Labor’s Upper hand

MANY thanks to Richard Herr for his informative piece, The truth about ‘hung parliaments’.

For those who have not read it, Richard tells us that the disparaging term is meant to be an analogy of “hung jury” and dates back to 1974 when it was used by The Economist about a UK election. In effect, there is no such thing as a “hung parliament”. If no party wins at least 13 seats in the House of Assembly, we have a “non-majority result”, as Richard puts it.

Of course, it has no effect whatsoever on the other half of the Parliament, the Legislative Council, which is by no means “hung”. In fact, some of its members may come into play if we do indeed get a “non-majority result” on March 18.
The implied impotence of a House of Assembly with no majority party is a furphy. The Greens, with five or six seats, might have the semblance of the balance of power, but in the significant votes in the House, the Budget and Supply, they would never be game to exercise it.

On all votes, there will be informal coalitions at play. If we have a minority Labor Government, for instance, the Liberals will sometimes back the Government, sometimes vote with the Greens, sometimes go their own way, and the same goes for the Greens.

The Liberals have a problem

Richard Herr’s main concern in the post-1998 House of Assembly structure of only 25 seats was the lack of both quality and quantity of the government backbench to form a Cabinet. In theory he is right and the odium for placing Tasmania in this position must be borne by the Labor and Liberal parties for reducing the size of the House in 1998.

However, Labor has MPs in the Upper House, who must now loom into contention for ministries in a minority Labor government.
There is plenty of precedent, David Crean was only the last of them. Many people will remember Brian Miller being the Labor Attorney-General while in the Upper House. Not only was he a very competent, capable and reforming attorney, he also served an important role in acting as a liaison between the Cabinet and Upper House MPs.

So there is a pool of Labor talent available to augment those Labor MPs elected in the House of Assembly. The extra gene pool would go some way to alleviating Richard’s concerns.

But the Liberals have no members in the Upper House. They do have a problem.

Bruce Montgomery
Liverpool Street
Hobart