THE POLL BLUDGER

Bass covers the eastern part of Tasmania's northern coast plus Flinders Island, and is dominated by Launceston. As can be seen from the graphs, Bass was an arm wrestle between the Labor and Liberal parties prior to the emergence of the Greens as an enduring force in 1989. The effect of the seismic statewide shift away from Labor at the 1982 Franklin dam election was relatively subdued here due to the electorate's distance from the site in question, although it should be stressed that this is only true in relative terms. The Greens' failure here in 1996 marked the first time since 1986 that they failed to win a seat in each electorate, although they in fact won more of the vote in Bass than in Braddon. Then came the electoral reform that the major parties contrived to neuter the Greens by cutting representation from seven members per electorate to five. Only Denison returned a Greens member at the 1998 election, when Labor won more seats than the Liberals in Bass for the first time since the pre-Franklin dam era.

The Greens returned to prominence at the 2002 election, doing well enough to elect members in every electorate except Braddon. Counting on election night suggested that the Liberals would be reduced to one seat in Bass, as had been the case in Denison, Franklin and Lyons. However, Liberal candidate Peter Gutwein narrowly edged out Labor's Anita Smith late in the count despite Labor's primary vote amounting to 2.95 quotas, a result widely put down to an apparent Labor blunder in fielding six candidates. Since Tasmanian voters are only required to number five boxes to cast a formal vote, many votes from Labor supporters who had only done the bare minimum required of them ended up exhausting. However, Antony Green assesses that the result was caused by leakage of Labor votes to Liberal candidates, Sue Napier in particular. Labor received no corresponding benefit from leaking Liberal votes because its highest profile candidates, Jim Cox and Kathryn Hay, were elected early in the count.

This indicates the important role that candidates' popularity and profile play in determining outcomes under Tasmania's system of Robson rotation, and the damage parties can suffer when a popular incumbent retires. Those unfamiliar with such intricacies would do well to peruse Antony Green's guide before proceeding further.

Labor's only sitting member going into the election is the Left faction's Jim Cox, who has had a long and interesting career in state politics. Shortly after he was first elected in 1989, Cox was the subject of a bribery attempt by local businessman Edmund Rouse, whose diverse interests included the chairmanship of the then-fledgling forestry company Gunns. Rouse hoped to entice Cox into defecting from Labor to prevent the party from forming a government in accord with the Greens, an outcome likely to damage his business interests. Cox took the matter to the police and agreed to take part in a 10-day sting operation that led to the imprisonment of both Rouse and fellow conspirator Tony Aloi. Cox lost his seat at the 1992 election that dumped Michael Field's troubled Labor government from office, but he recovered it in 1996 and has strongly consolidated his position at subsequent elections. He currently holds the finance, racing and sport and recreation portfolios in the Lennon government.

Labor suffered a blow when its other sitting member, Kathryn Hay, announced she would not seek re-election after just one term. A former Miss Australia winner, Hay became Tasmania's first Aboriginal MP when elected to parliament in 2002 at the age of 27. Fortunately for Labor, they have found an ideal replacement in former federal member Michelle O'Byrne, whom no-one blamed for losing Bass at the 2004 election. O'Byrne is a member of the Progressive Policy Forum faction which broke away from the Left during preselection disputes in 2003, and which also includes her brother David O'Byrne, state party president and secretary of the LHMWU. This is not O'Byrne's first attempt to return to politics in the short time since her defeat – she had to be persuaded against nominating for the casual Senate vacancy created by the retirement of Sue Mackay in July 2005, agreeing to do so on the condition that the Left would back the eventual victor, Carol Brown. Party sources were reported as saying this was a face-saving exercise by O'Byrne, who was likely to be defeated in any case after a cross-factional deal delivered the numbers to Brown.

The highest-profile of the remaining candidates is Grant Courtney, another member of the Progressive Policy Forum. The local branch secretary of the Australian Meat Industry Employees Union, Courtney has been prominent in the union's campaigns against live sheep exports and the lockout of Blue Ribbon meat workers. He also put his hand up to replace Sue Mackay in the Senate in July 2005, reportedly running against the wishes of his faction. Other tilts at public office included an unsuccessful run for Launceston City Council in October 2002 and endorsement as Labor's candidate for the upper house seat of Rosevears in May 2002. His notably poor performance on the latter occasion, when he polled just 8 per cent of the vote, put an end to Labor's pretensions of gaining a majority in the notoriously independent chamber.

Also on the ticket are George Town school teacher Michael Greene, whose preselection appeared in doubt when Left union official and state executive member Nicole Wells refused to endorse it in December 2005 on the grounds that he had not been a financial member of the party for the requisite six months; Michelle Cripps, regional development consultant for Northern Tasmania Development; and Scottsdale High School principal Steve Reissing.

The Liberals are going into the election with both sitting members on board. Senior among them is Sue Napier, the former party leader deposed by Bob Cheek in August 2001. Napier reportedly did not wish to resume the leadership after the 2002 election debacle which cost Cheek his seat in Denison. Although re-elected relatively comfortably, Napier's vote declined sharply and it was not clear on early counting that she would prevail over Peter Gutwein. There have been numerous suggestions over the year's that Napier might exit state politics to take up one of Tasmania's bumper crop of Senate seats. The most intriguing of these was the suggestion that the moderate faction would install her in the number two Senate position as part of a move to demote Right faction warlord Eric Abetz from one to three, but Napier herself scotched the idea. Abetz had earlier been instrumental in thwarting her move to replace the retiring Brian Gibson shortly after she lost the leadership in late 2001, installing Guy Barnett in her place. More recently, Napier was touted as a potential replacement for veteran John Watson in the event that he chose to retire mid-term, which has not come to pass.

