Fixed terms mean elections are held at regular, pre-determined intervals, rather than whenever the government of the day decides. Most systems still allow early elections in special cases – for example, after a successful no-confidence vote or when important legislation can’t pass.

Tasmania is now the only Australian state or territory without fixed parliamentary terms – although Federal Parliament doesn’t have them either. Every other state and territory uses a four-year cycle, with polling day usually on a specific Saturday in March, October, or November. The ACT was the first to make the switch in 1995, with New South Wales following the same year. Queensland was the most recent convert in 2016, and the only one to hold a successful referendum on the matter.

Since adopting fixed four-year terms, no other state or territory has had an off-schedule election.  

So, should Tasmania follow suit? There are several arguments for and against fixed terms – and it’s vital to consider how they might playout in our distinctive political system.

The government trump card
Advocates for fixed terms argue that if the government can call an election whenever it likes, there’s a temptation to do so opportunistically– say, when the economy is up, the polls are favourable, or before a controversy hits. As the UK’s review of its Fixed-term Parliaments Act put it, the argument goes that elections can be timed “to coincide with periods of relatively greater popularity or strength or to pre-empt anticipated negative events”. There is some data to suggest that incumbents do benefit from the absence of fixed terms. Political scientists Petra Schleiter and Margit Tavits found an “electoral bonus” for governments that went to the polls early, averaging an 8% increase in vote share and a 10% increase in seats.
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But it doesn’t always work that way. There are many examples of early elections – including in the UK, France, Canada and the Netherlands –which did not end well for the government. This is partly because voters aren’t naïve. As constitutional expert Vernon Bogdanor argues: “Voters are perfectly capable of making up their own minds on whether the reasons given by a government for an early dissolution are satisfactory”. Tasmanian psephologist Kevin Bonham sums it up bluntly: “the opportunistic-timing advantage argument is overrated… Voters around the country quite often threw out governments that went early without any sensible reason”.

Here today, gone tomorrow
Fixed terms could provide greater stability. Proponents argue that a pre-determined election date can provide certainty across the board because:

Certainty can also benefit minor party and independent candidates, increasing voters’ choice at the ballot box. Because these candidates don’t have the resources of major parties, they need longer to prepare their campaigns. For example, anecdotal evidence suggests several independent candidates planning for a 2025 Tasmanian election were caught off guard and unable to run in the snap 2024 poll.

However, critics argue fixed terms don’t guarantee stability because there is always a legislated way to allow early elections if government grinds to a halt:

Therefore, Bonham argues that fixed terms legislation wouldn’t have prevented Tasmania’s two recent early elections. Richard Herr disagrees – in his view, at least two of Tasmania’s recent elections could have been avoided if we had fixed terms.

“lumber Tasmania with parliaments that lack a mandate for what they are doing”. If enough MPs change their allegiances, it might become impossible to pass legislation – although well-designed rules for early dissolutions might mitigate this. Resignations and deaths add another complication under Tasmania’s Hare-Clark system. Vacancies in other states are filled using by-elections, which gives the voters a say. Here, if a new Lower House MP is required, there is a ‘countback’ of votes from the most recent election to identify the candidate from the same party as the departing MP with the highest number of preferences. A string of departures from within the same party can result in candidates who received very few first preferences becoming MPs – and have done in the past.  

These issues contributed to the early 2024 election. The Liberals had been elected with a slim majority in 2021, but in May 2023, John Tucker and Lara Alexander quit the Party to sit on the crossbench as independents. This left the government in minority, although both ex-Liberals agreed to guarantee confidence and supply. In January 2024, Tucker and Alexander threatened to withdraw their support based on a range of grievances. They could not reach a new agreement with the government, leaving it vulnerable to a no confidence motion. The government called a snap election, stating that this was justified because:

It’s worth noting that in our system, we elect individuals –not parties – so an MP changing their allegiance isn’t necessarily a reason to call an early election. But in this case, the argument ran that it was undemocratic for two MPs with little electoral support – Alexander received only 511 first preferences in 2021 and entered parliament via countback in 2022; and Tucker was the last candidate elected to Lyons in 2021 with 4,619 first preferences – to have upended a majority government.

The second scenario is when governments want to test public support for major reforms. John Howard’s 1998 election is a classic case: he went to the polls a year early to seek a mandate for the Goods and Services Tax (GST),and won narrowly. Early elections can, in this way, renew legitimacy or seek afresh mandate for major changes.

We're all tired, aren't we?
Another argument for fixed terms is that they could reduce ‘democratic fatigue’. Currently, many Tasmanians are sick of elections, with some going to the polls four times in the past 16 months. The uncertainty of not knowing when the next election will be called only adds to the frustration.

That said, snap elections can spare voters and politicians alike from the grind of a long campaign. And it could be argued that frequent elections are simply the price of a responsive system: if circumstances shift, the people get a say. Some even enjoy the theatre of it all. The ‘will they, won’t they’ speculation has long been a media favourite, and for some people it’s just part of the democratic drama.

Everyone else is doing it
Finally, there’s the fact that Tasmania is now the outlier. In the rest of the country fixed terms are now the norm, and they seem to work –at least for reducing the frequency of elections. Across Australia, shifting from a four-year maximum term to a four-year fixed term has extended the time between elections by around 125 days on average.

Herr puts it this way: “It’s time for a rethink and time for Tasmania’s parliament to catchup with the 21st century”.

But Tasmania isn’t like everywhere else. Our multi-member Hare-Clark system and small parliament make minority governments more likely, which in turn means defections, resignations, or deaths can quickly shift the balance of power. In this context, the flexibility to call an early election looks less like a weakness and more like a safeguard. Political scientist Jill Shepherd even describes fixed terms as a Band-Aid for instability. Tackling the root causes would require a more collaborative and transparent culture in our parliament.

Even if Tasmania decided that fixed terms are the way forward, we’d still need to pick a model. As the table above shows, states and territories differ in how they set election dates and when early elections are permitted. Importantly, we wouldn’t need a referendum (as Queensland did) to make the change because our ‘Constitution’ is an act of Parliament, so it can be amended by legislation (a topic for another PIMBY).

The big question is when it should be possible to call an early election. One option worth considering is WA’s model. Technically, WA doesn’t actually have fixed terms – they have a maximum four-year term with a ‘default’ election date on the second Saturday of every fourth March. There are no defined triggers for early dissolutions: in theory the government can request an election whenever it wants, and the decision is down to the Governor.

On the surface, this seems similar to Tasmania. But there are a couple of crucial differences that prevent WA from going to the polls more frequently. First, the default election date establishes a norm and makes governments feel that they need a very good reason for messing up the schedule. In other words, there’s a big political difference between asking for an election date to be set and changing one that’s been fixed already. Second, the symbolic and political power of the fixed date (even if it isn’t strictly binding) changes how the Governor would assess requests for early elections.

The result is that WA’s parliaments have become much more consistent in length, even though the system still allows flexibility when it’s needed.

Fixed terms are often framed as a simple fix: they would stop governments from calling elections when it suits them; provide more certainty; reduce democratic fatigue; and align Tasmania with the rest of the country. But as we’ve seen, they’re not a cure all. They do stop governments from opportunistically calling elections – but stability and certainty can come at the cost of flexibility and being stuck with an unworkable parliament.

In the end, this debate isn’t just about election dates. It’s about what Tasmanians want from their democracy: predictability and stability, or responsiveness and flexibility. Our aim in this PIMBY has been to lay out the arguments on both sides. But the decision is ultimately for Tasmanians. So, what do you think? Should we follow the rest of the country, or does our distinctive political system mean we need to go it alone?