Taswegians should dump their government and their voting system. Pronto!

ANYONE looking at Tasmania must conclude the ­island state is a political and economic basket case. Unfortunately, the preposterous Hare-Clark voting system Tasmanians have adopted to elect the 25 members of its House of Assembly is going to make it extremely difficult to reverse that situation even if the Liberal Opposition leader Will Hodgman defeats Labor Premier Lara Giddings as expected at next weekend’s election. Hare-Clark is an optional proportional voting system. Unless you’re a political scientist that won’t mean a lot. Like most dysfunctional systems, it was designed by well-intentioned individuals. In this case, 19th-century British political scientist Thomas Hare, who wanted a system that would give proportional representation to all classes in the UK so minorities would not be excluded from the House of Commons or other assemblies. His plan was taken up by Tasmanian attorney-general Andrew Inglis Clark, who after a couple of attempts managed to get parliament to agree to a trial of proportional representation in 1896. It was dumped in 1901 then resurrected six years later. It should have been left in the graveyard where fine theories but lousy practices are buried. The only other assembly to adopt it in Australia has been the ACT’s legislature. It is complex and not easily understood. To make matters worse and even more confusing for voters, Tasmania bans how-to-vote cards and distribution of electoral material on polling day. The Hare-Clark system is not well ­suited to the Westminster system, where the government usually has a clear majority of seats, the opposition has a few and minor parties and independents sit on the cross benches. In Tasmania, each of the five electorates returns five MPs. To be sure of being elected, an individual candidate must obtain a “quota” of 16.6 per cent of the total vote. That makes it easy for minor party candidates like the Greens. The five Green candidates need only win 16.6 per cent of the vote between them and one of them will be elected. But it makes it very difficult for a political party to win enough seats to form government in its own right. To do that, a party needs to win three of the five seats in three of the five electorates, and two of the five seats in the other two electorates. But to be sure of winning three seats in an electorate a party needs to win 50 per cent of the vote. If a party falls just a little short of 50 per cent it will win only two seats, meaning the electorate will return two Liberal MPs, two Labor and one Green. Under Hare-Clark a miss is as good as a mile. You definitely win two seats with 33 per cent of the vote but you are likely to miss out on winning three with 48 per cent. According to the published polling, the Greens will win four seats. The Palmer United Party is the only other minor party that could possibly win a seat. If they did win one, it would be in Braddon and they would take it from Labor. But while PUP, the Tasmanian Nationals and other parties are unlikely to win any seats for themselves, they could easily win seats for Labor and the Greens by stripping votes from the Liberals. That’s why the Liberals say a vote for any minor party is a vote for another Labor-Green minority government. Labor It is aiming to win nine seats and hoping the Greens will win four. This would give Labor and the Greens 13 seats between them and enable them to form a government. Announcing the election in January, Giddings said Labor would not have Greens in cabinet again. But on the same day Nick McKim said the Greens would be there. Giddings ­repeatedly refused to rule out doing another deal with the Greens but said she would not enter into a power-sharing agreement with them. Tasmanians know that a “no power-sharing agreement” does not mean “no deal”. The Liberals have consistently for the past four years said they will not govern in minority. This gives Tasmanians a clear choice — a majority Liberal government able to implement its long-term plan for the state, or another four years of Labor-Green minority government and all the uncertainty and lack of action that brings. History has demonstrated that Tasmania’s experiments with minority governments have been ruinous for the state. They lack the authority to make the major changes Tasmania needs with every single decision held hostage to the whims of the minor parties. Tasmanians should seriously consider their circumstances, consider their future and consider dumping their voting system after dumping the current government.