Peter Gutwein's narrow victory in 2002 came at the expense of Liberal incumbent David Fry. The Liberals might have ended up wishing the outcome had been otherwise, as his maverick behaviour has won comparisons with defeated former leader Bob Cheek, who last year wrote a tell-all book about the inner workings of the state party. Early in the term Gutwein went against party policy by calling for an end to old-growth logging, and his call for Catholic Archbishop Adrian Doyle to stand aside while an inquiry into sex abuse allegations in the church was under way prompted a tongue-lashing from veteran Denison MP Michael Hodgman. Gutwein's reputation as a moderate in a state party dominated by the Right fuelled accusations the he was undermining Rene Hidding's leadership and hoped to take the job for himself. He was briefly dumped from the front bench in December 2003 after crossing the floor to support a Greens motion calling for a commission of inquiry into child sex abuse, which Ellen Whinnett of The Mercury reported "infuriated his colleagues, who claimed Mr Gutwein's move was self-promoting and painted them as uncaring on the issue of child abuse". Hidding blamed the episode for a 6 per cent drop in Liberal support recorded in an EMRS poll in early 2004, which showed a particularly poor result in Bass. The party felt compelled to reinstate him mainly because of difficulties in spreading the portfolio workload across seven parliamentary members. He currently holds the police and education portfolios.

The Liberals' non-incumbent candidates include the aforementioned David Fry, who failed to retain the seat he assumed on a recount after Liberal colleague Frank Madill retired in 2000; Pam Fratangelo, a former Lions Club president and current executive officer of Women Tasmania, and Sam McQuestin, who owns a number of hospitality industry businesses in Launceston. The Mercury's Insider column reported in July 2005 that Fratangelo has worked on both sides of the political fence, as a staffer in the previous Liberal government and a campaigner for narrowly unsuccessful Labor candidate Anita Smith at the 2002 state election.

Sitting member Kim Booth brought the Greens back to Bass after a term in the wilderness (so to speak) with an easy victory at the 2002 election. Interestingly, Booth is a former owner and operator of a building and saw-milling company. The best known of the Greens' remaining candidates is Jeremy Ball, an electorate officer to Booth and former actor who had roles in the television series Water Rats and a brief cameo in the Hollywood blockbuster The Matrix, in which Keanu Reeves pinches his mobile phone (the film was shot in Sydney). He was also Booth's successor as the party's federal candidate for Bass at the 2004 election. Rohan Wade of The Mercury reported that Ball, who is now 36, was the youngest person to be arrested at the Franklin Dam protests in the early 1980s.

Other candidates: Les Rochester is a Tamar Valley councillor and former television journalist who has received widespread publicity for his campaign against Gunns' proposal for a pulp mill in northern Tasmania.

Outcome: 1. Michelle O'Byrne (Labor); 2. Jim Cox (Labor); 3. Peter Gutwein (Liberal); 4. Sue Napier (Liberal); 5. Kim Booth (Greens).

The most exciting outcome to emerge from the election was the re-election of Greens incumbent Kim Booth, who retained his seat over Labor's Steve Reissig by 138 votes. The conventional election night wisdom that Reissig would win prevailed right up to the final day of the count, when Sue Neales of The Mercury wrote that Booth "appears to have failed to lock in enough votes, giving last-minute Labor candidate and Scottsdale teacher, Steve Reissig, a likely swift passage into Parliament". However, there were a few voices cautioning that preferences could flow in historically unusual ways, and I might modestly note that mine was among them (as Kevin Bonham of the Tasmanian Times kindly noted). In particular, Labor's total primary vote was substantially boosted by the popularity of Michelle O'Byrne, particularly among voters of a feminist or otherwise left-leaning persuasion who would normally have voted for the Greens. Such voters constituted a large part of O'Byrne's remarkably strong 23.2 per cent share of the vote, comfortably ahead of Labor incumbent Jim Cox's 15.3 per cent. O'Byrne's popularity contributed to both the aberrant strength of Labor's total primary vote (up 0.5 per cent to 49.6 per cent compared with falls of between 2.4 per cent and 4.5 per cent elsewhere) and an unusually steep decline in the Greens vote (down 3.0 per cent to 13.6 per cent compared with falls of 0.4 per cent to 1.7 per cent elsewhere). Herein lay the clue to the surprise outcome – Greens voters who jumped on the O'Byrne bandwagon were politically engaged and inclined to be mindful of their preferences, which a great many delivered to Booth. However, there were a number of other contributing factors – an unexpectedly high rate of Labor exhaustion, indicating that the party once again erred in nominating six candidates when voters were only compelled to number five boxes; preferences from O'Byrne leaking to Booth not just directly, but also via a second preference to Jim Cox; and a surge for Booth on the final batch of postal votes.

Beyond that, the two Liberal incumbents had reasonably comfortable wins in the intra-party contest, although David Fry matched his 2002 performance with a fairly strong 7.0 per cent. Of the unsuccessful Labor candidates, Steve Reissig's 4.5 per cent was easily the best result. Anti-pulp mill campaigner Les Rochester polled 1.9 per cent, about half of which went to the Greens as preferences. A final thought from Kevin Bonham: "Labor has to have a good hard look at what it is doing in this electorate in terms of publicity and profile-building. Its star candidates keep leaking ridiculous amounts when this doesn't happen to it in other electorates, it keeps running six candidates without building a strong profile for a preferred third candidate, and twice in a row it has dropped 1000+ votes in the cutup and failed to turn a quota-plus lead into a win".

