The Liberal party faces having to negotiate with an expanded crossbench to hang on to power in Tasmania after winning the biggest share of the vote in the state election, but falling short of a majority of seats in parliament.
By late on Saturday, the Liberals, led by premier Jeremy Rockliff, were leading the poll with nearly 36.9% of the vote, but had suffered a 12% swing against it since the last poll three years ago.
The Labor opposition, led by Rebecca White, failed to benefit from the slump in support for the government, rising only marginally to 29.2%. Instead, voters swung to minor parties and independents, which shared nearly 34% of the vote.
The Greens, long a third force in the Tasmanian parliament, were on 13.4% while the Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN), running in a state election for the first time, received 6.7%, mostly in the north. Independents and smaller parties had 13.7% between them.
The split vote makes for a complicated count under Tasmania’s Hare-Clark electoral system, which will elect seven MPs in each of the state’s five multimember electorates after parliament agreed to expand the chamber from 25 to 35 members at this election.
As counting continued and with 18 seats needed for a party to govern in its own right, the Liberals appeared to have won 14 seats, Labor 10 and the Greens at least three, and potentially up to six.
But a handful of seats remain undecided, and the final result may come down to preferences and not be known for weeks.
JLN is vying for up to three seats, and appears well placed to win at least one, in the north-western electorate of Braddon. Kristie Johnston, an independent, is likely to be returned in the electorate of Clark, in central and northern Hobart. David O’Byrne, a former Labor leader now running as an independent, is competing for one of the final seats in Franklin, the state’s southern-most seat.
The big parties are also each vying for an additional seat.
Speaking alongside his family at the election tally room at Hobart’s Hotel Grand Chancellor, Rockliff said it “looks like a fourth consecutive win for the Liberal party” since it assumed power in 2014.
He said the party had clearly gained the most votes and most seats “by a large margin”, and Labor would not win enough seats to form a cabinet. But he said Tasmanians had “delivered a clear message” and he would work with the parliament they had voted for.
“I will seek to form a new government, to give Tasmanians the stability and certainty they need,” he said.
Addressing the crowd after Rockliff, White left open the possibility that the party could take power with support from the cross bench. She said the result showed there had been “a significant shift in the way politics operates in Tasmania”.
“We can expect to see this happen again and again. It is very likely Tasmanians will continue to elect minority governments, particularly with a 35-seat parliament,” she said. “It is also clear that people voted for change at this election. We’ll wait to see how the dust settles and for the final results to be determined.”
The Greens’ leader, Rosalie Woodruff, said the results “were sure looking good for the Greens”, and pledged to fight for its platform, including ending native forest logging. “Our message this election was that change is needed and change is possible. We’re fully committed to stepping into the next parliament with this in mind,” she said.
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Jacqui Lambie, a federal senator who ran a largely unknown team of candidates under her name and could play a pivotal role in determining the future government, told ABC TV it was too early to say what her candidates would do if elected.
She said the Rockliff government had been “crap” and the premier had failed to “extend the hand of friendship” before election day when the Liberal party put up a website mimicking and attacking the Jacqui Lambie Network’s site and refused to take it down. “We’re not exactly feeling the love,” she said.
Rockliff became premier in 2022 after the resignation of his popular predecessor, Peter Gutwein. He called the election more than a year before it was due, blaming a standoff with two conservative MPs, John Tucker and Lara Alexander, who quit the Liberal party to become independents and turned a majority government into a minority.
Tucker and Alexander failed to be elected on Saturday. The successful candidates for the Liberals included Eric Abetz, a former minister in the Howard and Abbott federal governments who lost his senate seat in 2022.
The election was called as the state faces widely acknowledged crises in healthcare and housing, and without the government having acted on the recommendations of a damning commission of inquiry into the state’s response to child sexual abuse.
The government also faced criticism over a politically divisive deal with the AFL to build a mostly publicly funded stadium at Macquarie Point on the Hobart waterfront to host a new local team, the Tasmania Devils, due to join the league in 2028. The launch of the team last Monday was reignited as a point of debate in the final days of the campaign as it quickly signed up 150,000 foundational members.
White was leading Labor to a third straight election. The state Labor branch spent much of the term attempting to move on from factional fights that damaged its last campaign three years ago, and prompted a national executive takeover that ended just as the election was called.
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