Tasmania’s Independent Tradition and Integrity Reforms: A Conversation with Meg Webb MLC

So tell our listeners who won't be as familiar if they're not from Tasmania with the Tasmanian, Tasmania electoral system, you're in the upper house, as you've pointed out.

The lower house is house from which government is traditionally drawn.

Is the system of the electoral system in Tasmania such that it sort of facilitates, if you like, if not encourage people to stand as independents? And, and, and what role do independents play in, in, in this democratic governance system in Tasmania?

Well, thanks, Mike.

Well, those are really interesting questions right now, particularly in Tasmania, because there we have seen a real come, coming to the forefront o- of it by independents in our political system.

In the upper house, though, we've actually always had a very strong tradition of, of independents in our upper house.

Just this year, our upper house has turned 200 and, and so it's, it's had this well-established tradition where it has b- always had majority independent members, except for, in that 200 years, except for a period of four years, and that was the years 2020 to 2024.

And during those four years, the two major parties together held a majority of seats in the upper house, and that was quite pivotal to be honest, and you could tell the difference it made.

But other than those four years, and including now, it's always been a majority of independents and, and now we also have one Green member in the upper house too.

So the independents and the Green member together form a majority.

That makes a huge difference.

It means it, in my view, it means it really genuinely has the opportunity to be a house of review, which is what we know in a Westminster system is the task of an upper house.

Because it hasn't been ever dominated by one party, l- it hasn't even ever, except for that four-year period, been dominated by the two major parties, what you get is a real diversity of voices from communities all around our state.

And the, the other part of our upper house that's a bit different to most other states, and, and people might not be familiar with it, is that we have single-member electorates in our upper house.

And so we are elected from particular, there's 15 of us, and we're each elected from an electorate around the state.

We have about 25,000, no, probably about 27,000 voters in each of those electorates.

And what you get when you have a lot of independents there amongst that 15, and you get people from all around the state, you get a real diversity of backgrounds and views and opinions.

People who are on the more progressive end, people who are on the more conservative end, really interesting mix.

I think that makes for really good legislating.

I think it makes for really good representation, and it makes it quite exciting.

And of course, our lower house, we have the Hare Clark system, the most fantastically proportionally representative system in the world, and we see that here.

So- That system also allows for minor parties and independents to have a, an opportunity to come through, because to win a s- one of the seven seats in each of the five electorates, you need to get about 12%, 30% of the vote.

So that's a really good opportunity.

So right now, we've got a minority government in the Lower House.

We've got a really big crossbench that's got independents, it's got minor parties, and then we've also got an Upper House that's got majority independents.