For years, the major parties have stoked fear in the community by invoking the spectre of minority government. It's a way of virtue signalling to the electorate. We've all heard the tired old lines ad nauseum.

"We'll govern in majority or not at all."

In other news:

"Never will we do a deal with the Greens to form government."

What they're really saying, though, is this: "We will disregard the will of the people in a bid to safeguard our electoral fortunes into the future."

This week, the Labor Party made headlines after it launched a letterboxing campaign, with plans to distribute more than 30,000 'pledge cards' to homes across the state. On these flyers is a picture of Opposition Leader Rebecca White, arms folded in defiance, a confident smile on her face.

The pledge is this: Labor won't govern with the Greens after the next state election.

"It was a mistake to think that Labor could ever work with the Greens," the flyer reads. "We will never make that mistake again."

They'll be hoping that will play well in the more conservative electorates of Bass, Braddon and Lyons. At the end of the day, though, it's a disappointingly cynical strategy.

And, in some ways, it just plays into the hands of their rivals, highlighting a "mistake" Labor made 10 years ago.

Liberal backbencher Nic Street issued a statement on the Tasmanian government letterhead two days ago, making hay of the flyer. "Labor always say they won't do a deal with the Greens - but, they always do," he said.

What Street forgot to add was that his own party have essentially done just that in the past. When a hung parliament was returned at the 1996 state election, neither then Labor leader Michael Field or premier Ray Groom would go back on their word and form government with the Greens.

So Groom stood aside and Tony Rundle became premier, stitching up a confidence and supply agreement with the Greens, then led by Christine Milne.

The Liberals were turfed out at the next election in 1998, and the Greens were reduced to just one member in Peg Putt.

But the Rundle minority government, with the Greens' support, achieved much to be proud of. Under its watch, Tasmania finally decriminalised homosexuality, completely overhauled state gun laws in the wake of the Port Arthur massacre and made a historic apology to Tasmania's Stolen Generations.

As Tasmanians, we need to get used to the prospect of minority governments, which are more likely to occur here due to our Hare-Clark electoral system.

More importantly, we need to stop fearing them. They aren't as bad as the Liberal and Labor parties would have us believe.

Labor famously signed an accord with the Greens following the 1989 election, resulting in Tasmania's first minority government since the late '60s. Then premier Michael Field was later made a Companion of the Order of Australia for his economic management during the recession that struck the nation in the early 1990s.

Former state Greens leader Bob Brown has pointed to a strengthening of Tasmania's right to information laws and an extension of the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area as achievements from the accord years of which he is particularly proud.

Then there was the Labor-Green government of 2010-14, which operated at a disadvantage from the word go, tasked with steering the state through the global financial crisis.

It's worth remembering, too, that ex-prime minister Julia Gillard led a minority government that passed more legislation than any other federal government in Australia's history. More recently, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was reelected in a landslide victory after governing in minority for three years.

None of the aforementioned governments were perfect. But neither is any majority government.

For the major parties to refuse to govern in minority is to say they will ignore the will of those they represent. But it goes even further than that.

It's tantamount to a dismissal of the Governor's role in commissioning our state governments.

When former premier David Bartlett went to Government House in 2010 to inform then governor Peter Underwood that he didn't wish to lead the state with so few bodies on the floor of the house, he was effectively told to suck it up.

When there's a hung parliament, someone has to govern. And it's going to be either the Liberals or Labor, with some form of support from the crossbench, whether through a power-sharing arrangement or a guarantee of confidence and supply.

When the major parties tell the electorate that they won't govern in minority, they are being dishonest and taking people for mugs.

We shouldn't accept it. As this alarmist rhetoric ramps up prior to the next state election, all talk of minority government should be treated with scepticism and discernment.

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