The Tasmanian state election finally arrives at its moment of truth with the return of state parliament from 10am today, at which Labor’s constructive vote of no confidence will be voted on. With the Greens announcing yesterday that they will not support the motion, it appears the vote will confirm the Liberals in government. The two between them command 19 votes out of 35, to which can be added independents David O’Byrne and Kristie Johnston. A Liberal promise to halt aquaculture expansions pending an independent review, which was slammed by Labor, even won positive noises from Craig Garland and Peter George. Only Carlo Di Falco of Shooters Fishers and Farmers, who has proclaimed the Liberals’ proposed ban on greyhound racing a “line in the sand”, would appear to be firmly in Labor’s corner. Labor has enlisted an upper house independent, Ruth Forrest, to serve as Treasurer in Dean Winter’s prospective government, but this doesn’t yield any advantage in the confidence motion – and may indeed have harmed it, given O’Byrne cited it as evidence that Labor could not offer stable government.
Meanwhile, a poll conducted Tuesday to Thursday by EMRS from a small sample of 503 finds 35% in favour of a no confidence motion and 49% opposed. It records 74% support for the Liberals’ greyhound phase-out, with 14% opposed, and 61% supporting its abandonment of opening 40,000 hectares of native forest for harvesting, with 24% opposed. A preferred treasurer question has Ruth Forrest on 40% and Labor’s former Shadow Treasurer Josh Willie on 10%, while for the Liberals current and former Treasurers Eric Abetz and Guy Barnett score 25% and 15% respectively.
@Goll – are you an actual politician? You seem to have some serious political skills – I haven’t seen you actually answer a question yet. Kudos!
I don’t accept the maths argument that Libs were better formed to make govt. The chamber is majority left (well, if you can call Tas Labor “left”).
Labor had a simple path to power and refused to take it.
Bizarre.
‘Rebecca says:
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 12:54 pm
I miss the days when at least the on-topic threads on PB used to have a majority of comments that were something other than barely-coherent, barely-related partisan nonsense from the same two or three accounts too low-effort to even bother trying to engage with everyone else’s discussion.’
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Good point, Rebecca.
There is nothing like the scorched smell of burnt Greens posters trying to close down that part of the conversation that they do not want to hear.
The Greens have zero interest in building a relationship of trust over time. They do not bother to engage with that part of the discussion as you rightly point out. They want to be able to slag Winter and Albanese but they do not want to try to engage with what the landscape looks like from Winter’s or Albanese’s perspectives.
It is simple humanity. If you want to engage constructively, behave constructively, and speak constructively and just stop slagging people.
I must say in this context that Waters actually seems to understand the principle a lot better than did Bandt, or does Woodruff.
I should also point out that personally I don’t particularly care for any of the Tasmanian state parties.
BW: “Calls for Winter to resign or for Labor to replace Winter…”
Do you have a source for this claim? I’ve done some Google searches and nothing has come up. I recall on election night Cassy O’Connor saying that Winter was difficult to deal with. But that’s not quite the same thing, is it?
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“At the federal level Albanese is known to resent the vicious tactics which went with some of the Greens attempts to capture his seat.”
I only recall him expressing concerns that they might succeed in doing so. What was the “vicious” stuff?
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“I’d love to know what’s going on inside the Greens leadership right now. For two terms in a row they failed totally to achieve any sort of rapprochement with Labor. Could it be that the perenniel habit of nastily slagging Labor politicians is coming back to bite the Greens in the arse?”
This comment is so deranged I don’t really know what to say in response. I don’t understand how anybody can be expected to achieve a “rapprochement” with someone who refuses to talk to them and states publicly over and over again that under no circumstances will they enter into any sort of an agreement with them.
Today Comrade Winter (who hails from the deeply proletarian background of St Virgil’s College and the Uni of Tasmania) described the Greens as “the enemies of working people.” Sounds like he is looking for a rapprochement, not.
Rebecca at 12.54pm….and yet we have childish comments today such as the “purple coalition” and the GLNP.
Dr Bonham has made it quite clear there is NO greens-liberal coalition government in Tasmania.
BW: “It is simple humanity. If you want to engage constructively, behave constructively, and speak constructively and just stop slagging people.”
