Voters in two Tasmanian Legislative Council seats go to the polls on May 4 to elect representatives for the next six years. Voters in the electorate of Elwick will also elect a representative for the next four years, to fill the remainder of Josh Willie’s term.
Profiles have been prepared for the three races, including results of the previous election, history of the seat, and list of candidates, along with results maps.
The boundaries of Legislative Council electorates were last redrawn in 2018, so this is the first election since the redistribution where the boundaries are the same as at the previous election for those electorates.
This map shows the three electorates facing election this year:
Tasmania’s upper house is unique in how it is elected. While every other state and federal upper house is elected with proportional representation, while every other lower house is elected with single-member electorates, Tasmania reverses that pattern.
The Tasmanian House of Assembly is elected using the Hare-Clark proportional representation system, with each federal electorate electing five MHAs. The entire House is elected once every four years.
The Tasmanian Legislative Council consists of fifteen electorates, each of which elects a single MLC.
The strangest thing about the Tasmanian Legislative Council is that these elections never happen all at once. MLCs are elected for six-year terms, with elections held every year on the first Saturday in May. Each year, two or three districts are up for election. These elections have only been held alongside lower house elections once, in 2021.
The Legislative Council has traditionally been dominated by independents. While Labor has regularly run candidates in the past, and in the past held most seats close to the Hobart area, the Liberal Party rarely ran candidates until the last few years, and held no seats between 1999 and 2009. The Greens regularly run candidates, but have never won a seat.
Independent MLCs held a majority of seats in the chamber until 2020. They reached a low point holding six out of fifteen seats after the 2021 elections, but now hold seven seats.