The electorate of Braddon covers the north-western coastal areas of Tasmania plus King Island in the Bass Strait, and is dominated by Burnie and Devonport. Smaller centres include Currie, Penguin, Savage River, Smithton, Stanley, Ulverstone, Waratah and Wynyard. This is an electorally mixed area in which timber and mining industries that traditionally provided a solid working-class base for Labor were balanced out by conservative small towns and farming districts. The economic decline that buffeted the area's industries, along with the political upheaval caused by the Franklin Dam controversy, dramatically tilted the balance in the Liberals' favour in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Recent years have seen a return to the good old days from Labor's perspective, barring the 2004 federal election when a backlash against Mark Latham's conservationist forestry policy returned the seat to the Liberals with a 7.0 per cent swing. As this result indicates, this is a relatively weak area for the Greens who have uniquely failed to win seats in the two elections held since the number of members in each electorate was cut from seven to five. It has also raised Liberal hopes that they might gain a seat from Labor, despite the lengths gone to by the state party to quarantine themselves from Latham's policy.

Antony Green notes the electorate's diversity encourages parties to balance their tickets with candidates from different areas: "In 2002, Burnie-based MPs Steve Kons and Bryan Green pulled in most of Labor's vote in Burnie and areas to the west, while Devonport's Brenton Best and Mike Gaffney from Latrobe helped Labor's vote in the east of Braddon. Based in Sassafras, Jeremy Rockliff similarly dominated the Liberal vote in the east of the electorate, while Burnie based Brett Whiteley polled well in Burnie and surrounding councils".

Bryan Green is a member of Labor's Left faction with a background in the Forestry Union, and is reckoned by Greens leader Peg Putt to be a "dyed-in-the-wool" advocate for the industry. He assumed ministerial responsibility in this area when he was promoted from Primary Industries Minister to Infrastructure, Energy and Resources Minister in the reshuffle after Treasurer David Crean's retirement in February 2004. Green achieved a personal victory at the 2002 election when he outpolled Steven Kons to become the electorate's strongest performing candidate (after polling 7.3 per cent to Kons' 17.6 per cent when both were first elected in 1998), and he was mentioned as a potential rival to Paul Lennon when talk of a leadership challenge briefly surfaced after the 2004 federal election debacle. Shortly after Jim Bacon's retirement, Ellen Whinnett of The Mercury reported that "the generally good-humoured Green has been anointed Labor's hard man after Paul Lennon became Premier and began to soften his image", prompting the Liberals to label Green as Labor's "attack puppy". Whinnett listed Green's strengths as being a "charismatic parliamentary performer, excellent public speaker (and) rising Labor star", while his weaknesses were that he was "easily provoked, prone to intemperate comments (and) perceived as unyielding".

As the mayor of Burnie, Steven Kons brought a high profile to parliament upon his election in 1998 when he achieved a quota in his own right on debut. Kons is a member of the Right faction and is known to have frosty relations with factional opponent Bryan Green – The Mercury reported in June 2004 that "it was common knowledge that before the last election, former premier Jim Bacon and his former chief of staff had spoken to the pair over their bickering". Kons was promoted to the front bench with the primary industries and water portfolio in the reshuffle that followed Treasurer David Crean's retirement due to ill health in January 2004, which occurred a month before Jim Bacon quit in similar circumstances.

Brenton Best of the Left faction was first elected at the 1996 election with 4.4 per cent of the vote and has been a consistent improver since, lifting to 7.3 per cent in 1998 and 10.6 per cent in 2002. However, Labor's overall strength on the latter occasion meant he only won narrowly over a party colleague, Latrobe deputy mayor Michael Gaffney. In May 2002 Best became the third Tasmanian MP in one month (after former Labor-turned independent Senator Shayne Murphy and Rumney Labor MLC Lin Thorp) to be charged with drink driving, recording a blood-alcohol reading of 0.13 after side-swiping a parked car. Labor has copped heat at Best's end of the electorate over the removal of accident and emergency and obstetric services from Mersey Hospital; he was spared having to vote on a Liberal motion calling for their reinstatement because he was acting as Speaker due to David Polley's absence from the chamber, a circumstance his opponents found more than a little convenient.

The newcomers on Labor's ticket are Peter Hollister, who served as mayor of Devonport from 2002 to 2005 when he lost the position to Lynn Laycock, and Leonie Batchelor, a staffer to Senator Nick Sherry. Antony Green argues that Hollister presents a particular threat to Brenton Best, who was able to dominate the Devonport vote in 2002.

At the 2002 election, neither of the sitting Liberal members (Carole Cains and former Premier Tony Rundle) sought re-election. With the Greens failing to get a member up, they succeeded in maintaining their two seats despite a 9.2 per cent dive on the primary vote. The star performer was 32-year-old Jeremy Rockliff, whose family have been farmers in the Sassafras area for 150 years. Rockliff was the state Young Liberals president from 1994 and 1995 and now holds the shadow primary industries, water and environment and arts portfolios. He was elected with 13.1 per cent of the primary vote, by far the strongest showing of the five Liberal candidates.

