"Safe Seats" Falling Is Nothing New

The Australia Institute and its director have been putting out a lot of its usual Hung Parliament Club type stuff about how "power sharing parliaments" are the new normal, how there are no safe seats anymore and so on.  They've been trying to claim that the rise of teals and the decline of major parties means the traditional 2PP swing-based model is more or less dead, although I actually nipped that view in the bud days after the election.  If major party vote shares keep declining we may sooner or later get to a point where 2PP swing-based models cease to be of much use, but 2022 wasn't even close.  See also here, where I point out that the Coalition didn't actually get a raw deal in the "non-classic" seats and what actually caused it to lose so heavily in 2022 was that Labor beat it on 2PP and thumped it on 2PP distribution in the classic Labor vs Coalition seats.

The "power sharing parliaments" analysis misleadingly lumps stable Coalition majority governments and non-majority upper houses in with the sort of thing we saw in 2010.  They're totally different: a true minority parliament involves a government that must make a fresh negotiation for supply and confidence and that continually depends on the crossbench for those things.  (Yes the Coalition has its own internal arrangement but it's a long time since there's been the slightest doubt that the Nationals or their precursors would continue to support a Coalition government).  When there is a "hung Senate" the passing of legislation is often at stake, but except in the most extreme cases supply is not, confidence is not, the composition of the Executive is not.  Hung Senates aren't generally perceived as causing potential stability issues, and the ability of governments to send them to double dissolutions if they keep blocking things can make it easier to browbeat them than it is to browbeat minority Reps crossbenchers.  The most successful governments use Senate obstruction, where it happens, to extend their own lifespans, by being able to signal to their base without having to put up with the consequences of policy their base likes being passed unamended.  A government majority in both houses can easily go to a government's head - cf Howard 2005-7 and Workchoices.

Why I Don't Support Fixed Four Year Terms For Tasmania

This is part of my 2024 Tasmanian state election coverage (link to main page here including link to effective voting advice), but is also a standalone article.

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The last two Tasmanian Parliaments have ended early.  The 2018-2021 parliament ended ten months early after independent-minded Liberal Sue Hickey was disendorsed and quit the party, and then-Premier Peter Gutwein argued the loss of the Liberals' majority meant an election was desirable.  The 2021-2024 parliament has ended thirteen and a half months early following trouble for the Rockliff Government with two backbenchers who moved to the crossbench in May 2022.  Tasmania is the only state that has not moved to fixed-term elections, but there had not been a seriously early election before these two since 1998, and there is a widespread lack of understanding about the historic conventions under which the Governor considers requests for an early election.   (A note that Tasmania's upper house does have fixed terms, but with elections on a rotating basis.)

I covered many of the misconceptions about calling an early election in 2021, and 2024 has seen a lower-level repeat of many of the same incorrect claims.  A Premier who holds the confidence of the House based on votes that have been cast on the floor - whether or not that looks likely to remain the case - is well entitled by precedent to be granted an early election in order to seek a fresh mandate based on newly arising issues or policies, because the workability of the Parliament is in question or for many other reasons.  It is not even clear that a Premier who is well into their term needs much of a reason at all.  The spurious idea that the Premier should test their support on the Parliament's floor before seeking an election has also been doing the rounds again - this confuses what happens at the start of a Parliament to the end.