So here's a shift away from the focus on North America to look at part of Australia that's fairly different from OTL.
Major credit to
@Turquoise Blue as much of this was her work, I just converted it to infobox form.
Hope you enjoy
Tasmania is one of the nine states and territories of the Commonwealth of Australia, located 150 miles south of the Australian mainland, separated from Victoria by the Bass Strait. The state covers the main island of Tasmania and the neighbouring 334 islands, with a total population of about 512,000 as of the 2011 census, although due to a mapping error it shares a land border with the state of Victoria on Boundary Islet.
Inhabited by Aboriginies for about 40,000 years, Tasmania was first sighted by Europeans in 1642 when Dutch explorer Abel Tasman landed at today’s Blackmans Bay. Despite several expeditions in 1770s and 1790s, which established that Tasmania was an island, colonial settlement would begin nearly 150 years after the island’s discovery. Whalers had based themselves on Tasmania’s islands since 1798, but it wasn’t until 1803 when a small military outpost was established by the British on the Derwent River, in order to deter any French claims to the islands.
At first, Tasmania was home to several convict-based settlements, including what later became known as Hobart, and over the course of its history as a penal colony received 65,000 convicts, nearly two fifths of all those transported to Australia. Free settlers began to arrive in the 1820s, drawn by land grants and the promise of free convict labour. By 1830, one-third of Australia’s non-aboriginal population lived on Tasmania, and the island accounted for about half of all cultivated land on the continent. Between the 1820s and 30s, the “Black War” took place, as violence between the white colonial population and the black aborigines escalated. Aboriginal raids on settlements, and the white revenge attacks, led to many mass-killings and by 1831, the Aboriginal population had fallen to about 300. In 1832, Tasmania’s indigenous population were forcibly removed to Flinders Island, an act considered by historians to amount to genocide or ethnic cleansing.
The island, then known as Van Diemen’s Land, was proclaimed a separate British colony in 1825, although it initially lacked self-government. The transportation of convicts to the colony ceased in 1853, partly as a result of pressure from the Anti-Transportation League, but also due to the beginning of the Victorian gold rush. Some of the last convicts to arrive on the island were American republicans, who had been exiled for their actions during the rebellion in British America. After a long campaign for self-government, the colony was granted a constitution in 1856 and formally changed its name to “Tasmania”. The 1850s and 60s saw rapid social and cultural development, despite Tasmania suffering from a large loss of working-age males to the Victorian gold fields, and in 1868 the colony became one of the first parts of the British Empire to adopt compulsory education. In 1878, the Tasmanian government established the Tasmanian Volunteer Forces as a local militia, and the auxiliary force remains one of the few state level militaries in existence within the Empire to the present day.
In 1901, Tasmania joined with five other colonies to form the Commonwealth of Australia, the twelfth dominion to be admitted to the United Empire, and the first since 1876. During the early 20th century, Tasmania became home to some of the earliest protected areas and national parks in Australia, but also suffered economically, leading to a rise in support for secessionism. The success of the Westralia referendum in 1933, led to the Nationalists under Sir Walter Lee calling a referendum in Tasmania in 1937. Although Tasmanians voted in favour of secession, the election of Labour that same year, who would dominate Tasmania politically for three decades, and measures taken by the federal government, led to a decline in support for secession. The state has remained politically dominated by the Labour party, punctuated by occasional periods of Liberal rule, to the present day, and despite periodic surges in support for secessionism, has remained part of Australia.
Modern Tasmania is characterised by an ethnically homogeneous population, with more than 65% of Tasmanians being descended from a few thousand “founding families” and more than 80% being born in the state. This ethnic homogeneity has given rise to a strong regional identity amongst Tasmanians, fuelling the periodic surges in secessionism. Economically the state is dominated by the agricultural and tourism sectors, and the natural beauty, combined with cheaper air fares, has made the state a popular travel destination for people across the Empire.
The
2014 Tasmania state election was held on 5 April 2014 to elect, under the single transferable voting system, the 25 members of the Tasmanian House of Assembly, five of which are elected in each of the five state divisions.
The incumbent
Liberal government, led by Premier Elise Archer, sought a second consecutive term in office, however the defection of Craig Davey to the regionalist
Tasmania Party in 2012 had weakened the party’s control of the legislature. The informal agreement with the environmentalist
Future Party was also unstable, as the two parties clashed publically over environmental protections in the Tasmanian timber industry. In opposition,
Labour, under new leader David Llewellyn, had their own issues, with the defection of Bryan Walpole to form the centrist
Democrats in 2013.
On election day, the popular vote swung towards Labour, with the Liberals haemorrhaging support to emboldened Tasmania party, who managed to unseat Archer in her own seat. However, the final result left no one party with a majority, and the state Governor invited Llewellyn, as leader of the largest party, to attempt to form a government. Securing support from both Future, who had lost a seat, and the remaining member of the left-wing
Socialist People’s Party, Llewellyn was able to form a minority government. The Liberals accepted the result, with Archer resigning from the party leadership the following day.
The
2018 Tasmania state election was held on 24 March 2018 to elect, under the single transferable voting system, the 25 members of the Tasmanian House of Assembly, five of which are elected in each of the five state divisions.
The four-year incumbent
Labour government, led by Premier David Llewellyn, won a second consecutive term over their
Liberal opposition, led by Jeremy Rockliff. However despite minor gains for Labour, who secure an extra seat at the expense of the Liberals, the main winners were the
Tasmania Party. Under new state leader, and former Liberal member, Craig Davey the party had shifted to the right, pursuing liberal conservative policies and advocating for Tasmanian secessionism. On election day, the party saw their vote share increase by nearly 75%, and they came within one seat of forming the opposition.
Labour's unofficial government partners,
Future and the
SPP saw their vote share drop, with Future losing a single seat, and neither party were vocal about continuing their arrangement with Llewellyn. Walpole’s
Democrats managed to increase their popular vote, but failed to gain any additional seats. On election day, the state Governor once again invited the Labour party leader to form a government, which he was able to do as the parties of the centre and left united against the Liberals.
The
1937 Tasmania secession referendum was held on 20 February 1937 in the Australian state of Tasmania, to ask the electorate whether the state should withdraw from the Australian Federation and establish a separate dominion within the United Empire. Building on the success of the Westralian secession referendum four years earlier, the Tasmanian government hoped that secession from Australia would boost the state’s lagging economy. The proposal won a majority of votes, but the incoming Labour government of Albert Ogilvie did not act on the results of the non-binding referendum. A report in 1938 from the Commonwealth Grants Commission, recommending that Tasmania received £300,000 in 1939-40, significantly reduced the Tasmanian demand for secession.
The
Tasmania Party is an Australian political party that operates exclusively in the state of Tasmania. The party was founded in 1996 when the Tasmania Country Party, the state member of the federal Australian Country Party, dissolved itself. Campaigning on a centrist platform of liberal conservatism, agrarianism, the party has gained support in recent years. At the 2014 federal election the party took a majority of the vote in Tasmania, securing a single seat in the Federal Parliament, and at the 2014 state election the party achieved third place and increased their share of the vote six-fold.
Rebranding itself as a conservative regionalist party, which favours Tasmania’s secession from Australia as a separate dominion, has been a popular move. At the 2018 state election, the party, under new state leader Craig Davey came close to unseating the Liberals as the opposition party. Political pundits are predicting that, if the rise in popularity continues, at the next election the party could form the next Tasmanian government.
