The Liberals have tentatively claimed ‘victory’ in Tasmania, but who knows if that will hold until Monday. If it does, they remain the only Liberal Party in power.

‘There’s still a lot of votes to be counted, but it looks like an historic fourth term of Liberal government has been secured for our great state. Thank you, everyone! We’re just getting started.’ – Rockliff on Twitter.

Presumed Premier Jeremy Rockliff has prepared himself for a fourth term, but far from ‘historic’, it will be a leadership built on the scaffolding of minor party support.

Do not mistake me, this is exactly how our system of politics is meant to work.

The rise of minor parties and increased negotiation with the cross-bench is a feature, not a bug, of the Westminster system. It is a situation that arises when major parties fail to convince the public of their right to govern. As a safety net, voters look around the political landscape for ways to tie the scary edges of the ruling regime down.

How do you stop cash from being banned? How do you stop digital ID laws? How do you stop the carbon credit surveillance system? How do you stop the censorious misinformation and disinformation legislation?

You pack the Parliament full of roadblocks and hope to heck the major parties get the message. It’s like throwing the Premier in the naughty corner and telling him to face the wall for a few years.

There is nothing more frustrating than listening to political commentators and party leaders curse minor parties for ‘stealing their votes’. I remember watching Nigel Farage fielding similar questions last week when journalists loyal to the Tories raged about the rise of Reform. Rishi Sunak’s failings are not the fault of Reform any more than the steady erasure of the Liberal Party is the fault of One Nation. If anything, minor parties are trying to help. They are offering solutions to political oblivion because they care about the country.

Does anyone remember the Liberals crying about minor parties during Howard’s golden years? Of course not. The flood of whinging began during the Turnbull-Morrison race toward failure where the ‘small government’ party adopted globalist policy and oversaw abuses of human rights during Covid.

Factional leaders within the Coalition insisted the party had to be less conservative and more ‘moderate’. They began the process of mimicking Labor policies to serve personal agendas. How’s that working out…? Since going ‘moderate’ and embracing the ‘broad church’ the Coalition has dismantled its identity and with it, abdicated political power.

People will not vote for a party that has no soul, no direction, and no message.

Tasmania will be left with a hung Parliament where the Greens shore up Labor leaving the Jacqui Lambie Network holding significant influence.

The Liberals have suffered a 12 per cent swing against them, but it was not gifted to Labor. An astonishing 34 per cent of voters went for minor parties with the bulk flowing to the Greens as radicalised children cross the threshold into voting age.

It’s a shame that of all the excellent and principled minor parties in the country, the Jacqui Lambie Network gets to fumble the keys to Tasmania – mostly through lack of choice. I don’t believe in forgiveness when a party leader threatens the public. In my view, it is a serious violation of their office that should see them banned from politics. Here is what Jacqui Lambie said of the unvaccinated.

‘Those anti-vaxxers out there, or that 20-30 per cent, the ones out there protesting in the streets and doing that sort of thing, I think you’re going to find the rest of us coming at you lock, stock and barrel. We’re going to be putting the pressure on you fairly hard because the rest of us that are trying to do the right thing by the country and our kids and get vaccinated. I think for you, we’re going to start to get even more agitated, and we’re going to start to get more hardcore. That’s what you’re going to see, massive division out there, and it will be us on the front foot. The tide is going to turn on these anti-vaxxers out there, and you’re really going to feel the heat.’

In a better world, these comments would have been the end of her career.

The Leader of the Opposition, Rebecca White, has a point when she says:

‘Tasmanians have humbled a Premier who called an early election expecting to be returned in majority. Tasmanians have clearly voted for change.’

Although it’s also hypocritical, given how often Labor does the same thing when it sees the polls getting a bit shaky. Voters want change, but they have nothing but junk-food parties to pick from. The political landscape in Tasmania is rancid, fake, and self-interested.

If you listen to commentary on the result, the biggest complaint has been a fear that ‘nothing can get done’ when the government is forced to negotiate. What will happen to Tasmania with an endlessly squabbling cross-bench?

Having legislation bogged down is deliberate. That legislation is usually dangerous, poorly drafted, or unwanted by the electorate.

Commentators fail to understand that the purpose of a hung Parliament is to stop sweeping cultural, social, and economic changes. Instead of accepting the wake up call, elected members from major parties respond with frustration, blaming the public. This behaviour tells us that mainstream politicians are poorly versed in the profession for which they are handsomely paid. They are servants of the people, put in place to do their bidding, and yet too many take on the characteristics of socialist regimes where the Parliament is merely a mechanism to push the party’s Utopian ‘vision’.

Slowly but surely their arrogance is being punished, as is their fascist Green Utopia.

This is not a rejection of the two-party system, as decried by many writers, it is a symptom of a mono-party system, where the major parties have merged on significant and unpopular ideas. The minor parties are serving as the second party. They are ‘the opposition’.

If the major parties fail to understand this they will eventually see their vote reduced to the point they will be replaced by a new major party, one made up from a coalition of like-minded minor parties.

Given that One Nation has quietly been absorbing disaffected conservative talent, the Liberals better swallow their pride or accept their self-inflicted fate.

---

Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.

Get 10 issues for just $10

Subscribe to The Spectator Australia today for the next 10 magazine issues, plus full online access, for just $10.

SUBSCRIBE 10 issues for $10 REGISTER 3 articles a month

Already a subscriber? Log in