30 April 1909 1912 → 22 seats 7 seats 17 seats 12 seats Start date April 30, 1909 | 12 July 1904 1906 7 seats 6 seats 12 seats 1 seat | |
Winner John Evans | ||
A general election for the House of Assembly was held in the Australian state of Tasmania on 30 April 1909 (a Friday, as the convention of holding elections on a Saturday did not become common until the 1920s). The 1909 election was the first to use the Hare-Clark proportional representation system.
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The Hare-Clark system
The Tasmanian House of Assembly had, from its inception in 1856, used a plurality voting system to elect members from one or two-seat electorates. In 1896, the Tasmanian attorney-general, Andrew Inglis Clark, suggested the House adopt a single transferable vote system devised by Englishman Thomas Hare with certain variations devised by himself, which became known as the Hare-Clark system. The system was used on a trial basis in the Hobart and Launceston electorates from the 1897 election onwards, but was never used in the country electorates and was repealed in 1901, with the districts being broken up at the 1903 election. In order to blunt the emergence of the Australian Labour Party which won eight seats in the 1906 election, Clark convinced the House to apply the Hare-Clark system statewide.
The outgoing House at the election represented 35 single-member districts. The adoption of the Hare-Clark system saw the number of seats in the House reduced from 35 to 30, and six members for each of five electorates (corresponding to the federal electoral divisions of Bass, Darwin, Denison, Franklin and Wilmot) would be elected using proportional representation.
Aftermath
The Anti-Socialist Party (previously known as the Free Trade Party) was a coalition of conservative parliamentarians, exhorted by incumbent Premier John Evans to combine their forces against the threat from the Labour Party who had won an unprecedented 12 seats. Evans offered to resign if asked, and in June was taken to his word, with Elliott Lewis elected as leader and premier with a pledge of twelve months loyalty. A faction of Liberals led by Norman Ewing undermined Lewis' leadership, culminating in a no-confidence motion in October 1909 which led to the Governor of Tasmania Sir Harry Barron calling on John Earle to form Tasmania's first Labour ministry, a minority government which lasted only a week before being voted out by the House.