In the first few months of 1969 the Tasmanian government was the sole surviving Labor administration in the country. It had been in power since 1934 and had won 10 elections in a row. It was more enduring than any other government in Australian history. In that time three premiers – Ogilvie, Cosgrove and Reece – had dominated the political scene. They often had to deal with the wafer thin majorities delivered up by the Hare-Clark system, fractious critics on the Left and the Right within the broader labour movement and, as ever, the ancestral opposition of the Legislative Council. The May election produced a typical Tasmanian result. Labor outvoted the Liberal party by 7000 votes but both parties gained 17 seats. The balance of power was left in the hands of Kevin Lyons, son of Joe and Enid, who had left the Liberal Party to run as leader of the new and short-lived Centre Party. Lyons became deputy leader in a coalition led by W. A. Bethune, descendant of an old gentry family. The end of Labor's dominance reflected the dramatic developments that were taking place in Australia and in the wider world and which themselves grew out of the many changes that reshaped Western societies during the long postwar boom.