The other successful Liberal candidate was Brett Whiteley, a Burnie councillor and state party vice-president, who polled 7.4 per cent. Whiteley might not have recovered from a charge laid against him for breaching the Electoral Act during the 2002 campaign, after he issued his own Liberal how-to-vote cards that listed and pictured the party candidates in his own order of preference. Defeated Liberal leader Bob Cheek later wrote that he had "never seen four men so angry" as when he discussed the matter with the other Liberal candidates, each of whom considered taking it to the Court of Disputed Returns (which was considered unlikely to succeed). Whiteley pleaded guilty and was placed on a 12 month good-behaviour bond by the court and fined $5000 by the Liberal Party, whose Devonport branch called for his expulsion. However, Ellen Whinnett of The Mercury wrote in June 2003 that his promotion from Shadow Infrastructure Minister to Shadow Police Minister followed strong parliamentary performances, and was "the clearest sign yet that he has been forgiven".

The enormous amount of adverse publicity generated by Whiteley's bungle has created an opportunity for rivals within the party. The likeliest candidates from this remove appear to be John Oldaker, a farmer, Vietnam veteran and Circular Head councillor who polled a respectable 21.2 per cent as an independent candidate at last year's election for the upper house seat of Murchison, and Leon Perry, a staffer to Senator Richard Colbeck who Antony Green says is "very well known in Devonport as coach of the East Devonport Swans". Rounding out the ticket is Heather Woodward, a hairdresser from Smithton (which produced the biggest anti-Labor swing of any booth in the country at the 2004 federal election).

Paul O'Halloran, an assistant principal at a Devonport college, is rated as the best chance to end the Greens' lockout in Braddon. The ABC reports that the remaining candidates are "youth worker Scott Jordan, physiotherapist Andrea Jackson, artist Di Ransley and activist John Coombes".

Braddon was the only electorate in which the Greens did not win a seat in 2002, and a 2.0 per cent drop in their vote put them well out of contention this time. Kevin Bonham notes that it is not inconceivable that they could still win a seat from 10.3 per cent of the vote, but only if they overcame Labor's surplus over its second quota. As it stood, Labor again managed a third quota off their own bat with 50.8 per cent of the vote, leaving no room for the Greens. The Liberals were also well clear of a second quota with 37.3 per cent, hence the return of all five sitting members.

Click here for Tasmanian Electoral Commission results

Denison essentially covers all of Hobart west of the Derwent River, plus some hinterland beyond. It is the strongest electorate in the state for the Greens, having elected Bob Brown at the 1986 election and returned the party's only member at the 1998 election, when representation was first reduced from seven members per electorate to five. The electorate also produced Tasmania's only state Democrats MP when Norm Saunders (who later became a Senator) won a seat in 1980 and retained it in 1982. The former election was another unique feature of Denison's history, having been held after the election of three Labor members from 1979 was ruled invalid due to breaches of a silly rule capping campaign expenditure at a mere $1500, which had hitherto been politely ignored. This led directly to the introduction of Tasmania's joyous system of Robson rotation, which ought to be the envy of the democratic world. Wayne Crawford explained the episode thus in The Mercury in 2002:

"Labor had held a conference on the West Coast to officially endorse its candidates for the by-election. The Left faction in control of the party decided to run a how-to-vote ticket in the poll and endorsed northern suburbs Left-wing lawyer John Green at the top; fellow Denison MHA and Deputy Premier and Treasurer Neil Batt – then also a federal heavyweight as the party's national president – was put No 4 on the ticket, which he took as a snub, given his seniority ... Originally, the order of candidates' names on ballot papers was alphabetical. Thus, because of the "donkey vote" (by which many electors simply chose their favoured party and voted straight down the list) the House was full of people whose names began with A, B and C. When I started covering Parliament in the late 1960s, 15 MHAs (of the 35) had names beginning with A, B or C.

"For years, a Liberal MHA for Bass, former Launceston banker Neil Robson (an intelligent man and a member of Mensa, the organisation for people with very high IQs) had been arguing for a system of "rotating" the order of names on ballot papers to give all candidates a share of "favoured" positions – that is, positions at the top or bottom of the paper or positions under well-known or popular candidates ... and for years he had been dismissed (not only by Labor but by members of his own party) as "the mad professor". After the Left's perceived snub to Batt in the lead-up to the 1980 by-election, Robson, as he recalls, abruptly went from "mad professor" to "man of vision". The government suddenly saw the wisdom of his system as a means of trumping the Left's how-to-vote ticket. Under the Robson system, a how-to-vote card would be worthless because it would be nothing like the ballot papers, which would be printed in batches of many various forms and shuffled.

"The upshot of the February 1980 by-election was that Green lost his seat and Neil Batt topped the poll (helped by not only Lowe but also Bob Hawke, then ACTU president, campaigning for him)."

As the chart below indicates, the emergence of the Greens initiated a period of electoral stability that ended with the Liberals' calamitous performance at the 2002 election, at which Bob Cheek became the first Tasmanian party leader since 1903 to lose his seat. His personal vote fell to 7.7 per cent from 12.9 per cent at the previous election – still the highest vote for a Liberal candidate, but preferences from Liberal supporters as well as opponents pushed veteran Michael Hodgman ahead of him.

Labor's electoral slate has been wiped clean by the exit of Jim Bacon, who polled a massive 35.5 per cent in his own right in 2002. Most of his preferences went to the other senior member in the electorate, Attorney-General Judy Jackson, who surprised many when she announced her retirement last year. The dearth of established sitting members led to talk that the void might be filled by local federal MP Duncan Kerr, whose plans to move to state politics at the 2002 election were scotched by then Labor leader Simon Crean (who feared a repeat of the Cunningham by-election). Labor's sitting members are the two candidates who fought it out for Labor's third seat in 2002 – the eventual winner, Graeme Sturges, and David Bartlett, who entered parliament through the recount held when Jim Bacon quit due to terminal ill-health in early 2004. Sturges is a member of the Left faction and is rated by Sue Neales of The Mercury as the only Labor member certain to hold his seat, on the grounds that he is "regarded as an outstanding member representing local constituents". Bartlett is a former IT worker for the state Treasury, who copped flak during the last election campaign after he put his computer skills to use by spamming local constituents. He is thought to face a tougher assignment than Sturges, as is often the case with members elected at mid-term recounts.

