Tasmanian Forests, the Environment and Voting in the 2004 Australian Federal Election

Abstract

The 2004 Australian federal election appeared to depart from the historical tendency for the Australian Labor Party to benefit electorally from adopting policies more sympathetic to environmental movement demands than those of the Liberal–National Coalition, when environmental issues have been prominent in election campaigns. This article assesses contending claims about the actual impact of environmental issues on the outcome of the 2004 election, and possible explanations for Labor's failure to gain a significant net electoral advantage from its environmental policies, in particular its commitment to preserve 240,000 hectares of native forest in Tasmania. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Ecopolitics XVI Conference held at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, 4–6 July 2005. The current version of the article has benefited considerably from comments offered by conference participants, and by the anonymous reviewers of the author's original submission to the journal.