Tasmania 2014–2024: A Liberal Decade
摘要
This chapter analyses a generational change of political fortunes for the two major parties over the decade 2014 to 2024 during which the Liberal Party won four terms of consecutive government, challenging the long-held view of Tasmania as a ‘natural Labor state’. It first examines the historical and political context which led to Labor’s decline and eventual fall and then details the success of the Liberal Party in the four elections in 2014, 2018, 2021 and 2024. The Chapter argues the sometimes shaky but nonetheless unbroken electoral domination of the Liberals was due to combination of institutional factors, particularly the State’s distinctive electoral system; the importance to voters of Liberal support for the forest industry as symbolic of their support for industry and jobs growth generally; the electoral toxicity for both major parties of any political alignment with the Greens; and the personal popularity of a triumvirate of Liberal leaders from the 2002 intake of new members. The chapter analyses the economic, budgetary and policy achievements as well as the controversies—particularly the unusually high turnover of ministers and backbench resignations from the party citing a lack of transparency over a proposed AFL stadium on Hobart’s waterfront and the Marinus undersea power cable across Bass Strait. It concludes that these modern era Tasmanian Liberal governments built their success on a balancing act between pragmatism and neo-liberalism on economic and industry policy and wedging Labor by championing workers in the ongoing Tasmanian industry development-versus-conservation debate while actively running a social justice and electoral reform agenda that appealed to mainstream centre-of-the road Tasmanian voters.