator

Kirsten Bacon, vocational teacher  (winner Tas VET Teacher/Trainer of the Year 2023), chef, food writer, cooking YouTube host, carer, Landcarer on Huon Island

Andrew T Jenner, former nurse/Bureau meteorologist working in "environmental monitoring, logistics, and field leadership" in Aus/Antarctica, including Lord Howe Island 

Anthony Houston, recently retired prominent salad farmer supplying Woolworths etc, spokesman Farmers for Climate Action, founder of Land Conservancy family fund, Tarkine protestor in 2021

Although not a party and claiming not to be a proto-party the Peter George group have unifying "pillars" of "budget repair" (meaning no stadium, Marinus Link or porkbarrelling), "social repair" (health, education and housing), "island repair" (environmental goals re salmon, ending native forest logging and increased mining royalties) and "integrity repair" (stronger Integrity Commission and government transparency).  I am considering determining the difference between these goals and the Greens' as a possible subject for my next scanning electron microscope booking.  

Andrew T Jenner is not to be confused with Andrew Jenner, Lyons MHA.

Independents (Ungrouped)

Sarah Gibbens, domestic cleaner (own small business)

Hans Jurriaan Willink,  IT and project assurance consultant, background in army and police, serial candidate usually as an independent (distant past Liberal Party, Science Party)

Tamar Cordover was a declared independent candidate but withdrew.

The ballot order in Franklin is Labor, O'Byrne, Peter George group, Liberal, Greens, ungrouped.

Prospects for Franklin

Franklin is generally a better seat for the Liberals than Clark, but is stronger for the left than Bass, Braddon and Lyons and has a high Green vote.  The Liberals would have only won three seats here under the 35-seat system in 2018 and 2021 and only fairly narrowly did win three seats here under it in 2024.  At this election, Franklin is the most obviously "bases loaded" seat and is set for an explosive count; nine potential seat winners into seven doesn't go, and that's even before we talk about the second seat the Greens got close to last time.

In 2024 the Liberals polled 34.1% (2.72 quotas), Labor 27.3% (2.18), Greens 19.8% (1.58), David O'Byrne 8.7% (0.70), JLN 4.9 (0.38) and there were various minor preference sources.  This led to a rather interesting cut-up where the Greens benefited from preferences but the Liberals were helped by their votes being split fairly evenly between Street, Abetz and Petrusma. The Greens also suffered from a high rate of within-ticket leakage.  Eventually Street won the final seat by 2.2% (0.17 Q).

George in Franklin at the federal election polled a primary vote of 21.7%.  This doesn't mean he'll get anything like that in the state election, but even a third of that might be enough.  He had three advantages in the federal race: Climate 200 funding, the Liberal candidate being low-profile and incapable of winning, and the Green candidate withdrawing from the campaign over Section 44 issues.  I am not sure the Section 44 issue had all that much impact on the Greens' vote as I think George would have taken a big chunk out of it in any case.  What I expect to see here is that George takes the place of the second Green in the cutup and surges on Greens preferences if he needs them, but he may not.

The launch of a full George ticket surprised me (yes it makes it easy for people to in effect just vote for him but he could get a bit lost in the forest on preferences from other parties).  However his candidates while mostly low profile seem solid in terms of community standing and may get some votes that flow as preferences to George by association.  I'll be very surprised if there is enough vote there for two seats and in the perhaps unlikely events of George either polling over a quota himself or getting excluded, votes exhausting at 7 from his ticket would be good news for the Liberals. 

Some very poor polling for the Greens in Franklin have led to concerns that they could lose their seat here because of George.  This seems unlikely; they polled 10.5% in the federal election with a low-profile candidate who had withdrawn from campaigning, and I suspect the DemosAU sample for Franklin is a bit off as concerns the Greens' vote.  All the same something to keep an eye on as the Greens' vote can be soft when challenged by likeminded independents.  

A two-party swing just above 3% would see Labor tie the Liberals on quotas but Labor will probably be disadvantaged by their vote being more concentrated with Winter.   On the Liberal side Abetz has had a successful term with the great entertainment value of his parliamentary performances winning over some critics who never expected they would like him on any level (and also some strong reviews of his performance as a minister).  It is possible therefore that Street will be defending the third seat. Abetz does tend to polarise opinions and will want to have a good primary vote after moving slowly on preferences in 2024.

Even if George wins, Labor could still take a seat at the Liberals' expense on the condition that O'Byrne loses.  A big part of the case for this is that unions that supported O'Byrne in 2024 now look to be getting behind Labor, with Munday's candidacy likely to help here.  Munday is herself a somewhat controversial pick because of past alleged links to O'Byrne, but it seems in general that the standard in Labor is that it's OK to have supported O'Byrne, it's just not convenient anymore to be him.   

O'Byrne may also suffer in traditional Labor communities from supporting the Rockliff government - on the other hands he does stand out as an overtly pro-stadium non-major-party candidate, his electorate work is generally considered strong and his ground game in terms of sign visibility seems good (though not so many shared fences with the ALP this time!).  The question will be how many loose votes he can pick up outside the Labor tent to make up for a loss of support within it.  Munday looks like Labor's biggest push for a third seat here in an electorate where Labor really has to win three.  If they don't, Munday could be a threat to Meg Brown's seat.  

Franklin could become a new Clark with three crossbenchers winning.  The Liberals have floated the possibility that if this happens it could be at Labor's expense not theirs but that would probably require Labor to poll extremely badly and the Liberals to get a good split within their ticket.

Outlook for Franklin: 2-3-1-1 was an early favourite, it now looks more between 3-2-1-1 and 2-2-1-2.