Tasmania's founding as a convict settlement in 1803 continues to shape the state's politics. Its convict origins gave rise to both a prominent role to the state which continues into the twenty-first century and, at the same time, a class divide and a determination on the part of the landed gentry to protect their interests. This latter feature was responsible for a constitutional design which stressed the importance of a property-based upper house of parliament as a conservative brake on government. The role of this chamber, the Legislative Council, although changed from its composition in 1856, has been to resist constitutional and democratic reform to itself, while permitting major changes to the lower house, the House of Assembly.

As a consequence, Tasmania has a distinctive set of legislative institutions in comparison with the other Australian states; a House of Assembly, since the 1998 election, of twenty-five members elected by a system of proportional representation by the single transferable vote from five multimember electoral districts, and a Legislative Council whose fifteen members are chosen by a preferential voting system from single-member electoral districts for six-year terms on a rotating cycle of elections at which two or three councillors are elected each year. The staggered elections in the Council are intended to protect the electorate from any popular ‘enthusiasms’ which might sweep governments based on transitory majorities in the lower house.