Bartlett faces what Sue Neales of The Mercury describes as "two high-profile and younger female candidates" who "have been keenly headhunted to fill the gap left by long-term fixture Ms Jackson". They are Tasmanian Small Business Council president Louise Sullivan (whose preselection appeared in doubt when Labor Left union official and state executive member Nicole Wells refused to endorse it in December 2005 on the grounds that she was not a financial member of the party) and Lisa Singh, a manager for Arts Tasmania and a former Hobart citizen of the year. Sue Neales reported on the weekend that internal Labor polling showed Singh was likely to win at Bartlett's expense. Also on the Labor ticket are Julie Collins, a former Labor state president who has worked as a staffer to premiers Jim Bacon and Michael Field and Senators Carol Brown and Sue Mackay, and her Left faction colleague Joe Ritchie, who is the brother of Pembroke MLC Allison Ritchie.

Justice cannot be done in the space available to the state and federal parliamentary career of Michael Hodgman QC, which goes back to 1966 when he was elected to the upper house seat of Huon. He won the federal seat of Denison from Labor at the 1975 election and held it until defeated by Duncan Kerr in 1987, before returning to state politics in 1992. Hodgman lost his seat at the 1998 election but recovered it on a recount in 2001 after the retirement of former Premier Ray Groom. He was the only Liberal to win a seat in Denison in 2002, narrowly running down party leader Bob Cheek after preferences. In his tell-all book published last year, Cheek described Hodgman as "the darling of the Sandy Bay blue rinse set" (with "more front than Dolly Parton") and said he had "entered every leadership contest state or federal, without being asked ... and rarely got more than one vote". One of Hodgman's legal clients, noted Melbourne poet Mark "Chopper" Read, forced a rhyme from his surname by rating him "a master of the legal twist/a shrewd and artful dodge-man". Now 67, he lives out his leadership ambitions vicariously through his son, Franklin MP Will Hodgman, which are likely to be realised in the not-too-distant future.

Martine Healy reported in The Mercury last year that the initial announcement of only four candidates led to speculation that a spot was being held for a high-profile recruit – believed to be "Federal Hotels spruiker" Brendan Blomeley, who in April 2005 denied reports he had been recruited by Senator Eric Abetz. The spot ended up going to Fabian Dixon, a prominent lawyer and former Law Council of Australia president. A suspiciously short time after his nomination was announced, news reports emerged of a Law Society of Tasmania investigation into Dixon over allegations of overcharging and negligence. According to The Australian, the complainant claimed Dixon had told him that the judge hearing his case, Michael Hannon, was "an ex-partner of mine and I usually get what I want from him", and said he did not inform him that Hannon was notorious for taking years to deliver judgements (although in the Poll Bludger's experience, taking forever to achieve bugger all at ruinous expense is par for the course in the legal system). Despite this, Sue Neales of The Mercury reported on the weekend that Dixon is well in contention to win a seat, perhaps even at the expense of Hodgman.

The other fancied Liberal newcomer is Richard Lowrie, a former rugby player and manager with Incat whose father served for 18 years in the Legislative Council. Also on the ticket is Elise Archer, yet another lawyer and the wife of state party president Dale Archer. Heather Low Choy of The Mercury included Archer (along with Michael Hodgman) in a list of the ten best-dressed Tasmanians in July 2004 for her "sharply tailored professional attire with an edge" and "beautiful accessories". Blind to the precedent of Imelda Marcos, Archer unwisely nominated shoes as as her "wardrobe fetish" and confessed to having "lost count of how many pairs I have, it's that bad". The remaining candidate is John Klonaris, a Hobart small businessman and a figure in the local Greek community.

The safest bet going in Denison is the re-election of Peg Putt, who succeeded Bob Brown as member in 1993 and single-handedly carried the party's banner after a changed electoral system reduced it from five seats to one at the 1998 election. The Greens have long fantasised about winning two seats in Denison, but recent polling suggests this is likely to remain beyond their reach. The most fancied of their remaining candidates is Cassy O'Connor, who has attracted attention because she worked until recently as an adviser to Labor's Duncan Kerr. This was seen to indicate that gap that has opened between the Labor Left and the party's pro-business, pro-forestry industry state hierarchy. O'Connor earlier made herself known as the public face of a campaign against a controversial housing and marina development at Ralphs Bay east of Hobart. Writing in The Mercury, Greg Barns took her nomination to mean that Peg Putt plans to retire mid-term so that her seat, and perhaps also her party leadership, might pass on to O'Connor (at the expense of ambitious rival, Franklin MP Nick McKim). Rounding out the ticket are social worker Marrette Corby, teacher Bill Harvey and ambulance communications officer Toby Rowallan.

Outcome: 1. Peg Putt (Greens); 2. Michael Hodgman (Liberal); 3. David Bartlett (Labor); 4. Lisa Singh (Labor); 5. Graeme Sturges (Labor).

