While the overall seat numbers in the Tasmanian House of Assembly have been very stable, that disguises more changes at the level of the individual MP.
For today’s post I am going to look at the statistics for how many MPs were replaced at each Tasmanian election, and how 2025 compares to the historical trend: MPs retiring before or at the election, or losing their seat, either to another party or to their own.
The 2024-25 parliament was a short one, so it has understandably meant that the number of MPs voluntarily leaving is lower than in the past. Just one MP retired mid-term (Rebecca White) and one MP retired at the election (Michelle O’Byrne). O’Byrne was the first such case since 2018 – it has become far more popular to rely on mid-term countbacks to replace outgoing MPs.
Yet there was a spike in MPs losing their seats at the election, such that the total turnover between elections is roughly in line with the trend at recent elections. Comparing the number of MPs at the start of the previous Parliament to the new Parliament, the number of MPs changing has ranged from six to nine at the last five elections.
It’s worth bearing in mind that this chart doesn’t consider what happens to part-term MPs.
This next chart is a bit different – it looks at the fate for MPs who were in office at the end of the term.
Once you factor in the very low retirement rate and very low rate of countbacks, 2025 had the highest rate of full-term MPs being re-elected in the time period I’ve analysed.
Seven MPs lost their seats in 2025. Putting aside the nine MPs who lost their seats in 1998, when the parliament was cut in size, seven is the highest number there’s been at any election since 1989, equal with 1996 and 2010.
So 2025 is in a peculiar position – it has seen quite a high rate of MPs losing their seats, but also a high rate of MPs being re-elected.
Finally this next graph shows who defeated those MPs who lost their seats.
Four of the seven defeated MPs lost their seat to someone from another party: the three ex-JLN MPs, and Nic Street in Franklin.
The other three lost their seats to fellow party members: Casey Farrell to Brian Mitchell in Lyons, Simon Wood to Bridget Archer in Bass, and Simon Behrakis to Marcus Vermey in Clark.
There has been a shift in recent decades towards sitting MPs being more likely to lose their seats to someone outside their party. From 1989 to 2010, 19 out of 34 MPs lost their seats to the same party (excluding the 1998 exceptions), while 14 out of 22 have lost their seats to someone outside their party since 2010.
2025 saw a relatively high number of MPs losing their seats to those in the same party.
One final point i wanted to touch on is the peculiar phenomenon of former federal MPs moving into state politics. It is quite unusual in other states, but happens quite often in Tasmania.
Six former federal MPs won seats at the recent election, three of them new to state politics. Bridget Archer, Brian Mitchell and Gavin Pearce moved straight into state politics after leaving federal parliament earlier this year (Archer not by choice). Three others were already in state parliament – Abetz, Barnett and Ferguson. A seventh, Geoff Lyons, came very close to winning in Bass.
Michelle O’Byrne was also a former federal MP and retired from state politics in 2025. So we know that there are six in the current Assembly and four in the previous Assembly. So how does this compare to previous elections? I’ve tried to find every example and match it to my results data back to 1989, and it does look like the numbers have been going up.
Prior to 2010, there were usually only two such MPs in the Assembly. Ray Groom and Michael Hodgman were both Liberal members for Denison, and overlapped in 1992 and 1996. Former senator Ken Wriedt held a seat in Franklin from 1982 until 1990, while Bruce Goodluck was an independent in Franklin in 1996.
The mainstays of this trend since 2010 were Michael Ferguson and Michelle O’Byrne. After Ferguson defeated O’Byrne at the 2004 federal election, the two served together as members for Bass through five parliaments.
Guy Barnett joined them in 2014. And Eric Abetz also joined the group in 2024.
So there has been an ongoing trend towards more federal MPs moving to state politics, but the 2025 spike is particularly unusual.
It’s also uncommon for MPs to move to state politics after voluntarily retiring. Hodgman, Ferguson, O’Byrne, Barnett and Abetz all lost their federal seats. Mitchell and Pearce’s decisions to quit federal politics and go straight into state politics is something that hasn’t been seen since Bruce Goodluck and Ray Groom voluntarily left federal politics many decades ago.
This trend is also much more of a Liberal phenomenon. Five of the Liberal Party’s 14 MHAs are former federal MPs, while there is just one on the Labor side (although it was close to being two). I don’t know what that says about the state of the Tasmanian Liberal Party – tell me what you think in the comments.
Great analysis, Ben.
Do you mean “Five of the Liberal Party’s 14 *MHAs* are former federal MPs”?
Bass being a notably high-churn federal electorate may have something to do with their strong showing in the “Former federal MPs winning seats in Tasmania” graph!
Not sure it says much about the Liberals. Simple fact is they usually only have senate seats. People fall in and out of favour and so move.
ALP has 4 lower house seats as well as the senate for their feds.
What happened in 1986?! Why was there such a significant number of MPs defeated despite little change in the party seat numbers from the last election?
The trend of ex-federal MPs getting into the state parliament is a uniquely Tasmanian one. I can’t think of another state lower house where over 10% of the members are ex-federal MPs. In the new Tasmanian parliament, ex-federal MPs will make up 17% of the House of Assembly.
Tasmania is small in size and has a small population plus a relatively high density. My guess is that these factors combined with the Hare-Clark system mean that local personalities and profiles and political outreach matter. Federal MPs have already built up their profiles.
This election was called not long after the federal election. The snap election meant a scrambling to find candidates. 3 of them (Archer, Pearce, Mitchell) had just left federal parliament. I think they probably got called up, saving their parties from going through a vetting or preselection process.
Thought I’d commented, maybe I never pressed send. 1986 a part of it was Gray brought in a lot of new stars to spruce up his team; people like Nick Evers and John “Bullbars” Bennett were run with the idea that they would go straight into ministries if elected and shake the place up.
Would there also be a factor of ‘keeping up your profile’ for some of the ex Federal members? e.g. if you are thinking of running again this is a good way of keeping your public profile up and keeping in good graces with the party?
I do though think the ‘lose to your own party’ phenomenon is a flaw in Hare-Clark. How common is it for a fairly low profile cabinet minister (transport maybe) who does a good and thorough job in their portfolio losing to a same party candidate who has done the hard yards locally?
MLV
The ability to ‘lose to your own party’ is one of the great joys of Hare Clark – it truly is democratic and keeps all MPs on their toes. Nothing worse than useless time servers in safe seats or even worse – high on Senate or Victorian LC tickets. It puts the power in the hands of the voter.
@ redistributed if you are high on Senate or VIC LC seats you guaranteed an electoral spot like Moira Deeming, Renee Heath so you can never be voted out even more so than being an MP for a super safe seat like Maranoa
Nimalan
My point exactly if not said entirely clearly – they might be elected anyway – Eric Abetz does but it is good to make them work hard for the job – in effect every seat is a marginal seat. And even with some independents winning from pretty low votes it is infinitely preferable from the unrepresentative horror that is Group Voting.
You have forgotten former Senator Peter Rae who was a senator from 1968 to 1986 when he resigned and was elected a state Member for Bass. It must also be remembered that new state MP Brian Mitchell did not voluntarily retire from the federal House; he contested preselection but lost to Rebecca White.
I haven’t forgotten him, I set a sensible cut-off of 1989. I’m sure there were plenty of others before that.
It’s pretty clear that Mitchell happily retired, he contested the preselection so he got the pay-out.