David Killick: Tasmania election uniting unlikely advocates while parties pitch net vast and wide

The Libs pitched in to snuff the oxygen out of single-issued independents, but Labor can’t laugh. Political editor David Killick runs his eyes over the campaign at the halfway mark.

Tasmania election reaches the halfway mark with both major party leaders fighting for votes wherever they can.

This weekend marks the midpoint of the 2024 Tasmanian state election campaign — or at least the midpoint between the election being called and polling day.

The first votes of this election will be cast on Monday.

The Liberals has gone from hugging renters and handing out half price bus tickets to backing in loggers and denouncing “juvenile career criminals”, covering an impressive sweep of the ideological spectrum from Scandinavian-style socialism to Trumpist populism as the party of

government tries to deprive nascent single issue independents and minor parties of oxygen.

(Hopefully the youth crime crackdown is swifter and surer than the effort to hold to account the known and named offenders — and their enablers — lurking within the public sector identified by the Commission of Inquiry.)

The release of the plans to thwart the university move and announcements on forestry have demonstrated that fear of minority government is more ingrained than the desire to consult widely and have stakeholders onside.

It wasn’t popular and it’s an odd thing to imagine Bob Brown and the head of the peak forestry body chaining themselves to the same metaphorical tree in staunch opposition.

Or the Property Council, the Master Builders and the Save UTas crowd lying in front of the same metaphorical bulldozer at Sandy Bay.

Labor can’t laugh: their plans for a Tasmania Power Company had the half-life of a rare isotope of whoopsadasyium because someone forgot to get the union on board.

All the polling is pointing to the Liberals losing ground not to Labor but to independents as they seek a fourth term.

University of Tasmania professor Richard Herr pointed out in the Mercury during the week that people are drifting away from the major parties as they become more ideologically flexible in the chase for the affections of swinging voters.

Polling shows a big bloc of “undecideds”.

It is ironic then that the Jacqui Lambie Network might end up being be the main beneficiary of this, given its radio silence so far.

It has been not so much a small-target campaign as a no-target campaign.

Either Mark Twain or Abraham Lincoln noted, it is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.

Nobody is taking Ms Lambie for a fool, but there’s a growing concern that the voters of Tasmania should have the right to know what her candidates stand for on the big issues facing the state before they put numbers next to names in the ballot box.

Minor parties and independents could well decide who forms the next government.

With so many disgruntled ex-party members, in the mix, there are some interesting conversations to be had in backrooms once the votes are in.