There appeared to be a straightforward exchange of votes from Labor (down 3.9 per cent to 46.9 per cent) to Liberal (up 3.6 per cent to 26.6 per cent), but not of sufficient force to endanger Labor's three seats. The intra-party contests were a very different matter. Jim Bacon overwhelmingly dominated Labor's share of the vote last time, polling 35.5 per cent out of the party's 50.8 per cent total. This time David Bartlett (elected on a recount in 2004 after Jim Bacon's retirement) was the standout performer with 13.0 per cent, while fellow sitting member Graeme Sturges performed only slightly better than successful newcomer Lisa Singh, 9.6 per cent to 9.4 per cent. Sturges struggled further on preferences, coming within 762 votes of being eliminated ahead of party colleague Louise Sullivan (who polled 6.6 per cent). With no rival sitting Liberal, Michael Hodgman turned in his best performance since 1992 with 12.1 per cent, defying expectations that he might face a threat from Fabian Dixon (5.8 per cent). Despite her bad mood on election night, Peg Putt could console herself with the knowledge that her personal vote of 18.1 per cent was the highest in the electorate, while Cassy O'Connor polled 3.9 per cent.

Cassy O'Connor's second place for the Greens could yet prove significant, as Greg Barns has suggested Peg Putt might not be there for the long haul. Should Putt retire, O'Connor would replace her following a recount. However, the same cannot be assumed for Liberal runner-up Fabian Dixon in the event that Michael Hodgman retires mid-term, a strong possibility considering he will be 71 by the time of the next election. As Antony Green noted in comments on this site, the method used for countbacks will put Dixon at a disadvantage relative to his Liberal rivals because he was unexcluded at the point where Hodgman was elected: "That means that at any re-count, these Liberals get their primary votes back from Hodgman, but Dixon will not because his votes were not excluded at the point where Hodgman was elected. The current re-count method gives little weight to the fact that people vote for party as well as candidate. The best way to overcome the problem would be to completely count the votes again but exclude one candidate. This is used in other states where electronic counting is used, but very messy and time consuming in Hare Clark compared to the current re-count method of only examining the candidate's quota. If anyone can think of a shorter method to overcome the problem, the Tasmanian parliament and Electoral Commission would love to hear of one."

Click here for Tasmanian Electoral Commission results

Franklin includes the areas of Hobart on the eastern shore of the Derwent River, small towns south of the city and the unpopulated southern part of the World Heritage area to the west. The federal electorate was mostly in Liberal hands in the post-war era (though usually by narrow margins), until Harry Quick won it for Labor at the Tasmanian Liberal wipeout of 1993 and consolidated it thereafter. At state level, the electorate has reflected the pattern of traditional Labor dominance that foundered on the rocks of the Franklin Dam controversy in the early 1980s. The Liberals lost one of their standard three seats at the 1996 election, the last held under the seven-member system, to independent candidate Bruce Goodluck, who had been the federal Liberal member from 1975 until he retired due to ill health in 1993. Goodluck polled 6.3 per cent of the vote and won with help from a good many preferences leaking from the Liberal ticket. He did not recontest at the 1998 election, when the number of representatives was cut to five, and the Liberals failed to recover the seat.

The real Liberal disaster was to come in 2002 when they slumped from 37.0 per cent of the vote to 23.7 per cent and dropped another seat, this time to the Greens. Their only sitting member going into the poll was Martin McManus, who entered parliament at a mid-term recount when Peter Hodgman quit for an unsuccessful run at the 2001 federal election. The other elected member from 1998, Matt Smith – who was elected at the age of 20 – quit shortly before the election after his father was charged with stealing from his employer, and a court was told some of the money may have been used to fund his campaign (his father was later acquitted on all charges). Their only successful candidate was Will Hodgman, nephew of Peter and son of legendary Denison MP Michael Hodgman.

Labor by contrast is going into the election with three sitting members, all of them high-profile – none more so than the Premier, Paul Lennon. There has been a perception that Labor will struggle to retain its three seats this time around, which if correct will mean the loss of a cabinet minister. However, a Labor upturn in recent polls may require a revision of this view.

Paul Lennon entered parliament in 1990 via the state secretary position at the Tasmanian Trades and Labor Council. He failed at his first run for election in 1989, but won a seat on a recount the following year when Labor veteran Ken Wriedt retired. He has steadily built up his personal vote over the years, cracking double figures in 1996 and increasing from 13.1 per cent in 1998 to 18.2 per cent in 2002. Lennon emerged over time as the head of the state party's Right faction, and became Deputy Premier upon the election of Jim Bacon's government in 1998. He assumed the role of Labor's "enforcer" and took on an ever more demanding load of portfolios from Bacon who, in the estimation of Tasmanian academics Tony McCall and Peter Hay, sought only to retain "portfolios that kept him out of trouble and allowed him to present himself as the avuncular statesmen". The tough image Lennon acquired led to concerns about his suitability for the job when he took over from Bacon in early 2004. These came to the fore when Labor lost two Tasmanian seats at the federal election due to the disastrous rift with the federal party over forestry policy, which prompted short-lived talk of a leadership challenge. This has long since ceased, but the jury will remain out on his premiership until the figures come in on Saturday night.

Lara Giddings became the youngest woman ever elected to an Australian parliament when she first won a seat in Lyons at the age of 23 in 1996. She was squeezed out when the number of members was reduced at the 1998 election, but returned as a member for Franklin in 2002. This came at the expense of Labor member Neville Oliver, who entered parliament mid-term after a recount when Fran Bladel abandoned her seat to make an unsuccessful tilt at the upper house seat of Huon. Hiddings became Economic Development and Arts Minister in 2004 and, according to Sue Neales of The Mercury, is better placed than party rival Paula Wriedt to retain her seat. Despite being of the Left faction, Giddings has been described as a protégé of Paul Lennon.

