Winter of content for Labor: new leader offers plan to win back regional, blue collar voters

New Labor leader Dean Winter is flanked by caucus as he speaks to the media on Parliament Lawns in Hobart on Wednesday.

Dean Winter offers Tasmanian Labor – stuck in the political wilderness despite the party’s mainland triumphs – its best shot at returning to majority government in almost 20 years.

This is why the fresh-faced 38-year-old secured the unopposed endorsement of caucus, despite being a right faction fish in a left-dominated sea.

Winter’s vision is not new or innovative. It’s positively retro.

It’s a back to the future focus on jobs, industry and regional voters.

At its core is a belief Labor cannot out-green the Greens. Instead, Winter argues, the party must live up to this name and place the creation and protection of jobs above all else.

The theory is that only by growing jobs and building industries can Labor use the wealth created to look after the vulnerable.

It’s an approach that harks back to Labor leaders such as Eric Reece, Jim Bacon and Paul Lennon. It will not please the party’s greener elements and places state Labor on a collision course with the Albanese government over the environmental impact of salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour.

With an implicit focus on blue-collar industries, it may alienate public sector unions.

But in terms of winning majority government – something Labor has not done in Tasmania since 2006 – it appears a sound if simplistic formula.

Winter’s biggest challenge is not the weakened and divided Liberal minority government but rather being left alone by internal opponents within sections of Labor’s left and the union movement.

Some of these actual and would-be powerbrokers appear more focused on personal hatreds and loyalties than the best interests of the party, let alone the state.

Winter is now comfortably city-based but he comes from a regional Labor background – his father was a miner, his mother a nurse.

He also overcame adversity as a child with a stutter and learning difficulties.

His rise through Labor’s ranks has been meteoric – he was elected to parliament only in 2021 – but also involved hard fights, including to get preselected against the wishes of local hard left powerbrokers.

He’ll need more grit still to rebuild his party, but he appears well equipped to do so.