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Yeah, right.
So, we are now clear that Labor offered “the enemy” nothing?
And that Labor are salty that the Greens won’t support their no-confidence motion?
Surely they are the worst opposition in Australia, beating even the WA Libs.
Democracy Sausage: “As for Labor in Tasmania, they need a long hard look at themselves, and a new leader, Winter clearly isn’t up to the task, so would Josh Willie be the one to take them forward over the next few years?”
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To my eyes, Willie is just a slightly smoother and smarmier version of Winter.
While she doesn’t have much of a profile in southern Tasmania, I reckon Janie Finlay might be a better choice. She has a creative arts background and at one time ran a boutique studio in Glebe, NSW, where she made and sold her own furniture. That puts her more in the bailiwick of the educated middle class (including refugees from the mainland) whose vote Labor has lost not only to the Greens, but more recently to candidates like Peter George, Craig Garland and, to some extent, Kristie Johnston.
And, unlike Winter and some of the others, Finlay is genuinely popular in her own neck of the woods (Launceston, where she was formerly the mayor). She actually won a quota off her own bat.
The Greens want to kill jobs in the salmon industry, building the stadium, the dogs and in forestry. They are praising Rockcliff who will, with the able assistance of Treasurer Abetz, kill off public service jobs and will kill off public services.
It reminds me of Bandt, actually. His word to miners on killing jobs in mining? The best job for a miner is another mining job…. right… just not THAT mine, or THAT mine or THAT mine.
‘meher baba says:
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 1:08 pm
BW: “It is simple humanity. If you want to engage constructively, behave constructively, and speak constructively and just stop slagging people.”
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Yeah, right.’
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Yeah. Right. Has anyone pointed out to Winter that belonging to the Labor Party he is complicit in genocide yet? Or is genocide just Albanese’s job?
Greens will be reduced to 2 seats at the next state election with only 1 each in Clark and Franklin.
Green voters hate the Libs more than Labor voters do and this will be seen as an unforgiveable betrayal to some Green voters, while most Green voters don’t appreciate Winter or his stubborness, a large percent of Green voters are yoing progressives and I can see them switching to an Independent like a Peter George next time (In Franklin) and Labor in other seats which will be aided by the fact Winter will be replaced by Finlay.
This parliament will last 2 years at most, 2027 election is my prediction.
Vlad – I made the GLNP comment earlier today, and it was meant only as light hearted.
I am well aware KB has said there is no “coalition”, and no one here is seriously suggesting it.
My “childish” comment is withdrawn. We haven’t even had the vote on the Premiership as yet and as another poster has pointed out up thread, we’re heading to a “childish” Labor v Greens thing on PB this arvo.
Peace & calm, everyone pls. Lets get the vote done in Parliament first, and then further discussion.
Exactly.
The day Winter hopes to become Premier, he refers to the Greens as the “enemy of the working people”.
Of course, only the Greens dish out insults don’t they.
Labor is a pure as snow.
Winter is a real winner.
Winter must be the worst opposition leader in Australia by his unwillingness to develop any mature working relationship with the Greens and thus forfeit any chance of being in government in Tasmania.
The sooner the Labor party dumps Winter the sooner the political spring and the possibility of government will come for Labor.
If you are working in the salmon industry, the forestry industry, the stadium construction industry or in the dogs industry you would be forgiven for thinking that the Greens might not just be the friends of the working people that they claim to be.
The “dog” industry is a disgrace. Puppies raised so they can run around a track chasing a plastic rabbit for the benefit of humans so they can gamble. And when the dog gets too old to run around, they get put down.
You support this Boerwar?
All the invective on this chat is unnecessary.
Whoever was leading Tasmanian Labor and the Greens would have same incentives to do what they did.
Labor had the history of the three Tasmanian governments (1989,1996,2010) who dealt with the Greens being defeated at the next election.
For the Greens, they are unlikely to break through to form a government of their own. So how can they win, they need to get concessions from the majors.
Any rational Labor or Greens leader would do what Winter and Woodruff did.
To carry on how persons, unions, partisans are stupid, malicious etc. misses this crucial point.
