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 for 2025 but weren't able to lock in a second so didn't run.  

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.

Tasmanian Senate Major Party Preselections

Tasmanian major party (Labor and Liberal) Senate preselections are expected to be announced on Saturday 8 September.  I will be posting the results when I know them, and discussion of such voting details as emerge, but I will be out on a field trip for some of Saturday, and I don't yet know at what time the news will be revealed.  For starters then, this post looks at what different Senate placements for some of the candidates would mean.  It will be expanded to cover all relevant aspects of the preselections that emerge.

Before I get any further, I would like to say this: media should not denote any spot on the Tasmanian Senate ballot as "unwinnable".  Unwinnable, obviously, means it is impossible to win.  Lisa Singh was dumped to a so-called "unwinnable" spot in 2016, and won, as a result of below the line votes.  Clearly then her spot was not unwinnable!   It's embarrasing to hear intelligent journalists say stuff like "Lisa Singh was elected from an unwinnable position".   An acceptable alternative to "unwinnable position" is "position winnable only through below the line voting".  This description applies to all positions below 3 for either major party.