Unpicking Labor’s multi-party scare

Yesterday I was informed of a website from Tasmanian Labor that has been used in text messages to Tasmanian voters.

I don’t normally comment on campaign rhetoric like this, but in this case the website name-drops me a number of times, and selectively quotes from an article I wrote for the Guardian six years ago.

The website makes a number of arguments as to why voting for the Greens, an independent or a minor party “risks” giving the Liberal Party another four years in office. As was the case with some other similar campaigns I’ve seen in the past, they take a kernel of truth and ignore a lot of relevant information to present a very skewed argument.

Of course parties are entitled to make their case for why people should vote for them, but there’s nothing in this document about why a Labor government would be better if people vote for them rather than voting for others. I think it presents a very immature approach to a multi-party political environment that isn’t going to go away in Tasmania.

There are three main arguments:

• Voting for someone other than the major parties will make it harder for Labor to form government.
• Voting for the Greens won’t help Labor because Greens preferences don’t do much to help Labor win seats.
• The Greens somehow “stopped Labor” winning government before – even though the quote they use does not refer to actions of the Greens.

Non-major seats makes it harder for Labor to form government

The first section refers to the fact that some independents and the Jacqui Lambie Network haven’t made a commitment to form government with Labor.

While some left-leaning voters may see that as a reason to not vote for those candidates, there is no way to avoid the issue of Labor having to work with other parties.

Labor’s polling has been stuck in the 20s throughout the last few months. They are a long way away from a majority.

The website is careful not to claim that “the only way to change the government is a Labor majority”, but if that isn’t possible, Labor will need to work with some other people.

It’s also worth noting that they lump the Greens in with those other crossbench parties, but in Tasmanian history it has usually been Labor that has refused to work with the Greens, not the other way around.

I think voters should be considering how potential crossbenchers would decide to act in a hung parliament situation and ask questions on that basis. But they should also hold the major parties to account on how willing they are to work with others and come to a deal for stable government. These arrangements go both ways. And if one party is more able to work with the crossbench they may find themselves in a better position to form government, even if they don’t win as many seats.

Generally if someone is considering voting for someone other than Labor or Liberal, then they have concerns other than simply having a Labor or Liberal government. A Labor majority government would be different to a Labor minority government dependent on other parties or independents. I suspect a lot of voters would prefer the latter scenario, so those voters have to factor that in.

The website also implies, but does not say, that the question of Labor or Liberal winning more seats would be crucial to who forms government. While that could be one factor, I would argue a more relevant question is who has the ability to work well with the crossbench, and who can make a credible case for stability. Labor would find themselves in a stronger position if they can build those relationships, rather than running scare campaigns about politicians saying that they will consider their options.

The value of Greens preferences

The Labor website references a Kevin Bonham piece which looks at the role that Greens preferences play in deciding other seats in Tasmanian state elections.

The short answer is, they don’t matter very much. Not that many flow, and they don’t usually make a difference to the outcome.

The Labor website tries to spin this as a bad thing, comparing it to the compulsory preferential voting system used for the federal lower house.

But the reason why preferences play a less crucial role under Hare-Clark is because those votes are more likely to elect the candidate who received the first preference, or at least a candidate in that party.

I calculated the share of the vote cast at the last four Tasmanian state elections for candidates who were elected. This number varied between 65.9% and 70.8%. If you count all of those votes for parties that won a seat in that electorate, the number was between 86.6% and 97.5%. In contrast, this number never got over 50% in federal lower house elections, and was as low as 42.3% in 2022. The main reason why preferences don’t flow that much is because voters get their preferred candidate elected much more often.

So yeah, Greens votes don’t elect Labor MPs, but they elect Greens MPs. The same is also true in reverse – Labor votes very rarely help get a Greens member elected.

The website is carefully written to scare a voter into thinking that voting for the Greens would produce an unintended consequence, but in this case it would simply have the consequence of electing a Greens candidate.

If Labor was concerned about voters just numbering 1 to 7 for their preferred party (whether it’s Labor or the Greens) they could run a campaign advocating for progressive voters to fill out more preferences, but I’m not seeing that.

The Greens “stopping Labor” winning government

This is the part that uses my name and references an article of mine for the Guardian’s, and I would argue is the most misleading.

Firstly, it’s not a headline I wrote. It says “Tasmanian election: how the Greens helped dash Labor’s hopes of victory”. The article was something I wrote summing up the 2018 Tasmanian election. The article covers a lot of other stuff about the election, but at the end it discusses the issue of some centrist voters who don’t like hung parliaments or the Greens, and thus will swing to favour whichever major party seems to have a more credible case of being able to govern in majority.

But the Labor website’s headline says “The Greens have stopped Labor winning government before” – which is a misleading summary of the issue discussed.

Indeed any reasonable person would assume this refers to the Greens refusing to support a Labor government. But there have been three cases of an election producing a hung parliament. In two cases, the Greens supported a Labor government. In the third case, in 1996, the ALP refused to form government.

Tasmanian politics has been increasing in complexity. Support for the major parties has been dropping, there has been an increasing spread of parties and independents with a chance of winning seats. It’s pretty obvious that big parts of the major parties aren’t very comfortable with that arrangement, but it’s a thing that’s happening. It’d be nice if they could treat it a bit more seriously and maturely.

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