Huon failure will come back to bite high-flying Liberals
Fortress strategy has worked a treat but hostile Upper House looms, says Brad Stansfield
HAVING successfully (to date) guided Tasmania through the COVID-19 pandemic, Premier Peter Gutwein can seemingly do no wrong. His “Fortress Tasmania” strategy has worked a treat, and it seems the only question now — albeit perhaps the hardest one — is when to let the drawbridge down, and how to get our economy going again.
With the virus continuing to ravage Victoria and starting to pop up in other states, the smart money would be on the Premier maintaining his conservative approach and our borders remaining closed for longer than the current August 31 date.
Business and the broader community are now looking for clarity on the Premier’s longer-term plan and exit strategy. Is it to keep the walls up and lock out the virus until a vaccine is available? Or is it to keep the walls up only until the worst of the pandemic is over on mainland Australia, then seek to operate our state with COVID as an everpresent and managed threat?
Each will require distinct economic strategies. Grants of $5000 to businesses are well and good, but for most that would be lucky to pay their outgoings for a week. In Tasmania, 20,000 have lost their jobs, mostly in tourism, hospitality and retail. Ultimately, the government will be judged by how many they can get back to work.
But earlier this year, the
Premier did make an error which is likely to have significant consequences for him and the Liberal Party over coming months and years.
After being newly installed by a clear majority of his colleagues as Premier, he failed to take action to overturn the decision taken under premier Will Hodgman not to run a Liberal candidate in the Legislative Council division of Huon.
One of the number one rules of politics is “if you’re not in it, you can’t win it”. Worse, under the strict spending caps and campaign rules in the Legislative Council, you can’t even intervene as a third party in Legislative Council elections — in any way.
So if you don’t have your own horse in the race, you are reduced to the status of impotent bystander. No doubt both the current and former premier would argue decisions regarding candidates are taken by faceless party officials. Defeat truly is an orphan.
The defeat of conservative independent Robert Armstrong and election of Labor’s Dr Bastian Seidel with just 31 per cent of the primary vote overshadowed new state director Stuart Smith’s first campaign, which saw a spectacular result in the northern division of Rosevears.
Not only did this neutralise the Rosevears gain on the floor of the Legislative Council, it takes Labor’s numbers in the Upper House to five. When you add the almost slavish voting support Labor usually receives from four of the remaining independents, government legislation will invariably require Labor support to pass the Upper House.
The prospect of a Labor government with a clear working majority in the Legislative Council also looms,
although that would of course require Labor winning a majority in the Lower House, a remote possibility at the moment, to say the least.
On the bright side for the government, the result has scotched any intemperate talk of an early election. Early elections are never popular, especially when it is clear the only motivation is political self-interest.
More significantly, the Huon result has obscured the real story of last weekend’s elections – Labor’s vote remains diabolically low.
In Rosevears, where the Liberals polled 41.5 per cent, the Labor candidate polled just 9 per cent. This in the critical northern electorates of Bass and Lyons. If your phone battery was on 9 per cent, you’d be desperately searching for a charger.
But what about Huon? Sure, Dr Seidel polled 31 per cent — but the Liberals didn’t even turn up. And while it’s not directly comparable, 31 per cent would allow Labor to merely retain the two seats in Franklin they already have.
No doubt, it’s been an incredibly tough time for Labor to gain traction politically, but it’s not helping itself. For every step in the right direction, it almost immediately trips over itself walking backwards.
Finally, a word on the Legislative Council. It certainly is significant the major parties now hold a majority. There are several reasons, the major one being that both have learned how to effectively campaign to win Legislative Council seats.
To Labor’s credit, it got there earlier than the Liberals, and with the Liberals now having learned the winning formula I would expect the number of independents in the Legislative Council to continue to shrink (presuming they learn from their mistake and contest the seats).
But to see various academics, some of the existing independent members, and even the retiring member for Rosevears, chastising voters for daring not to vote independent was just a bit too much. They would do well to reflect on the number one rule of politics, the voters never get it wrong.