Live commentary
9.30pm. I spoke too soon, as further pre-polls have been added, and they have pushed Jo Palmer up to 42.7% in Rosevears. I’m inclined to think that will be enough, unless the independent’s preferences are radically unfavourable to her.
8.20pm. I believe we may have had all the counting done for the night, and my reading of the situation is that Clare Glade-Wright is likely to unseat Dean Harriss in Huon, with preferences from Labor and the Greens accounting for the latter’s 30.5% to 27.2% lead on first preferences; while Rosevears should be a close race between Liberal incumbent Jo Palmer and Labor’s Ben McKinnon, with the former’s lead of 41.8% to 25.0% needing to hold up against a 17.4% Greens vote that will overwhelmingly favour Labor. That won’t of itself be enough though, which means the matter is in the hands of preferences from independent Susan Monson, who is on 15.8%, on which I can offer no guidance.
7.30pm. The Nepean count will be dominating by attention henceforth, but I notice the pendulum has swung back in favour of Jo Palmer with all but four booths reporting from Rosevears, giving her a 42.3% first preference vote share that will be difficult for Labor (who now have a fairly solid buffer in second place) to overhaul on preferences.
7.15pm. The Franklin booth in Huon provides a weak result for Dean Harriss, pushing him below 30%. In Rosevears, I spoke too soon in suggesting the Greens candidate would be first out, as they have now pulled ahead of independent Susan Monson. There is little to separate the three, but enough to suggest Monson makes the final count, which would be the worst case scenario for the Liberals.
7.10pm. Another large booth, Sandfly, has given Harriss and Glade-Wright equal shares of the primary vote, which likely means favouring Glade-Wright after preferences.
7.05pm. Dean Harriss has had a much better result for the Ranelagh booth, which provides 822 out of 1978 votes counted, pushing him to a lead over Glade-Wright of 675 (34.1%) to 507 (25.6%), giving him some hope of holding out against the coming preference tide.
7.00pm. A bad result for the Liberals from the Beauty Point booth reduces Jo Palmer to 631 out of 1491 (42.3%), and it now looks clear that the Greens will come fourth. I presume their preferences will push Labor clear of independent Susan Monson, with whom they are all but tied on first preferences, setting up a close result between Liberal and Labor after preferences. Six from 22 booths in from Huon and Clare Glade-Wright is maintaining a slight lead over Dean Harriss on first preferences. This seemingly bodes ill for Harriss, who is noted as a conservative and has to contend with nearly 30% of the vote being first preferences for Labor and the Greens.
6.55pm. A further booth in Huon and two more in Rosevears have been good for the Liberals: Jo Palmer in Rosevears has 483 votes out of 1047 (46.1%), which will be enough for her if she can maintain it, while the gap in Huon is down to four votes, though Glade-Wright will presumably enjoy ample preferences from Labor and the Greens, who have about 28% of the vote between them.
6.45pm. Two booths in from Rosevears have Liberal incumbent Jo Palmer in the lead with 251 votes out of 584 (43.0%) and the other candidates reasonably matched. Voters are required to number at least three candidates, which amounts to full compulsory preferences when there are only four candidates, and Labor and Greens preferences can be expected to flow strongly to each other. Independent Susan Monson’s preferences will presumably be less unfavourable to the Liberals, who will be hoping she doesn’t make the final count.
6.35pm. Three booths in from Huon, and they’re encouraging for independent challenger Clare Glade-Wright, who leads independent incumbent Dean Harriss by 133 (36.5%) to 88 (24.2%). However, these are small booths from far-flung parts of the electorate: things may be different, in one way or another, in the urban territory around Kingston.
Overview
With the first Saturday of May comes Tasmania’s periodic upper house elections, in which either two or three of the chamber’s 15 seats go up for election over a six-year cycle. The detachment of this process from lower house general elections is conducive to the election of independents, particularly outside Hobart, and the current numbers in the chamber are three each for Liberal and Labor, one for the Greens and eight independents. Up for election this time are Huon, covering the area south of Hobart inclusive of the metropolitan fringe centre of Kingston, which is held by independent Dean Harriss; and Rosevears, encompassing the western part of Launceston inclusive of the town centre and Tamar Valley territory to the north, which is held for the Liberals by Rockliff government Education Minister Jo Palmer.
