Tas Liberal Senate Turnover As Duniam And Askew To Go

I had a piece in drafts almost ready to release for weeks about this, but perhaps just as well I didn't since further developments have rendered the draft somewhat out of date.   The last few weeks have seen major news in the leadup to the expected 2028 half-Senate election with the Tasmanian Liberal ticket to lose both its incumbents.  Incumbent since 2019 Wendy Askew was to retire at the end of the term but will now resign in coming weeks while incumbent since 2016 Jonno Duniam will quit by the end of this year.  Askew's successor will get something like 20 months and Duniam's successor about 17 in the Senate in the lead-up to the next election, assuming it is on schedule and not early. 

The preselection currently underway is for the next election but I would expect that the top two candidates will inherit the seats of Askew and Duniam unless there are twists regarding availability.  

While it may seem disastrous for the Liberals to be go in with no incumbents, in some ways it is an advantage to them compared to if just one incumbent departed now.  The party now has more flexibility in planning a 2028 ticket from scratch without, for instance, feeling pressured to choose a female candidate as the sole winner of the vacancy race as might have been the case had only Askew departed.  

Duniam has cited family (once a cliche, these days with younger politicians not so much) and also burnout (especially over the Liberals' recent leadership spill) as factors leading to his departure.  Duniam, as outgoing Shadow Minister for Home Affairs, was viewed as a pretty major player in the Coalition Senate team especially on national security.  It's quite common to see politicians quit parliament citing lack of family contact then turn up in a new demanding job, as was the case with Gavin Pearce's comically brief retirement from politics, but in some such cases what they are really quitting is Canberra - being a FIFO politician from the Apple Isle would take a toll on families.  We will see where Duniam, who is only 43, turns up next.  Askew has a much lower profile but has served as Chief Opposition Whip and Chair of the committee on Senators Interests, and is well regarded as among her party's more knowledgeable people on the Senate's operations. So between them they are leaving quite a gap to fill.

What are the stakes?

At the last Senate election the Liberals retained the seats of Claire Chandler and Richard Colbeck, but Colbeck's seat was in doubt for some time with a final winning margin of 3.06% over Labor after One Nation preferences.  (It is not true that One Nation's Lee Hanson was close to winning this seat; Hanson jnr in fact finished eighth).  The Liberals' second seat was at risk because of a strong Labor performance in a case where Jacqui Lambie took the fifth seat. Lambie intends to retire in 2031, and it is not expected that there will be a Lambie Network ticket at the 2028 election.  

However a new threat is apparent in current polling, which is that One Nation are polling so well nationwide that in an election "held now" they could win two seats to the Coalition's one in various states, with Tasmania being potentially one of these.  The underlying strength of One Nation in the state  has long been masked by the competing Lambie Network vote, and the Liberal vote in the state is weak.  Had JLN not contested, One Nation would have polled around 6.8% in Tasmania in 2025 (slightly lower than Queensland and higher than every other mainland state - though partly because of a smaller field of parties), though they would not have won a seat in 2025 because of the high Labor vote.  In 2022 had JLN not contested, One Nation would have won a seat.

There is also a possibility that if Labor has another strong election, Labor could win three seats in the state with the Liberals and One Nation on something like current numbers winning only one each.  This sort of four left two right result would have happened in 2025 had JLN not stood, though in that case it would have been two Liberals.  Although this seems unlikely at the moment with the government struggling to retain its primary vote in polls, the government also struggled in polling at times in the previous term, so this cannot be ruled out.

Overall at the moment the Liberals would be expected to win the top seat while the second seat is a maybe, maybe not.  The second seat firms up if One Nation support collapses though it has so far shown no real signs of doing so.

Who's (not) running or might run?

I will edit this section if/as news on candidates comes to hand.  At the moment we have one declared candidate and a fair amount of speculation but other names are not to my knowledge public.    

Brad Stansfield (declared candidate) is a former Liberal strategist and staffer who was a key player in the party's victories at the 2014 through 2024 state elections (but not 2025).  He was chief of staff to Will Hodgman for eight years, and before that to Eric Abetz for a few years when Abetz was a Senator.  In recent years he was also known as a partner in the Tasmanian public relations firm Font PR which had a large number of industry and political clients in the state and which hosted Fontcast.  After Font PR dissolved itself, Stansfield took over the long-running polling business EMRS which Font had previously acquired and has also been commenting on the Poll Position podcast.  He is also a part-owner of Tasmanian Country newspaper.

Stansfield has made a large number of commentary remarks about the state of the party for those looking for his positions on things.  In particular he strongly opposes imitating or forming strategic alliances with One Nation, and has also criticised a wide range of state and federal MPs who have quit the parties they were elected under.  He supported the Voice to Parliament (while criticising the woeful official Yes campaign) but I would not describe him as a typical Liberal moderate on that account; in a recent podcast with someone you might recognise he described his politics as libertarian-leaning.  He would be a rather different Senator - not an obvious "retail politician" (though that hardly matters in the Senate where name recognition among the general public is often low) but someone with a large amount of campaigning and public opinion experience.  

By the way as the podcast notes I have known this candidate intermittently for about 35 years through chess as well as politics - among other things he was joint Tasmanian Champion in 1993, at the time the youngest ever Champion though that record has since been surpassed.  

Sarah Courtney (reported variously as "understood" to be running or "believed to be considering", which are not at all the same thing) is a former state MHA for Bass, and also a financial analyst and viticulturalist and Chair of the Tasmanian Forest Products Association. Courtney was elected at the 2014 election and became Minister for Primary Industries and Water and Minister for Racing in 2018, later serving in a very wide range of other portfolios including Health Minister during the pandemic, Resources, Building and Construction, Women, Education, Skills, Training and Workforce Growth, Children and Youth,  Hospitality and Events and Disability Services.   Courtney, generally considered a moderate, was a popular MP and at times considered a future leader but resigned from Parliament in somewhat controversial circumstances in 2022.  

Former Deputy Premier and now backbencher Michael Ferguson was being reported as not ruling out interest but has now announced he isn't running.  

I expect there are multiple candidates who have either not publicly announced they are running or have done so in a low key fashion and I am surprised the full makeup of the field - whatever that is - is not attracting more attention.  It would be interesting to know who are the others running.

Overall Tas Senate Turnover

A potential result of these changes is that Tasmania could see a completely different lineup of Senators elected in 2028 to the start of the slate in 2022.  Peter Whish-Wilson (Greens) is about to depart, Anne Urquhart (Labor) has already been replaced by Josh Dolega after resigning to run for the Reps, Helen Polley (Labor) will be 71 in 2028 and might retire before the heat death of the universe and Tammy Tyrrell (JLN) is now effectively the third Labor Senator after quitting the JLN, briefly forming her own party then now joining Labor.  However it's possible in theory that Polley could continue for at least part of the term or that Tyrrell could be preselected for a winnable position on the Labor ticket.    

I am doubtful - but haven't checked - if any state has ever seen a complete turnover from the start of one six-year term to the start of the subsequent term since the abolition of slate voting in the mid-20th century.  There was the curious case of Queensland 2019 where none of the six elected Senators had served a three year term since the 2016 DD (four were new, and two had been disqualified during the term, though one of those was recontesting as an incumbent.)