Vlad says:
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 1:35 pm
The “dog” industry is a disgrace. …
… so, apparently, is the forestry industry, the salmon industry, the stadium building industry, the mining industry, the opening up of an irrigation industry in Tasmania…
…any other ‘disgrace’ that real workers are actually working in?
Nadia, noted.
GLNP is a childish term which adds nothing to any debate.
Tasmania’s purple coalition:-
Promising!
“There is nothing like the scorched smell of burnt Greens posters trying to close down that part of the conversation that they do not want to hear.”
Rebecca has spent days trying to induce the removal of posts contrary to her liking.
It must be hard reconciling the idea that the Greens Political Party are a progressive left wing party when they have officially consecrated a Greens-Liberal purple alliance.
I would feel betrayed if I were a Greens supporter who hasn’t yet realised the Greens Political Party exists to bash the working class labour movement on behalf of the inner city, trust fund holding, Liberal voter parented, professional managerial class who hate unions.
Vote Greens – Get Liberals.
@Isle of Rocks.
Labor’s position is clearly irrational, not rational. This result does not serve their membership or their constituents.
It is utterly and inexplicably bizarre. The have chosen to lose. For what?
BW: “If you are working in the salmon industry, the forestry industry, the stadium construction industry or in the dogs industry you would be forgiven for thinking that the Greens might not just be the friends of the working people that they claim to be.”
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Leaving aside MCM’s ridiculous embrace of the CFMEU, have the Greens ever seriously claimed to be friends of the working people?
Certainly not the Tassie Greens: they are as privileged a bunch of tree-huggers as you would ever meet.
But in my view they are 100% right about wanting to protect wild landscapes and endangered species. IMO, the Greens are generally wrong about economics, immigration and foreign policy, but, while I will never vote for them again, I don’t entirely hold their views on those matters against them because they are genuinely trying to protect the environment.
Anyway, what time is this farce over?
It’s easy to “protect the environment” when you’re a HR staffer who lives in a million dollar CBD apartment. Not so easy if you care about how the country is going to get the wood and metals required to build houses affordably.
When was the last time Labor was in Government in Tasmania in it’s own right? To think that one day it will be without the Greens is a fantasy. Labor will never be in Government again and what you will get is a Liberal Government cutting hospital and education funding for years to come, cutting services in general and a state going backwards. The Labor Party needs to understand what negotiation and compromise means because at present they do not and to put it simply Winter should resign. His intransgience and petty behavior is simply idoitic.
I think it’s actually “Vote Labor, get Liberals”.
Not sure what the incentive to vote Labor is (and nor are 75% of actual Tasmanians) if they refuse to govern.
Surely a vote for Labor is now always a wasted vote. Better a Green or an Independent, at least they can extract actual policy outcomes .
@madpjkfan
Simple….. to not lose worse next time.
That’s how they read the history of 1989-1992 and 2010-2014.
Look, my read of it is this.
The 5 Greens are about to prop up a Lib gov’t in about half an hours time. Parliament re-opens at 2pm, so not far off.
How long will this arrangement last. I think the Greens will have to keep propping up the Libs for a while yet. Unless they have plans to get the Libs to kill off dog racing & then pull the plug on the Libs. So what happens then? Another election, this time caused by the Greens. They’ve just seen what happenned to Labor in the last election, after Labor triggered the NC on 3-Jun.
I think Tasmanian’s will be after blood if they’re forced to go to another election next year or 2027, at the behest of the Greens
@Isle of Rocks.
I dunno what to say to that.
I mean I guess they do ok at Federal elections but they are rubbish at state contests.
The Greens and the Liberals in Tasmania, starring Rosalie and Jeremy, with Eric as the spoiler, a Mills and Boon classic!
@Nadia88
Yeah, it’s hardly going to be stable. This is the only thing that maybe Labor’s strategy make sense about.
But… they are probably still going to have to negotiate with the greens?
I think the coming term will provide a reasonably stable government, because nobody in Parliament will wish to take responsibility for forcing another election.
Whether or not a future detente between Labor and the Greens – with Labor coming to the party to some extent on environmental issues – could lead to a change of government without an election will depend on the attitude of the independents. As far as we know for now, only Peter George and Craig Garland are at all environmentally-focused. Johnston is just for Johnston, and is not an easy person with whom to make any sort of a deal. The SFF is basically a right-wing party and O’Byrne is old school Labor, which makes him far closer to the Libs than the Greens.
