Labor leader Rebecca White reflects on the year and looks to 2020

Starting the year arguably stronger than the party finished it, Labor, voting with the Greens and Speaker Sue Hickey, was able to block a number of key government bills in the lower house.

However, the resignation of Clark MHA Scott Bacon and defection from the party of his replacement, former Labor MHA Madeleine Ogilvie, left Labor one seat down.

"That's seen a bit of a change in the Parliament but that hasn't seen a change for Labor in that we are absolutely determined to continue to deliver good outcomes for our community," Ms White said.

"The voters of Clark will ultimately decide if they are happy with Madeleine Ogilvie's decisions."

Ms White said the election of Ms Ogilvie has proven Premier Will Hodgman was governing in minority.

"He has been reliant on her vote, more than once now, to pass legislation," she said.

"The Labor party is not doing deals [with] independents or the Greens and my focus remains to deliver a majority Labor government."

With the Legislative Council elections for Rosevears and Huon coming up in May, Ms White said she was hopeful Labor would pick up one, if not both, seats.

"We've announced our candidate for Rosevears, Jess Greene, and we will be announcing our Huon candidate in the new year," she said.

"There's an opportunity for us to ensure that those communities have got good upper house Labor members representing them and we will certainly run very strong campaigns."

With the government set to introduce new gambling legislation early next year, Ms White said her party would wait to see what that bill looks like before announcing Labor's policies on the issue.

In February, Labor came under fire for backing away from its 2018 election promise to ban pokies from pubs and clubs.

"We will continue to announce policies as we head toward the next election based on consultation with industry ... and also talking with the community," Ms White said.

"However, we support good harm minimisation and making sure Tasmania has the best harm minimisation framework possible.

"Unfortunately the Labor party can't implement the policy we took to the last election, and I've acknowledged that already, but what we can do is hold the government to account over the policy it's set to introduce."

When asked if she was playing shallow politics on the issue of the Northern Prison, by opposing the government's preferred site in Westbury but not providing an alternative, Ms White said a proper debate on an appropriate site for the prison could only take place if the government had been transparent about other shortlisted sites.

"We continue to call on the government to release the shortlist. They went through a process that took 18 months [and] cost over $100,000," she said.

"We will continue to represent the views of the community and the Westbury community has been incredibly vocal in declaring that they don't support Westbury as a site for a maximum security prison."

Ms White said she and local members have been busy in the North and North-West speaking with the community, businesses and other groups to understand their priorities.

"We understand that a good government should represent all Tasmanians, and it shouldn't matter where you come from, but we recognise that you need to have policies that support the aspirations of those living in the North of the state," she said.

Ms White said she was confident Labor's Braddon members, Anita Dow and Shane Broad, would be reelected in 2022.

"I know how hard they are working and I see the contribution they make in the Parliament, the contribution they make to policy development and the amount of travel they are undertaking to make sure they are representing their entire electorate," she said.

Ms White said she would sum up the year as a "missed opportunity".

"The Tasmanian economy is doing quite well and the government had more revenue than they forecast they would over the course of the last term, yet we've still got 11,000 people on elective surgery lists, we've got people waiting over 500 days for priority housing, underemployment and unemployment at unacceptable levels, and a government that's got no reform agenda at all," she said.

"[Labor] would have made sure we were thinking about the priority needs of Tasmanians now but also in the future. Obviously the key priority is making sure young people get the opportunities, skills and training they need to get a job."

When asked what her first bill of 2020 would be if she was premier, Ms White said her biggest priority would be to ensure the state was providing adequate training opportunities for Tasmanians.

"My priority would be to support TAFE, to make sure it had the appropriate resources and funding that it needed to provide more courses to Tasmanians, and ensuring that the legislative framework supported it to be able to enact that," she said.