Kevin Bonham

For these reasons, using Europe as an example of why Tasmania’s parliament should not be unstable is invalid, as European parliaments are too strategically different to Tasmania’s current three-party system.
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The Greens hold the key to resolving this problem. They can only do so by agreeing that in future parliaments they will neither move nor support any motion of no confidence or any blocking of supply (except in specified extreme cases such as a court finding of illegal activity). If they do this, then they will defuse the strategic problems of the three-party parliament by making it truly the case that the major parties can safely co-operate on those issues they agree on.

IN the leadup to the 2006 state election, two opposing orthodoxies regarding the prospect of minority government were apparent in Tasmanian political debate.

Supporters of major parties generally held that a majority government was necessary and that minority government would lead to political instability, loss of investor confidence and economic disaster.

Meanwhile Greens supporters, and some independent commentators, maintained that minority government was both benign and desirable, and that whether the Lennon government maintained its majority or just lost it really did not matter to investment or political stability.

The latter view that minority government is a non-issue was based on the following beliefs:

• That the fears of excessive Green power over a minority government and of loss of investment due to instability were simply scaremongering, because the major parties could simply co-operate on and vote down any Green idea they disagreed with.
• That there is no reason why minority government should not be stable in Tasmania, given that it is extremely prevalent in Europe where many nations have multi-party coalitions with no hope of majority government.

Proponents of these views must be wondering why the electorate, which returned the Lennon government with its majority intact and its vote only slightly and inevitably decreased from the 2002 whitewash, did not accept it. Lennon’s win was, after all, a massive win on a two-party preferred basis and a comfortable one even by the standards of Hare-Clark. It was achieved in spite of critical personnel losses, widespread perception of a significant health sector crisis, and a long series of minor propriety scandals.

Many explanations have been offered for the magnitude of the Labor triumph despite indifferent polls for much of Labor’s reign.

These have included:

• the difficulty of dislodging an incumbent in strong economic times
• the impact of Peg Putt’s power-grab for the deputy premiership
• scare campaigns against the Greens
• Rene Hidding’s inept leadership

Whatever the merits of all these and other explanations, many of which have been discussed and debated so well by others that I have little left to add, I don’t believe that all of them added together account for the size of the Lennon win in two-party preferred terms.

I therefore add a further possible factor, although it isn’t necessarily the main reason Lennon won. It is that a sitting majority government in Tasmania has an overwhelming advantage because there are completely valid strategic reasons for voters to continue to vote for it if it is the only party capable of winning outright.

Ironically, while those opposing majority government accuse those defending it of being simplistic, it is actually the two key points in favour of minority government (outlined above) that display simplistic thinking, and it is the swinging voters who prefer to elect majority governments of either party in the name of stability who currently have a better grasp on Tasmanian political realities.

This is not to say that minority government must be avoided. Rather, those supporting it, and the Greens in particular, need to look for ways in which minority government in Tasmania can offer real stability of governance.

Instability

The major parties in Tasmania tend to take a similar stance on most development issues and the Greens’ stance on those issues tends to be significantly different. On this basis, those arguing that minority government does not matter will typically say that the Liberal and Labor parties can simply vote in favour of major developments, such as the proposed pulp mill, and since the Greens will always be outvoted, the Greens have no power to block such proposals and the idea of instability affecting investors is therefore a furphy.

This argument fails to take account of the indirect impacts of implied threats of no-confidence motions and blocking of supply on motions that otherwise have the support of both major parties.

An obvious reason business might hesitate in a minority government situation is that while it may “have the numbers” in parliament to get its development approved even if the minority government should be forced to an election and replaced, it cannot know that the government will not be forced to compromise on the proposal or abandon it to avert exactly that outcome.

I doubt it is quite as simple as Richard Herr’s claim (in his excellent piece at http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php/weblog/comments/rich/) that “The business community has favoured majority Government but the reasons for this appear to lie more with a preference for dealing with an opaque executive than a transparent Parliament.  Certainly it is not based on the issue of instability or a lack of resolute decision-making.” Or at least, it would be interesting to know the evidence for this claim.

The potential for instability when no Tasmanian party has a majority, as demonstrated by both the Field and Rundle governments both failing to go their full terms, arises from the motives of the three parties. Whichever party is in government would like to remain there, whichever party is in opposition would like to become the government, and the Greens would like to both maintain their balance of power position and achieve as much of their agenda as they can.

It is in the dual aims of the Greens that the problem arises. Because they will be voted down by the major parties on most of their key policy issues, they can only achieve the relevance their supporters desire by using the implied threat of bringing down the government to force concessions on issues over which both major parties disagree with them.

The threat can easily be left unstated, or can be made through action on an irrelevant matter as a warning shot. From time to time, it may be strategically tempting for the Greens to actually bring down the government if it does not comply, simply as a warning to future minority governments. Of course, this is only worth considering well into a government’s term, when it is already unpopular enough that removing it from office may cause it to lose the coming election outright.