Paula Wreidt is the daughter of the aforementioned Ken Wriedt, who was the Whitlam government Agriculture Minister and Senate leader at the time of the 1975 supply crisis, and later led the state party amid its wilderness years from 1982 to 1986. She entered parliament in 1996 and became Education Minister when Labor came to power in 1998. This made her Tasmania's youngest ever female cabinet member, and two years later she became the state's first MP to have a child while in office.

With three cabinet ministers up for re-election, the remaining Labor candidates are unlikely to get a look in. They are Ross Butler, a former Lindisfarne real estate agent and school principal, and Daniel Hulme, a Australian Taxation Office worker and former Young Labor president described by Sue Neales of The Mercury as a "right-wing pro-development campaigner".

Will Hodgman is the new generation representative of the evergreen Hodgman dynasty, which includes his grandfather (who served as both a Liberal and independent member) as well as his father Michael and uncle Peter. Hodgman went straight into the deputy leadership of the battered Liberal Party after the 2002 election fiasco and looks certain to go one better in the very short-term future, given the results of a recent poll published by The Mercury which showed he was the preferred Premier of more than a third of Liberal voters. He has set himself apart from his monarchist lawyer father by abandoning his legal career after entering parliament and taking up the position of deputy convenor of the Australian Republican Movement.

The best-known of the Liberal newcomers are Tasmania Police lawyer and criminologist Vanessa Goodwin, who in 2003 was touted as a Senate candidate by party moderates hoping to demote conservative warlord Eric Abetz to the dicey number three position on the ticket, and Tony Scott, a Vietnam veteran and chief executive of the state branch of the RSL. Also standing are Steve Allie, a local business and cricket identity who was a partner in former Liberal leader Bob Cheek's first business venture in the early 1980s, the Eastern Shore Indoor Cricket Centre; and bed-and-breakfast operator and former aid worker Sue Bastone, who was one of the first Australians to arrive in Aceh after the Boxing Day tsunami. Allie was drafted late in the piece after the withdrawal of Kingston carpet business owner Derek Smith.

Nick McKim is rated as the current Greens member most likely to succeed Peg Putt as leader. The local federal Labor member, Harry Quick, created a stir within his party early in the campaign when he endorsed McKim in his election material. The other Greens candidates include former parks ranger and current "weather observer" Mike Anderson, science teacher Jane MacDonald and aged care assessor Gerard Velnaar. Breaking the Greens mould somewhat is Mark Rickards, a real estate agent and former naval officer.

Outcome: 1. Paul Lennon (Labor); 2. Will Hodgman (Liberal); 3. Nick McKim (Greens); 4. Lara Giddings (Labor); 5. Paula Wriedt (Labor).

Although they ended up with nothing to show for it, Franklin gave the Liberals their best result – up 7.7 per cent to 31.4 per cent on the primary vote, with Labor down 4.5 per cent to 47.4 per cent. On election night, it was unclear whether Paula Wriedt would be able to hold her seat from Liberal newcomer Vanessa Goodwin, with most favouring the latter. In the event Wriedt prevailed by a fairly comfortable 1032 votes – as Kevin Bonham notes, "Will Hodgman leaked far more than Paul Lennon and Paula Wriedt continued to gather leakage from everywhere while the Liberals' lack of profile apart from Hodgman did them in". As expected, Labor's other incumbents were comfortably re-elected (Paul Lennon with 26.1 per cent of the vote, Lara Hiddings with 10.6 per cent), and Will Hodgman overwhelmingly dominated the Liberal vote (22.0 per cent, his nearest rival being Goodwin with 4.3 per cent). Nick McKim easily held his seat with the Greens vote down only slightly, from 20.4 per cent to 19.4 per cent.

Click here for Tasmanian Electoral Commission results

Known until 1982 as Wilmot, the electorate of Lyons is made up of what's left over after the north-west coast (Braddon), north-east coast (Bass), western Hobart (Denison) and eastern Hobart (Franklin, which also includes towns to the south to make up the numbers) are grouped together into communities of interest. It thus includes small towns on either side of Tasmania's pronounced north-south divide, respectively including New Norfolk outside Hobart and Launceston's southern outskirts, along with tough mining towns on the west coast, fishing towns and tourist centres on the east coast and a lot of farming land in between. Its profile has made it slightly conservative leaning by Tasmanian standards, though it has otherwise moved with the state's distinct electoral rhythms over the decades.

The recent Liberal decline kicked in early in Lyons when former Premier Robin Gray took his personal vote into retirement at the 1996 election, which saw the Liberal vote drop by 16.3 per cent from its high point of 1992 (compared with a statewide average of 12.1 per cent). This cost them a seat and contributed to the Rundle government's loss of a majority; another loss in 1998, when the number of seats was reduced from seven per electorate to five, helped cost the Liberals government. But the electorate had still not finished with them, and another dive in support in 2002 (which was actually fairly muted when compared with other electorates) saw the fall of yet another seat, this time to the Greens, who came back into the game after party leader and future Senator Christine Milne lost her seat in 1998. That left Deputy Leader Denise Swan fighting it out for the sole remaining Liberal seat with Rene Hidding, a bitter opponent of both Swan and leader Bob Cheek, who lost his seat in Denison. Hidding began with a slender lead of 3958 primary votes to 3905 but fell behind at one point during the distribution of preferences, recovering late in the count to prevail by just 82 votes.

