Labor receives the toughest of love

Former Tasmania Premier Lara Giddings during a media call the day after her labor governm

RIGHT up until polling day, senior Labor figures were adamant. “Voters don’t hate us,” said one. “They are not waiting with baseball bats,” said another.

If Saturday’s election result isn’t hate for Labor, it sure is the toughest of tough love.

The Labor vote has plunged almost 10 per cent on its 2010 result to just 27 per cent of the statewide vote. This is its lowest level of support, dating back to the early 1900s.

Labor can blame the flagging economy, high unemployment, and the perfect storm of global financial crisis and falling GST revenues, leading to ballooning deficits and debt.

However, it’s also no coincidence that the last time the ALP came close to a vote this disastrous was in 1992, when it managed 29 per cent.

The underlying reason for Labor’s wipe-out back then is the same as now: Tasmanians do not like minority governments; and they like alliances with the Greens even less.

In 1992, Labor’s historic nadir before today, voters punished Labor premier Michael Field for having governed in an accord with five Green independents, Australia’s first-ever Greens MPs.

In 2014, Tasmanians meted out the same punishment to Lara Giddings for Labor having not learnt its lesson and instead having created Australia’s first Greens ministers.

Giddings inherited the power-sharing alliance with the Greens struck by her predecessor David Bartlett, after the 2010 election of a hung parliament. However, she retained it when chosen to replace Bartlett in January 2011 and right up until election eve resisted pressure to dump it.

The alliance did deliver stable government, remarkably so, and did at least curtail the growth in spending and begin to rein in the burgeoning public service.

But its supporters, much less swinging voters, simply will not tolerate deals with the Greens. Now twice bitten, Labor appears to have got the message.

There is mounting pressure within the ALP rank and file and union movement for Giddings to go.

Giddings holds the cards. Her only standout potential replacement, David O’Byrne, has likely lost his seat and the only way he can return is if Giddings quits parliament. (This would allow O’Byrne to be elected on a recount in their common electorate of Franklin.)

Giddings is keeping her options open, while she consults the Labor survivors and potential new comers. If she fights on, there may be more Labor blood spilled; this time by its own hand.