Early in a government’s term, a bringing-down of the government over a policy matter would be seen as inexcusable spoiling, and would backfire not only on the Greens but also on any Opposition that supported it. After a few years, however, there are usually enough “betrayals” and “mistakes” about that it is easy to muddy the waters about who is to blame for the collapse of the minority government.

Having seen both the Field and Rundle years, the public knows that the Greens mean business and will force the demise of minority governments over policy issues. This means that support can snowball towards whichever major party shows signs of winning the election — a possibility that I repeatedly gave as a reason why Lennon might win outright even while his government trailed behind such an outcome in the polls.

European comparisons

So, if minority government Tasmanian style is implicitly unstable, why does minority government work in Europe where it is taken for granted and in many nations there is no possibility of majority government?

Firstly, as an aside, minority government doesn’t always work in Europe. Some nations, most notably Italy until very recently, have long histories of frequent coalition collapse and political chaos. Several nations have adopted “reforms” to curb the problems caused by unstable multi-party coalitions, including:

• Setting national primary vote hurdles (commonly around 4-5%) or requirements to win a local seat for a party to gain representation. This encourages large parties to artificially manipulate the vote of potential coalition partners upwards.

• Formation of massive formal coalitions, similar to the Liberal-National coalition but on a much grander scale, such that while the nation is nominally multi-party, its elections are still two-force them-vs-us type affairs.

• Granting of extra seats to the winning coalition so that if some minor parties leave it, the coalition most likely stays in power • so much for proportionality.

However, to the considerable extent that it does work, the reason it does is that the strategic dynamics are different. A Greens press release of 17 January 2006 listed 26 European parliaments (plus New Zealand) that had balance-of-power situations. Of these ten were said to have two-party governments and the remainder had more. I have found some errors in this press release (eg Denmark, claimed to have a two-party government, in fact has a three-party government) but the important thing is that none of those parliaments reproduces Tasmania’s three-party situation.

These are some examples of minority governments in Europe:

In Austria, there are two major parties and two significant minor parties. Whichever major party does best can form a coalition with the most likeminded/willing of the minor parties.

In Denmark, there are seven parties with seats in the current parliament. None of these parties received more than 29% of the vote at the last election.

In Iceland, there are five significant parties and the government is currently a coalition between two of those.

In Hungary, there are two major parties, one of which is a coalition. There are also two significant minor parties, one of which aligns with one of the other major parties, another of which is independent of either.

Ireland has seven represented parties and a significant number of independents. One of the represented parties is very close to governing in its own right, but the rest are nowhere near.

Belgium has numerous parties of which about ten are in parliament at any one time and none get much more than 15% of the vote.

Tasmania’s strategic situation of three parties, of which the two largest have hopes (albeit dim in the Liberals’ case) of majority government, but with the smallest party not politically aligned to either of the others, has no close parallel in Europe.

In a multi-party system as opposed to a three-party one, a party that withdraws from a coalition can often be replaced, meaning that less of its agenda will be implemented but no fresh election can be forced. Alternatively, if a party is supporting a clearly likeminded major party, it has little incentive to force an election and cause the opposition to win — the payoffs of blackmailing a likeminded party are too small.

Finally, there is often less incentive for oppositions to co-operate with the forcing of elections through pragmatic games, since to do so will probably not result in an outright win (especially as minority government is accepted as normal and therefore policy failures under it are not blamed on it). Therefore the stick carried by a minor party threatening to bring down its coalition partner is smaller.

For these reasons, using Europe as an example of why Tasmania’s parliament should not be unstable is invalid, as European parliaments are too strategically different to Tasmania’s current three-party system.

What can the Greens do?

Prior to the last election, the Greens played hardball on the issue of how they would govern in minority, and failed. The result was to revive public memories of the instability of the Rundle years at a time when the Greens should have been hoping the electorate was beginning to forget.

Neither major party has any interest in defusing the potential instability of minority government, since it advantages both if voters continue to see instability as a reason to not vote Green. Both would prefer, long term, to have periods in outright government and periods in outright opposition, to having periods in and out of Green-supported minority government.

The Greens hold the key to resolving this problem. They can only do so by agreeing that in future parliaments they will neither move nor support any motion of no confidence or any blocking of supply (except in specified extreme cases such as a court finding of illegal activity). If they do this, then they will defuse the strategic problems of the three-party parliament by making it truly the case that the major parties can safely co-operate on those issues they agree on.

There are two problems with this. The first is that even if they make such a statement, particularly under their present leader, they may not be publicly believed. The second is that by making such a commitment they forfeit the right to exploit the unstated threat of forcing an election to achieve progress on goals that both major parties oppose.

Nevertheless, any other choice will encourage major-party swinging voters to continue supporting whichever major party looks most likely to win outright, thus making it harder and harder for the Greens to achieve a minority government situation at all. It is not a dilemma that I envy them.

Kevin Bonham is an electoral and political commentator/analyst, consultant specialising in invertebrate ecology and threatened species issues, and junior chess coach/organiser. He enjoys feeble hate-mail sent through anonymous remailers, but would prefer to receive more work offers instead; either can be emailed to [email protected]