Update: As of 9 November the Legislative Council has fixed the issue reporting in this article by changing per-candidate funding to per-party/group funding.
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Watch out which candidate you vote for next Tasmanian state election. Your vote could cost the party you voted for $17,000. That's if the Liberal Government's current electoral public funding model is passed through Parliament with the help of the Labor Opposition.
Of all the bizarre things that have happened in the current Tasmanian Parliament this is among the strangest. We are here not by design but by accident, largely because former Attorney-General Elise Archer was given (and relied upon instead of checking) incorrect advice on a technical point about elections in the ACT. It may be that the Rockliff Government has no real intention of progressing electoral reforms inherited from Archer, or that an election intervenes before they can come into place. But if the Government does go ahead and the Electoral Disclosure and Funding Bill 2022 (No. 25) comes into force with Labor support, then that will create a public funding model that will distort the competition between candidates within the same party. It will also unfairly advantage some parties over others, and expose voters to tactical dilemmas best left to defective voting systems like first-past-the-post. This will be the worst reform in the 126 year history of Hare-Clark, the first change that is completely contrary to the spirit of the system.