That leaves Razay. Does he have an environmental side to him? I don’t think anybody can be quite sure one way or the other: the guy really likes to play his cards close to his chest. Is there a pathway to a mid-term change of government through Labor+Greens+George+Garland+Razay? Perhaps, but not yet, and I suspect not while Winter remains leader.
Why would the Greens Political Party collapse the Government? They’re in it now, it’s their alliance with the Liberals. And it gives them what they most crave, which is power at the expense of Labor.
This is a little bit of payback for their pre-Fed election non-stop talk about how they’re going to force Labor into minority government and make Albo lick Bandt’s boots only for them to be booted out themselves.
The Greens hate Labor for being more diverse, having an actual connection to the working class and having delivered effective Government on the mainland.
In a democracy you don’t go 20 years without winning an election in your own right (will be 20 years next year)
Tasmania needs a federal intervention now, the state is a mess, no wonder the state is behind on almost every statistic like education, healthcare etc (NT is lower in many stats but that is not a state)
I would encourage everyone to stop buying Tassie Salmon and reschedule their planned trips to Tassie and go elsewhere. This state under a disaster Liberal government must not profit anymore cents from the rest of Australia. This government is worse than the Newman government in QLD was.
The no confidence speeches begin.
Winter up first.
I wonder what the odds are that Tasmania changes its election system from Hare-Clark to something else in the next decade?
25 single-member electorates must be pretty tempting in their own ways for Liberals and Labor.
Yes, they’d be small since Tasmania is as well, but they’d have roughly 16,000 electors per seat, which isn’t too ridiculous.
@kirsdarke – Tasmania’s upper house is 15 single member seats, with Labor and the Liberals each having 3 of them.
Small electorates mean it’s easy for a high quality local independent to win against a low quality, well resourced major party candidate. Considering Labor and the Liberals pretty much only have low quality candidates in Tas, they could lose a lot of seats.
There’s no chance they move to 25×1.
So not happening then. Fair enough, it’d be something of a dog act if they tried that too.
Best case moving forward is that Tasmanian Labor stops being so garbage and gets its act together and actually try winning elections again. They’re just a pathetic joke at the moment.
meher baba says:
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 1:45 pm
BW: “If you are working in the salmon industry, the forestry industry, the stadium construction industry or in the dogs industry you would be forgiven for thinking that the Greens might not just be the friends of the working people that they claim to be.”
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Leaving aside MCM’s ridiculous embrace of the CFMEU, have the Greens ever seriously claimed to be friends of the working people?
Certainly not the Tassie Greens: they are as privileged a bunch of tree-huggers as you would ever meet.
But in my view they are 100% right about wanting to protect wild landscapes and endangered species. IMO, the Greens are generally wrong about economics, immigration and foreign policy, but, while I will never vote for them again, I don’t entirely hold their views on those matters against them because they are genuinely trying to protect the environment.’
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Agree that the Greens are a mixed bag.
My jobs stuff came in response to some Greens (above) who was upset about Winter’s statement about jobs. If we take primary and secondary employment out of the salmon, trees, dogs and the stadium out of the Tasmanian Labor market you are probably looking at, in the order of something like a twentieth of the Labor market. One job in twenty is actually a lot of unhappiness. Take the reduction in windfarm or new mining investments because of the high Greens-backed NIMBY transactional costs and you could take out some more.
In a real sense, Winter has done his day job. He has protected workers’ jobs. He knows that the Liberals are only pretending that they are going to halt job growth in those industries – except for the sacrificial dogs. And even with the dogs the ‘phase out’ period ends in the Never Never of 2029 which I take to be after the next Tasmanian election.
When it comes Greens and the environment, alas, I remain to be convinced that they are nearly as serious about biodiversity as they are about Gaza or Trans issues, for example.
Kirsdarke says:
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 2:33 pm
I wonder what the odds are that Tasmania changes its election system from Hare-Clark to something else in the next decade?
25 single-member electorates must be pretty tempting in their own ways for Liberals and Labor.
