Labor party plans review of all policies before next election in 2022

Former Liberal strategist Brad Stansfield said the choice was a smart, if somewhat overdue, move.

"This will provide Labor with a clean slate from which to develop their policies for the 2022 state election," Mr Stansfield said.  

"It's worth noting that the Liberals successfully adopted a similar strategy after their 2010 election defeat."

When announcing the Labor portfolio reshuffle last week, Labor leader Rebecca White said the new roles marked the start of an intensive policy redevelopment process over the coming year.

"We want to ensure that our policies are relevant and reflect the priorities of the community," Ms White said. 

Political analyst Dr Richard Herr said he believed Labor were acting on findings from their post-electoral review. 

"The point is they didn't do as well in the last election as they expected and they had a review as to why things didn't go the way they wanted to see what policies might have resonated better," Dr Herr said. 

"I think this is a further extension.

"If you've got three years that does mean that you are able to have time to sell your policies, to brief the candidates who want to sell the policy, and in other words prepare the electorate to be supportive."

Labor's willingness to compromise and adopt a harm minimisation approach to poker machine reform, when banning poker machines from pubs and clubs was a key Labor election promise, has been controversial. 

Dr Herr said, as the specific issue of Labor's stance on pokies was identified as a significant contributor to under-performance at the polls, it makes sense for the party to review a way of selling that message better. 

"On past experience, they certainly wouldn't be willing to try and sell the message in quite the same way they did last time," Dr Herr said. 

"We would expect them to be reviewing that particular policy with considerable care. 

"Either they want to bury it, how do they explain how they bury a policy that was so central to their last campaign, or if they want to tweak it or radically restructure the message - that is probably what Labor is going to have to try and work out." 

The Liberal party has been highly critical of Labor's decision, and Bass Liberal MHA Michael Ferguson said the Labor party stands for absolutely nothing. 

"Labor's not reviewing their policies, they've just chucked them all out," Mr Ferguson said. 

"We are genuinely flummoxed at Labor's lack of policies and lack of conviction."

Dr Herr said it is "standard fare" for every government will say that their opposition has ill-formed policies, that they have no policies or they do not know what they want to do.

"Of course the government will say they have no policies, but as long as Labor begins announcing some new policies starting with the State of the State response and then the budget reply, this short-term pain is worth the long-term gain," Mr Stansfield said. 

Rumney Labor MLC Sarah Lovell said Labor is undertaking a series of reviews, with all stakeholders able to be involved in the process. 

"This is a process you would expect all political parties to do because things change over a course of a term of government," Ms Lovell said. 

"We are not going to take policies to another election without ensuring they are still the right policies for Tasmania."