Tasmania's Depression Elections

Abstract

Two State elections were held in Tasmania during the economic depression of the 1930s. The first in 1931 resulted in the confirmation of the Conservative Government then in office. On that occasion, the Premier, J. C. McPhee, was returned with a large majority in spite of rapidly worsening economic conditions. By the time of the 1934 election economic conditions had improved. The Government failed to retain office and gave way by a narrow margin to the Labor Government of A. G. Ogilvie. An assessment of the effect of the depression on these results must acknowledge that a measure of depression was not an unusual experience for Tasmania. Through most of the years of the twentieth century, Tasmania had suffered a high level of unemployment, a steady drain of population to the mainland and a series of budget deficiencies. Tas mania suffered from a poverty of resources and from isolation. The first Commonwealth Grants Commission observed 'Tasmania has a national income which for the last fifteen years has been twenty five percent below the Australian average and in earlier years still more . . . The substantially lower prosperity of Tasmania must be regarded as inherent and permanent save for the unlikely chance of a great mineral discovery.'1 The Tasmanian economy was dominated by mining and rural activity.2 Industrialisation was slower than in other States and the high proportion of small factories contrasted strongly with the giants like the Electrolytic Zinc Company and the textile factories.3 Furthermore, much manufacturing involved metal extraction and was a consequence of the mining industry. Primary production excluding mining was responsible for 51.5 per cent of the total recorded production.4 This rural bias softened the effect of the Australia-wide depression. Many who would otherwise have been unemployed were occupied in unpaid rural employment. Tasmania was even able to absorb popu lation. A net loss of population had not been unusual but in 1929, 1930 and 1931 there was a migration back into the State.5 Subsistence on the parental farm was apparently acceptable when harsher conditions pre vailed across the Strait. Tasmania was fortunate also in that zinc and copper production in the State expanded during the depression. Furthermore, there was a notable conciliance of movement in the return from the five variables which most influenced the Tasmanian economy, viz. apples, wool, tin, zinc spelter and copper. Although there was an overall decline in the return from these products it was neither severe nor persistent enough to be the cause of great hardship.6