An Island Off an Island

Sitting on the lounge, glass of wine in hand, watching the Tasmanian election broadcast on ABC. It’s our first Tassie election and provides a different perspective to the process, but Antony Green* has been helicoptered in to help us all understand through his magic whiteboard, so there is also a wonderful sense of familiarity.

The election was called a year early, and the cynics among us would say this was building on the success of the Queensland and Western Australian elections, where the incumbent government was returned based on the COVID response. Haven’t been here long enough to comment.

Our nearest polling booths were at Adventure Bay or Allonah, both about a 40 minute drive away, so we opted to go down the postal vote route. This was another first; we’ve done absentee in the past (Jindabyne with Darryl and Cathy), and I think we may have missed an election once when we were overseas, but never postal! **

There are only five electorates in Tasmania so Antony is having to stretch things out. We also use a different electoral system – the Hare/Clark which we share with the ACT. Haven’t been able to get our heads totally around it yet. There is also no handing out of ‘how to vote’ material at state elections – I don’t think Tasmania realises the skill and experience that they are missing out on.

So back to the postal vote. Being at home potentially meant no democracy sausage. But wait! There are some in the freezer! Our own nod to tradition.

Will wait until tomorrow to see what the results look like.

For our overseas readers:

* Antony Green is Australia’s # 1 election analyst.

** Voting is compulsory in Australia

** A democracy sausage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_sausage