Majority rules? Not in Tasmania, mate.

Let me tell you something about Tasmania: we love to be unique. Two-headed jokes aside, we’re the state that gave the world Errol Flynn, tried to keep the rest of the country honest on pokies reform, and still thinks AFL premiership points should be earned with a side of drizzle and meat pie.

But one thing we’re distinctive on, and often to our own confusion, is how our state parliament works.

On the mainland, it’s mostly winner-takes-all: majority rules, losers sulk on Sky News. Here in Tassie, we play a completely peculiar game, one with a lot more players, a lot less predictability, and absolutely no guarantee of a clear winner.

Five electorates, seven candidates, and a whole lot of maths

Tasmania’s House of Assembly is elected using the Hare-Clark proportional voting system. That’s a fancy way of saying:

• Each of the five electorates elects seven MPs.
• You number as many candidates as you like in order of preference.
• The vote is proportional, meaning you don’t need to be the biggest dog in the park, you just need a decent pack.

This system makes it hard, by design, for any one party to dominate. Which is beautiful for democracy and brutal for the two major parties, who still campaign like they’re going to get 18 seats and waltz back into the majority like it’s a high school formal.

Spoiler alert: they probably won’t. Hare-Clark, in theory, is a brilliant system for a truly representative Parliament. In practice, it absolutely refuses to deliver the kind of strong, single-party governments Jeremy Rockliff and Dean Winter seem to crave.

But Isn’t Majority Government Better?

Depends who you ask. If you like rubber-stamped legislation and MPs nodding like dashboard bobbleheads, then sure, majority government delivers that. But here’s the rub: it often comes with arrogance, complacency, and a strong whiff of entitlement.

What Tasmania needs is what our system is meant to deliver: collaboration, negotiation, and shared power.

What we get, unfortunately, are tantrums disguised as leadership. Jeremy Rockliff, bless his cotton socks, seems to think every time a backbencher or crossbencher dares to disagree, the only solution is to threaten a snap election. For someone who needed the support of independents to stay in power just a few months ago, he’s remarkably quick to act like a solo act. And Labor’s Dean Winter? So far, he’s still campaigning like it’s a two-party race, with his horse a universal church for progressive politics that somehow ignores the perfectly valid idea of working with, you know, the Greens.

A Parliament That Reflects Its People

Here’s a radical idea: a hung parliament is not a failure. It’s a reflection of a mature democracy, one where voters have said, “We don’t want just one mob running the show.” And in Tasmania, that’s not gridlock. That’s normal. It’s our Parliament doing what it was built to do: force people to work together.

Perhaps it’s time we stop treating that like a problem and start treating it like a strength. Even more radical? What if a crossbencher, like David O’Byrne, actually tried to form a government? Imagine the collaboration then!

Just don’t tell Jeremy. He’s probably still drawing little ‘18s’ in the margins of his campaign diary.