page_title: Tasmania
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Tasmania / Government / Politics
caption_attribution_description: English: Lake Pedder from Mt Eliza, Southwest National Park, Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, Tasmania, Australia. Français&#160;: Le lac Peter vu du mont Eliza, dans le Parc national Southwest, en Tasmanie (Australie). Le Parc national Southwest fait partie de la Zone de nature sauvage de Tasmanie (Tasmanian Wilderness), classée au patrimoine mondial.
context_page_description: Tasmania is an island state of Australia. It is located 240 km to the south of the Australian mainland, separated by Bass Strait. The state encompasses the main island of Tasmania, the 26th-largest island in the world, and the surrounding 334 islands. The state has a population of about 537,000 as of December 2019. Just more than forty percent of the population resides in the Greater Hobart precinct, which forms the metropolitan area of the state capital and largest city, Hobart.
  Tasmania's area is 68,401 km², of which the main island covers 64,519 km². It is promoted as a natural state, and protected areas of Tasmania cover about 42% of its land area, which includes national parks and World Heritage Sites. Tasmania was the founding place of the first environmental political party in the world.
  The island is believed to have been occupied by indigenous peoples for 30,000 years before British colonisation. It is thought Aboriginal Tasmanians were separated from the mainland Aboriginal groups about 11,700 years ago after the sea rose to form Bass Strait.
context_section_description: Tasmania has a number of undeveloped regions. Proposals for local economic development have been faced with requirements for environmental sensitivity, or opposition. In particular, proposals for hydroelectric power generation were debated in the late 20th century. In the 1970s, opposition to the construction of the Lake Pedder reservoir impoundment led to the formation of the world's first Green party, the United Tasmania Group.
  In the early 1980s the state debated the proposed Franklin River Dam. The anti-dam sentiment was shared by many Australians outside Tasmania and proved a factor in the election of the Hawke Labor government in 1983, which halted construction of the dam. Since the 1980s the environmental focus has shifted to old growth logging and mining in the Tarkine region, which have both proved divisive. The Tasmania Together process recommended an end to clear felling in high conservation old growth forests by January 2003, but was unsuccessful.
caption: The campaign to save Lake Pedder led to the 1972 formation of the United Tasmania Group, the world's first Green party.
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