Tasmanian Nationals Are Lambie Chaos 2.0

This article is part of my 2025 Tasmanian state election coverage. (Link to main guide page with links to other articles here.)

I was going to write an article called "There Are Too Many Independents" but on seeing the full rollout of candidates for the state election I feel that higher duty calls.  There are too many independents this election (a record 44; some are competitive or at least entertaining but I'll be impressed if even ten get their deposits back) but that can wait.  I want to make some comments about the latest coming of the Tasmanian Nationals.

We've been here before.  In the leadup to the 2014 election there was a Tasmanian Nationals branch that was briefly part of the federal Nationals and was under the stewardship of former Labor MLC Allison Ritchie (never herself a candidate).  Initial enthusiasm for that run included Michael McCormack tweeting (above) that the appointment of Ritchie was "a coup for Christine Ferguson" (then Nationals Federal President).  Less than a month after McCormack's tweet the branch had been disowned by the federal party, who tried but were powerless to cancel the state party name registration.  The rogue branch's curious crew of candidates, including a legal dope advocate and a former Socialist Alliance member, polled a risibly tiny vote tally and the Nats name disappeared. 

There was a brief revival for the 2019 federal election after Steve Martin joined the party after taking the seat Jacqui Lambie briefly lost to Section 44.  The 2019 try did very well in Lyons after the Liberal candidate was disendorsed but Martin himself sank without trace and the party vanished again thereafter.  In the leadup to the 2024 election there was speculation that John Tucker (who has long seemed like a Nat from central casting) might run as a Nationals candidate although the party was not yet registered at state level, In the end he ran as an independent.  

In late 2024 the National Party of Australia - Tasmania made two separate signup attempts with the second one succeeding.  Christine Ferguson, on whose federal watch the 2014 damp squib squibbed or did whatever damp squibs do, is now the party's state secretary.

The Nationals might seem attractive to voters who don't like the proposed Macquarie Point stadium but don't want to vote for the Greens or independents.  They might also seem attractive to conservatives who think Jeremy Rockliff is too left.  But I think that if one is looking for any way out of the mess that the previous parliament has been, the Nationals are not the answer, they are more of the same.  Or maybe worse given one of their candidate selections.

Incompatible incumbents

One of the obviously bizarre aspects of the Nationals' campaign is their endorsement of both Miriam Beswick and Andrew Jenner.  Beswick and Jenner were both elected for the Jacqui Lambie Network in March 2024 but their paths since have been very different.  Both of them initially signed a deal with the Rockliff government that was ridiculously restrictive and controlling.  The JLN parliamentary party collapsed partly because of this deal (which the government was also heavily to blame for even asking for).  Beswick and Rebekah Pentland were thrown out of JLN before they could quit, and Andrew Jenner remained.  The major cause of the breakdown was Lambie herself, threatening to rip up a deal she was not a signatory to and trying to control the state party's actions when she had suggested in the campaign that she wouldn't.  There was obvious bad feeling between Jenner and the other two, with Jenner backing in Lambie's declaration that Beswick and Pentland (who he has referred to disparagingly since as "the ladies") had betrayed the values the party failed to announce before the election.  

What happens if the Nationals win two seats and the winners are Beswick and Jenner?  Beswick who voted against the no confidence motion in Rockliff and Jenner who voted for it, and whose loss of confidence in the government through the term basically has caused this election? How is that supposed to work?  What on earth was Bridget McKenzie doing down here effectively endorsing both of them?  Had she been paying any attention to what had happened here?  At all?

What about the other ex-JLN candidates running for the Nats Angela Armstrong and Lesley Pyecroft?  Which side of the Jenner/Beswick divide were they on?  If elected would they be Jenner Nats, Beswick Nats, Tucker Nats or something else altogether?  How can anyone expect anyone to be loyal to a party when few of its candidates have been members for even a few months?  

(Tucker, Cooper and Rick Mandelson are the only Nats candidates out of nine who were on the December 2024 signup list of members - as oddly was Claudia Baldock who is running with the Adam Martin independent group!)

Speaking of Jenner, in a Facebook video update posted June 18 he talked about commenting about salmon (on which I suspect his position disagrees with the federal party) and said "I'll do the salmon one in a minute" because "that's an important one".  I'm still waiting for the salmon video.  

Contradictory comments

There is also the question of what the Tasmanian Nationals will actually do if they obtain the balance of power, and my strong impression so far is they really do not have a clue and are just hoping anti-stadium populism carries a few of them over the line.  A juicy initial source on this was a 6 News interview with Carl Cooper, candidate for Bass (and the longest standing of the group, having also run in the 2019 election):

"We need to be reasonable, we are prepared to negotiate in relation to the government that is formed.  We understand that our strength is in listening to people and following through on their discontent.  [..] We have no allegiances currently, we have no arrangements or agreements with any party [..] We'll basically listen to any incumbent who's prepared, or group who's prepared, to run as a government, and we will listen and support them if it's a reasonable arrangement.  So we will negotiate, basically, with whoever comes to parliament with the numbers, that will be done in a transparent and honest manner.":

Now firstly, this is a very confused statement.  A potential government that has the numbers doesn't need to negotiate with anybody else (potentially the Nationals could be in a position, jointly with other non-Green crossbenchers, to provide the numbers to either side, so they might have to make a choice). Also to nitpick a little while I'm at it, the negotiation is the phase before anybody comes to the parliament.  But overall this sounds pretty amicable - they'll try to do something for the people but they will work constructively.  