David Llewellyn was first elected in 1986 and has served as a cabinet minister under Michael Field, Jim Bacon and Paul Lennon. His prestige grew as he handled the notoriously difficult health portfolio without serious incident, and he became Deputy Premier when lung cancer forced Jim Bacon to stand down as Premier in February 2004. This was despite resistance from the Left, which favoured Braddon MP Bryan Green. Weighing up the two contenders at the time, Ellen Whinnett of The Mercury listed Llewellyn's strengths as being "hard-working, sincere (and) able to get across the detail of the portfolios", and his weaknesses as being "soporific", a "poor public speaker" and "lacking in aggression". Llewellyn has kept a low profile during the election campaign, which the Liberals say is due to his anger at a "shady factional deal" which they claim will cost him the deputy leadership after the election.

Michael Polley has had by far the longest uninterrupted run in the House of Assembly of any current sitting member, having first been elected in 1972 at the age of 22. He held fairly minor portfolio responsibilities until the Labor-Greens accord government of Michael Field came to power in 1989, when he began his first stint in the Speaker's chair, a position he resumed when the current Labor government came to power in 1998. His sister, Helen Polley, was elected to the Senate at the 2004 federal election. The above table compares his performance on the primary vote with that of Llewellyn since the latter entered parliament in 1986.

Labor's third successful candidate in 2002 was Ken Bacon (no relation to Jim), who won a seat in 1998 at the expense of sitting Labor member and now Franklin MP Lara Giddings (Christian Kerr of Crikey, then travelling under his Hillary Bray pseudonym, speculated that voters had him confused with Jim) and was returned with 14.3 per cent of the vote. Bacon retired in April 2005, ostensibly due to health problems associated with diabetes, although he had recently resigned as Tourism Minister after stumbling through parliamentary hearings into huge losses incurred by the TT-Line's ferry service from Sydney. The Mercury later reported that Bacon felt he had been undermined by Michael Polley, suggesting this was the reason he endorsed former Liberal candidate Russell Anderson for his run against Polley's wife Kim for the mayoralty of Northern Midlands.

With Llewellyn, Polley and Bacon dominating the Labor vote in 2002, not much was left for their remaining candidates, but one of them was needed to fill the void created by Bacon's retirement. The recount was won by east coast tourism operator Heather Butler, who polled just 3.1 per cent in 2002 and is said by Sue Neales of The Mercury to have "not exactly been a parliamentary star performer". Concerns that a stronger candidate was required to retain three seats for Labor prompted Paul Lennon to poach Wendy Kennedy, a television and Hobart social identity, but she withdrew at the last minute citing family pressures. The newcomer Labor candidates are Sorell councillor and former mayor Kerry Degrassi (said to be backed by the Left faction) and teacher and football coach Malcolm Upston.

Dutch-born Rene Hidding (first name pronounced "reen", although his foes delight in doing otherwise) ascended to the Liberal leadership after the disastrous 2002 election result deprived the party of both leader Bob Cheek and deputy leader Denise Swan, who stood together at the other side of the schism that rent the parliamentary party throughout the previous term. Hidding does not come off well in Cheek's recently published memoir, Cheeky: Confessions of a Ferret Salesman, in which Cheek complains of persistent acts of betrayal and delights in revealing that Hidding has avoided financial portfolios because he was declared bankrupt while working as a used car salesman in 1981. Hidding had better luck in business after setting up a building industry company with his four brothers, and served on Launceston City Council from 1985 to 1992. He was elected to Lyons from 7.6 per cent of the vote in 1996 and has been an unspectacular electoral performer since, polling 11.2 per cent in 1998 and 7.0 per cent in 2002.

The new Liberal candidates are Richmond businesswoman Jane Howlett, whom Sue Neales of The Mercury rates a strong chance if the Liberals pick up a second seat; Sorell businessman Andrew Wright, also reckoned to be running a "strong campaign"; Meander Valley transport operator Geoff Page, who as the federal candidate for Lyons in 2001 was the only Liberal candidate in the state to achieve a swing; and Richard Shoobridge, Timber Communities Australia branch president and former Tasman councillor.

Former tourism operator Tim Morris came to parliament via Derwent Valley Council, comfortably topping a ticket of untried Greens candidates in 2002 with 9.1 per cent of the vote. He is considered likely to retain his seat and is unlikely to be threatened by his party running mates: state party convenor Karen Cassidy, Buckland grazier Helen Gee, Dunally businesswoman Frederika Perey and former Kentish councillor Annie Willock.

Outcome: 1. Michael Polley (Labor); 2. David Llewellyn (Labor); 3. Rene Hidding (Liberal); 4. Heather Butler (Labor); 5. Tim Morris (Greens).

After some doubt on election night as to whether the Greens would retain their seat, all sitting members were ultimately returned. At the close of the count, the Greens were 0.1 short of their first quota and the Liberals were 0.2 short of their second, leaving Liberal candidate Geoff Page with a slim chance of unseating Tim Morris. However, the gap widened in late counting and Morris finished 1646 votes ahead. An interesting aspect of the outcome was how closely the primary vote swings matched the state totals – precisely in the case of the 2.7 per cent swing against Labor, and only 0.1 per cent out in the case of the Liberals (up 4.4 per cent) and the Greens (1.5 per cent). Another was that Michael Polley (21.2 per cent) outpolled David Llewellyn (18.4 per cent) for the first time since 1992.

Click here for Tasmanian Electoral Commission results