Bass

Bass covers the eastern part of Tasmania's northern coast along with Flinders Island, and derives 70% of its voters from Launceston. Other centres include George Town, a Labor-voting coastal town at the mouth of the Tamar River, and the more conservative Scottsdale, a hub of surrounding timber and farming communities. The electorate has been an epic arm wrestle between the major parties at federal level, changing hands in 1975, 1993, 1996, 1998, 2004, 2007, 2013 and 2016. At state elections, it recorded relatively mild shifts with the realignments to Liberal in the early 1980s and Labor in the early 2000s, before moving dramatically to the Liberals in 2010 and 2014.

The Liberals were up 8.8% and Labor down fully 15.1% at the 2010 election, but this failed to change the result from Labor two, Liberal two, Greens one, as Labor had barely failed to win a third seat in 2006. Then came a further 11.2% Labor drop and 14.6% Liberal gain in 2014, this time giving the Liberals an easy gain at the expense of Labor's Brian Wightman, who won Labor's second seat on the retirement of Jim Cox in 2010. The Greens maintained the seat they had held since 2002, but their hold has sometimes been precarious, with Kim Booth landing clear of Labor candidates by 138 votes in 2006 and 1034 votes in 2014.

Liberal candidates

BRIDGET ARCHER SARAH COURTNEY MICHAEL FERGUSON PETER GUTWEIN SIMON WOOD

The three Liberal members, each of whom is recontesting, include two who were re-elected in 2014 with full quotas in their own right, and a newcomer whose vote share was considerably more modest. The strongest performer was Peter Gutwein, who first won a seat in 2002 at the expense of Liberal incumbent David Fry, who had filled a mid-term vacancy. Gutwein went against party policy in his first term by calling for an end to old-growth logging, and was briefly dumped from the front bench after voting in favour of a Greens motion calling for a commission of inquiry into child sex abuse. He has served as Treasurer since the election of the Hodgman government, while also holding planning and local government, and gaining state growth in September 2017.

The second strongest performer was Michael Ferguson, who was one of the federal seat's many one-term members from 2004 to 2007, before making the transition to state politics in 2010. Ferguson did exceptionally well to poll 25.0% in 2010, but lost vote share to Peter Gutwein in 2014. A former director of the Tasmanian Family Institute, Ferguson has been noted as a member of the state party's ascendant Right, and as an opponent of gay adoption laws, abortion and stem cell research. He has served since the 2014 election as Minister for Health and Information Technology.

Sarah Courtney is a Tamar Valley vineyard owner who slightly outperformed two rival Liberal newcomer candidates to take the party's third seat. The two new Liberal candidates are Bridget Archer, the mayor of George Town, and Simon Wood, Launceston alderman and electorate officer to Senator David Bushby.

Labor candidates

ADAM GORE JENNIFER HOUSTON MICHELLE O'BYRNE OWEN POWELL BRIAN ROE

Labor's sole remaining member after 2014 was Michelle O'Byrne, who came to state politics in 2006 after two terms as the federal member for Bass from 1998 to 2004. She was Labor's strongest performer in Bass in 2006, outpolling 17-year incumbent Jim Cox, and won promotion to cabinet seven months later, serving after the 2010 election as Health Minister. Her brother, David O'Byrne, was elected in the division of Denison at the 2010 election, and immediately elevated to cabinet. Both have backgrounds in the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union, and are accordingly aligned with the Left.

The other Labor candidates are Jennifer Houston, former Migrant Resource Centre general manager and upper house candidate for Windermere in 2015; Brian Roe, a sports administrator who for the upper house seat of Launceston last year, and was a candidate in Bass at the 2006 election; Adam Gore, an adviser to the federal member for Bass, Ross Hart, who also ran in 2014; and Owen Powell, a Scottsdale dairy farmer.

Other candidates

The Greens' seat in Bass is held by Andrea Dawkins (left), a former Launceston alderman, café owner and market manager. Dawkins has held the seat since June 2015, when she won on a countback to succeed Kim Booth, who had led the party since the 2014 election, but resigned from both the leadership and the parliament citing family reasons and the need for renewal.

The Jacqui Lambie Network is fielding a ticket of four candidates, the most prominent of whom would appear to be Michelle Hoult (right), a teacher who formerly served in the navy and ran as a Nick Xenophon Team candidate for the Senate in 2016.