Then their later statement is rather different - John Tucker saying that they will make sending the stadium back to the drawing board a condition of their support if the Nationals hold the balance of power.  Which most likely means that if the Nationals get the sole balance of power, neither major party will be able to work with them without breaking core promises on one of the biggest issues, and it's quite possible the major parties will simply do a deal with each other to try to pass the stadium (on whatever terms the LegCo might let them) so that somebody can get on with governing.

And there's this ...

At the last moment one Andrew Roberts emerged as a previously undeclared extra Nationals candidate.  Will we see a profile of Roberts on their website? (They don't even have profiles for six of their other candidates up there yet. Voting starts this week!)  Roberts ran as a very obscure independent for Lyons at the previous election polling just 130 votes, and the Nats have now run him for Braddon though he is still based in Lyons.  At the previous election, Roberts was one of the candidates who signed a pledge for a so-called "Women's Forum Australia" committing to excluding trans women from all women's spaces (which would force them to use men's toilets placing them at obvious risk of sexual and other assaults).   His Facebook page is full of similar material, and not very much else.

It's bad enough that the Nationals would run a candidate with those views but the Examiner also reported that Roberts had run a few times before as an independent, and indeed there is an Andrew Roberts from the same town who attracted controversy over impounded anti-gay fliers advertising his candidacy and stated to be co-authored by him (link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4 with link to flier).  As one of the links notes:

"The flyer also links homosexuality to drug abuse, calls for the re-criminalisation of homosexuality in Tasmania, and describes a vast homosexual conspiracy involving Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and “Hollywood”."

Not to mention the Bilderberg Group and the Rockefellers!   The fliers were ostensibly co-authored by James Durston whose name also appeared on Roberts' "True Green" website (the email address on that website was an AEC-lodged contact detail for Roberts' Senate run), and it also used the name Three Wise Monkeys. Similar bizarre fliers circulated in the 2013 Nelson LegCo election.  Roberts also ran in the 2014 state election as an independent, then in the 2016 Senate election as a Family First candidate (in the latter case supporting this very nice and moderate chap who Tasmania almost elected to the Senate under Group Ticket Voting in 2013).   Images from Roberts' 2014 state run and the 2024 WFA endorsement confirm it's the same guy.  In fairness I have seen no proof that the inadequately authorised fliers were even partly the work of Roberts as opposed, for instance, to Durston acting unilaterally, but even having run with Peter Madden in 2016 after Madden's 2013 run should in my view be enough to exclude a candidate from running for a mainstream party forever.  

This history was hardly obscure, I referred to it in my 2024 Lyons guide.  Did the Nationals do any vetting of this candidate at all? 

So what's the problem here?  Roberts presumably isn't going to win, Beswick has been an okay MP and one could always still vote for or preference Beswick and just leave Roberts off safely, right?  If only!  The problem is that because of the way Hare-Clark recounts work, any vote that helps elect Miriam Beswick could later result in Andrew Roberts becoming an MP.  If Beswick wins and then at any point resigns her seat, it is very likely her sole running mate will win the recount.  Any recount is of the departing member's votes when they were elected, and this almost always elects someone from the same party, even if they have no primary votes to speak of.  If Beswick is elected, Roberts will be a prospective MP in waiting for as long as the Parliament lasts.

The safest way for Braddon voters to reduce the risk of Roberts ever getting into parliament is now, alas for Beswick who may not have known anything about all this, to number all 38 (sigh) boxes and put the Nats totally last.   Or if not making that much effort, to at least not preference either Nat above anyone remotely competitive, and to give as many preferences as one can stand to others.  

The completely unnecessary preselection of a risky candidate with a long track record of not getting votes raises the question whether anyone in the Nationals has any idea what they are doing or whether they were so desperate they just took anyone without checking.  In this light Clark independent John Macgowan says  "The nationals even called me and asked me to run, even though I disagree with all their announced positions and sledge them regularly online. Candidate vetting is not their strong suit."  Did they think they had to have a running mate for Beswick or something?  Do they even think they could win two seats?

Chaos Party Of The Year

Every Tasmanian election these days seems to have at least one party that's as stable as a lump of sodium in a high school chem lab sink.  In 2014 as silly as the "Nationals" were, Palmer United were much sillier.  In 2018 it was the first Lambie Network run (and also whatever "Tasmanians 4 Tasmania" was). In 2021 it was the ALP (yes really), and in 2024 it was the policy-free zone of  JLN.  In 2025 it looks like the Tasmanian Nationals are it.  

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time but there should be some head scratching in the federal Coalition about how we have got to this point.  The junior Coalition partner's state branch is running two candidates who between them sent the country's oldest Liberal government to two premature elections, and who history may record as having caused its demise.  

Being against the stadium is one thing and an obviously popular one.  But if one is against the stadium in the name of budget repair then the cost of the stadium is trivial compared to the indirect costs of repeated premature elections.  And while the Government is very much itself to blame for its run of such elections (because of lousy people management), as a part of the solution we need reliable crossbench forces.  Not parties full of party-hoppers, splitters, populist opportunism and obvious internal tensions.  We need people who we can know what they stand for - who can even know what they stand for themselves - based on a history of loyalty to good ideas.