Both seats are being defended by their incumbents, who tend to be difficult to dislodge at these elections. Dean Harriss won Huon at a by-election in 2022 after the resignation of Labor member Bastian Seidel, recording a 2.5% winning margin over the Labor candidate. His father, Paul Harriss, held the seat as an independent from 1996 to 2014 and later served as a Liberal in the lower house division of Franklin from 2014 to 2016, which presumably has an indirect relationship to the fact that the Liberals are not fielding a candidate at the current election. Harriss’s competition consists of Labor candidate Abby McKibben, Greens candidate Paul Gibson and three independents. The most high-profile of the latter is Kingborough deputy mayor Clare Glade-Wright, who is endorsed by the Voices for Franklin community group and lower house independent Peter George.
Jo Palmer gained Rosevears for the Liberals in 2020 upon the retirement of independent Kerry Finch, securing a 260-vote winning margin over independent Janie Finlay, who made her way to parliament a year later as a Labor member for Bass. Palmer faces competition from Labor candidate Ben McKinnon, Greens candidate Charlene McLennan and a seemingly low-profile independent, Susan Monson.
William you mixed up Paul and Dean in the first paragraph
I’m thinking these two will go to the incumbents but of course hoping for Greens upsets in both
Labors candidate in Huon is a pretty strong performer, but probably the most pro-salmon person they could find, with more than 10 years in the marketing department of one of the big two companies. Oddly when I’ve heard her speak about the industry and its loss of its social licence she speaks about them as if she wasn’t right in the centre of this process.
Robyn Glade Right has a good chance, she’s been a popular duty mayor and somehow kept herself from being tarred with the zoning fight thats currently going on, very aligned with the anti salmon movement.
Sadly the Liberal aligned independent will probably get up. But either of the above 2 candidates would be a better outcome.
Did Labor come up with anything at their conference which would give voters a reason to back them MI?
Both seats probably a bit of a test of where their support is at
Kevin Bonham obviously has comprehensive write ups on both contests
It’ll be interesting to see if greyhound racing swings many votes
HBG, I’d say this conference was all about the branches speaking to the parliamentary party. The election cycle is very young.
HBG, this is why no one is voting for Labor in Tasmania. Lifted from KBs site on the current independents voting habits in the upper house seat of Huon.
“In the last two years’ voting patterns reviews I’ve assessed Harriss’s voting pattern as centre-right on a spectrum running from Cassy O’Connor and Meg Webb to the Liberals (noting that this still placed him to the left of the ALP). “
Yep, definitely accurate MI. Unfortunately
Maybe Tasmanian Labor will see the light one day, they would be in government if they did
https://kevinbonham.blogspot.com/2026/05/legislative-council-2026-huon-and.html Legislative Council 2026: Huon and Rosevears Live Plus Nepean (Vic) – intro post up now, live comments from 6 pm. #politas #springst
Huon going Teal?
Early counting getting ne excited for a Glade Wright. Spoke to a unionist and long time Labor voters, ex member.
Moving their vote to an anti salmon anti stadium candidate rather than bote Labor. That’s happening across the state and yet they refuse to adjust their policies.
HBG, not massively surprising. Based on the last 2 votes in Franklin in 2025.
Interesting MI, just a shame the Greens will get caught in the wash
Oh well, it’ll be for the greater good if it leads to Labor changing their approach
Tallyroom has Harriss polling better than he did to win last time around
Everyone adding extra after their updates lol
Ben points out the Liberals aren’t running so polling a little better isn’t necessarily that good
If as I expect Harris and Glade Write finish 1, 2 then the Labor preferences will be the decider. The rusted on Labor voters are pretty pro salmon so that might give Harris the win.
MI. Tallyroom has Labor just ahead of the Greens with around 10% with the other independents. I’m not sure there will be enough Labor preferences to get Harriss home
HBG, Labor, oh look really strong anti salmon vote in Franklin, I know lets put in the most pro salmon person we can find, that’ll show them.
I’m not sure they are even a serious party down here any more. They see,m to be so captured by the business lobbyist that they deliberately tank elections. I can only thing that they preselected McKibben so they could door knock everyone and talk about pro salmon policies.
