Blog

Welcome to our blog where you can keep up to date on our thoughts about
governance, democracy, accountability and transparency in Tasmania.
Click on the headline to read more.

  • Keep Hare Clark

    11 September 2025 The co-creator of Tasmania’s electoral system, Andrew Inglis Clark, wanted parliament to be the state’s most important debating chamber. And so parliament should represent the broadest possible range of opinions. For Clark, elections were not just to elect an executive.  That’s why calls by former Labor staffer Jody Fassina (The Mercury Talking…

    Read more: Keep Hare Clark

  • Educating MPs

    1 September 2025 A political career is one of the few that doesn’t require specific qualifications. That’s why Professor Pam Allan’s suggestion that the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) could create a course for members of parliament (The Mercury Talking Point 1 September) should be implemented. AICD course content includes strategy, conflict resolution, collaboration…

    Read more: Educating MPs

  • Tasmania lags in integrity

    22 August 2025 Transparency International Australia (TIA) provides the latest prompt for the need to reform not just Tasmania’s lobbying regulations but also the Integrity Commission. As the Mercury’s editorial (22 August) said, “Tasmania’s weak system of integrity is not a bug in our political culture; it is one of its defining features.”  The TIA…

    Read more: Tasmania lags in integrity

  • Political culture must change

    17 August 2025 Parliament will resume on Tuesday, a month after the election, and we still don’t know who the government will be. And that’s too long for some people which is why there are calls to replace our Hare Clark electoral system with single-member electorates. Politics is the art of negotiation and negotiations take…

    Read more: Political culture must change

  • The system is working

    7 August 2025 Demands for the Hare Clark voting system to be replaced should be rejected because it is one of the, if not the, most representative of voter’s intentions. The system is more likely to produce a power-sharing House of Assembly but history shows that’s when reforms and progress are made. The Liberal and…

    Read more: The system is working

  • MPs need to catch up

    14 July 2025 When one part of society changes, it takes time for other affected areas to change. The sociologist, William Ogburn, explained in his book, Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature published in 1922, that a society’s culture had different related parts. All the parts don’t change at the same rate…

    Read more: MPs need to catch up