Something quietly significant happened in Tasmanian politics last weekend. On 13 June, former Liberal staffer and public affairs executive Brad Stansfield announced he would seek Liberal Senate preselection in Tasmania. The very next day, sitting Senator Jonathon Duniam announced he was stepping down from federal politics before the 2028 election.
Wed 17 Jun 2026 01.00 AEST
Photo: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas
Something quietly significant happened in Tasmanian politics last weekend. On 13 June, former Liberal staffer and public affairs executive Brad Stansfield announced he would seek Liberal Senate preselection in Tasmania. The very next day, sitting Senator Jonathon Duniam announced he was stepping down from federal politics before the 2028 election.
“Ten years, on top of 15 years prior to that of being in and around politics,” Duniam said. “It has taken a toll on my family.”
These announcements follow Senator Wendy Askew’s June 11 decision not to recontest her seat which she secured upon replacing her brother David Bushby after he announced his retirement from the senate in 2019. Senator Askew won the second spot on the Liberal Senate ticket in the 2022 election, ahead of the long-serving Senator Eric Abetz.
With both Duniam and Askew departing, Tasmania’s Liberal Senate representation is facing its biggest generational reset in years.
The timing of Stansfield’s announcement may be entirely coincidental with Askew and Duniam’s. But politics is rarely just about what can be proven. It is also about what patterns reveal.
And this pattern is worth examining. Before entering Parliament, Duniam served as an adviser to former Tasmanian Senator Eric Abetz. Before founding his own public relations and political polling businesses, Stansfield spent almost seven years working for Abetz too. The departing senator and the man positioning himself as successor share, among other things, the same political mentor.
Abetz himself has not gone anywhere. Despite leaving Federal Parliament, he re-entered the Tasmanian House of Assembly following the 2024 state election and now serves as Treasurer in the Rockliff Government. His influence over Tasmanian conservative politics remains.
Taken alone, this might simply be an unremarkable tale about how political networks operate. Parties cultivate talent, mentors back protégés, and seats pass between people who share values and relationships. That is not, in itself, scandalous.
But it does raise a genuine question, one the Liberal Party itself would benefit from sitting with. Is this renewal? Or is this succession? The distinction matters.
Renewal means new ideas, new constituencies, and new voices entering the tent. Succession means influence moves – but mostly within the same rooms, among the same networks, shaped by the same relationships that have always dominated them.
And the Tasmanian picture does not exist in isolation. In May 2026, Tony Abbott was elected Federal President of the Liberal Party, marking the formal return of one of its most influential conservative figures to an organisational leadership role. Shortly after, commentator and former Abbott chief of staff Peta Credlin provided a testimonial supporting Stansfield’s Senate candidacy, joining endorsements from three Tasmanian Premiers.
Of course, former Prime Ministers and prominent commentators are free to support candidates they believe in. But when departing senators, a prospective replacement, a serving State Treasurer, a former Prime Minister, and one of Australia’s most prominent conservative voices can all be connected through overlapping networks, it becomes hard to make the case that something fundamentally new or revivifying is underway.
What makes this more than a Liberal internal matter is the context. Tasmania’s Senate is entering one of its most significant generational shifts in decades.
Long-serving Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson is stepping down in a matter of weeks to be replaced by environmental lawyer Vanessa Bleyer, who will face Tasmanian voters as an incumbent for the first time at the 2028 federal election. Senator Jacqui Lambie has stated that her current term may be her last. And former Jacqui Lambie Network Senator Tammy Tyrrell’s move to Labor has reshuffled the deck entirely. Noting that Tyrrell will also be contesting her new senate seat in 2028, meaning Labor’s future Tasmanian Senate representation will carry a decidedly unconventional lineage.
Labor Senator Helen Polley is also the focus of speculation about whether she will recontest her seat. Across the spectrum, Tasmania’s political figures are moving on. Seats are opening. Electorates are being invited to decide what kind of representation they want next.
That is an opportunity.
But opportunity only means something if parties treat these moments as inflection points rather than managed handovers. There is a wildcard that Liberal insiders may be underestimating. Political transitions that concentrate too visibly on internal succession have a habit of creating openings for outsiders.
In the 2025 election Senate race, Lee Hanson – Pauline Hanson’s daughter and touted future leader of One Nation – narrowly missed out on a Senate seat, polling 17,635 first preference votes (5.08%) to Jacqui Lambie’s 25,171 (7.25%), a gap of just over two percentage points. After preferences were distributed, Hanson came within 1.3% of catching Lambie before being excluded.
In a Senate environment marked by retirements and voter disillusionment, 2028 could create exactly the conditions under which she would be most competitive.
None of this is predetermined. And 2028 is some time away. But the test of renewal through new parliamentary members is not the identity of the person who fills the seat. It is whether something changes when they sit in it.
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