Yes, they’d be small since Tasmania is as well, but they’d have roughly 16,000 electors per seat, which isn’t too ridiculous.
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I suggested the same thing up thread. The NT has smaller size electorates (population wise), and it seems to deliver majority gov’t most of the time (not always).
A couple of weeks ago someone said it would cause confusion for Tasmanian’s as they are used to their boundaries being aligned with the Federal divisions, but voters on the mainland seem to cope with different state/federal division boundaries.
I think it’s worth looking into. I believe it can be changed via legislation, not a referendum.
‘meher baba says:
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 2:19 pm
I think the coming term will provide a reasonably stable government, because nobody in Parliament will wish to take responsibility for forcing another election.
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True. A known unknown is whether or not some overwhelming ‘trigger’ pops up.
Frankly, Dean Winter would have a legitimacy struggle as premier:
– His party has 4 fewer seats than the Libs
– He lead the ALP to their worst showing since 1903
– He couldn’t even manage a quota in his own electorate – compared to 2.4 for Jeremy Rockcliff and 2.3 for Rebecca White in 2024. Has a leader of one of the two major parties ever not won their own quota in the past.
Should Jeremy Rockcliff end the day as Premier, Dean Winter has no choice but to resign as ALP leader. A new leader would then be elected and then be in a position to run a no confidence motion in a few weeks and then quite possibly end up in the Premiers office. That new leader would still have a legitimacy issue (election result, not the leader who went to the election) but be in a better position to negotiate with others and get the magical 18 votes.
Kirsdarke: “25 single-member electorates must be pretty tempting in their own ways for Liberals and Labor.”
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Tempting for the Libs, but I doubt that it would help Labor too much. If they are going to continue to receive around a quarter of the total primary vote, it might see their level of parliamentary representation fall still further.
From memory the NSW Libs tried to shut down the NSW dog racing industry.
What caused them to backflip and maintain the industry, and will the Tasmanian Liberals & Greens face the same problem/obstacles.
‘Daniel T says:
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 2:23 pm
In a democracy you don’t go 20 years without winning an election in your own right (will be 20 years next year)
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That would be 35 years for the Greens…
Anything government spends money on will create jobs.
Any time government taxes money, it destroys jobs.
Yes, building a stadium creates jobs. But, to pay for it, you either need to raise taxes (destroying jobs) or cut spending on something else (destroying jobs).
All the analysis shows the stadium is a bad idea. An inefficient use of government money. Much better for government to save its money for use of more worthwhile infrastructure.
Similarly, greyhound racing takes government subsidy, employs a small amount of people, and the gambling addiction it causes leads to suicide, domestic violence, crime and generational trauma. None of that is good for jobs. There’s a tiny number of jobs in the industry, considering all the jobs sucked out of the economy as a result of it.
Boerwar says:
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 2:46 pm
‘meher baba says:
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 2:19 pm
I think the coming term will provide a reasonably stable government, because nobody in Parliament will wish to take responsibility for forcing another election.
…’
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True. A known unknown is whether or not some overwhelming ‘trigger’ pops up.
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Like when Christine Milne turned on PM Gillard in early 2013.
I know the Tas Libs probably don’t have much of a choice, but that must be in the back of their minds.
‘nadia88 says:
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 2:47 pm
From memory the NSW Libs tried to shut down the NSW dog racing industry.
What caused them to backflip and maintain the industry, and will the Tasmanian Liberals & Greens face the same problem.’
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There is a reasonable summary of the status quo in NSW here. I seem to recall that the rural and regional lobbies were politically critical. The ACT track was closed at about the same time and is currently still closed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyhound_racing_in_Australia
‘Voice Endeavour says:
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 2:50 pm
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I am sure that the Greens are always 100% right about the labour market and the economy. That goes without saying, really.
However, you may have noticed in passing that it is an unfortunate byproduct of slowing development, making development more costly by protests and green lawfare, or by stopping development from occurring altogether, or shifting developments to some less optimal commercial location, or even closing down existing industries, that jobs creation is dampened and existing jobs are destroyed.
The problem for the Greens is that Labor is a workers’ party and that it is not all that interested in destroying ANY jobs in ANY industry.