They desperately need to reinvent themselves MI
I reckon Eric Abetz will have been premier and then died in office before Labor get back in. A decade at least
I’m not sure they can. I think that the dominant Left faction can see nowhere to go other than down to the bottom of the Tasman Sea with their affiliated unions. The changes required to attract any environmentally-focused voters are too hard and would involve too many important people getting pissed off. Better just to keep going as you have done with the expectation that the electorate will eventually decide it’s time for a change.
MB, from what we know and can see internally, the dominate left have been infiltrated by the right. Not at the branch level, but by the PLP.
No one other than other than McKibben put their hand up, she certainly isnt of the left, had been in the part a figurative week. She seems to be a candidate allowed to run to deliberately suppress the Labor PV.
To be a Labor candidate at the moment literally means burning $20k for zero return.
I think McKibben got to run because there wasn’t anybody else serious for them to pick . And, as you suggested, to fly the flag for Labor’s continuing support for the salmon industry.
Labor never had Buckley’s of winning the seat. and yet they won it less than six years ago with a high quality candidate.
Tonight they got 1/6 of the total vote and it looks like Clare Glade-Wright, who is a nice lady but basically a lightweight at this stage of her political career, looks like she might be elected.
Sad
Ultimately Labor’s problem is that most of the voters who want to vote for someone who is in favour of industries like salmon and forestry are always going to vote for the Libs, or for a candidate like Harris.
I remember once seeing a vox pop of a Southern state Republican voter who was asked if he would vote for John McCain in an upcoming primary.
“No,” he drawled. “If I want a Democrat, I’ll vote for a Democrat. But I don’t, so I’ll vote for… “(I think he said Rick Santorum).
Political parties need to stick to their lanes IMO. Nowadays, the main “lane” for Labor is the views of university-educated, middle class people. That’s their base. Ignore them, lose them, and you’ll never get much more than 20% of the vote.
Experienced scrutineer has reported Glade-Wright getting a pile of prefs off Greens and that Labor prefs are not helping Harriss that much. As would be expected.
Political parties need to stick to their lanes IMO. Nowadays, the main “lane” for Labor is the views of university-educated, middle class people. That’s their base. Ignore them, lose them, and you’ll never get much more than 20% of the vote.
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Pretty much agree. Tas Labor have certainly done a pretty good job at alienating left leaning educated voters. The calculation would be that in Tasmania there isn’t very many, unfortunately that’s still a third of your natural voting base, and they’ve all gone off to independents.
Hopefully these results lead to some soul searching for Labor, they weren’t really competitive in either contest
As I keep saying, they could be the government if they change their approach. Surely it makes more sense to step on the toes of some of their hard-headed supporters than to be in continual opposition
HBG, some of these people are not living in the same reality as the rest of us. I’d go so far as saying they are extreme in their views blinding them to the actualities of Tasmania.
MI:
There are significant numbers of educated middle class seachangers and retirees relocating here from the mainland all the time.
I talk to some of these newcomers: most of them regularly vote Labor or 1 Green 2 Labor federally, but they feel absolutely no enthusiasm for Labor at the state level, and will always favour the Greens and the environmentalist independents over them, and perhaps the Libs if push came to shove.
It’s pretty bizarre. Labor down here is arguably more dominated by the so-called left faction than it is in any other state or territory bar the ACT, and yet its political philosophy is almost indistinguishable from that of the Libs. The only key difference is that the Libs under Rockliff are little more pragmatic on environmental issues than Labor.
As you say, Abby McKibben is candidate with a strong cv, while Clare Glade-Wright doesn’t do much for me at all: as far as I can see (and I accept that I might have failed to pick up on some of her strengths) she runs mainly on a platform of nice photos and being relatively non-threatening towards most interest groups. But her great advantage over Abby McKibben and Labor is that she is prepared to embrace environmentalism to a certain extent. Consequently, she gets 27 per cent of the primary vote over McKibben’s 16 per cent. And she gets most of the Green preferences.
Someone once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. (Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think it was Einstein.) Tassie Labor has made it their guiding philosophy.
Clare Glade-Wright is the new MLC for Huon.