Hung Parliament

Does Julia Gillard think the Australian people have the memory of a goldfish?

In the alternative Gillard reality we are apparently swimming about taking a fresh look at her Government with each lap of the bowl, oblivious to what we saw yesterday or the day before.

That is the only possible explanation for the bald-faced hypocrisy with which she is now championing a “Parliamentary Code of Conduct”.

Continue reading "Voters won’t forget the way Labor has conducted itself" »

If there’s one thing you can count on in Canberra these days, it’s that nothing is guaranteed. As the government dances along the knife edge of minority support, the balance of power seems to be shifting on a daily basis.

Such is the case with Andrew Wilkie. Only a few months ago it appeared that his influence with Labor had been dealt a serious, almost terminal blow, with the role of Speaker moving from Harry Jenkins to Peter Slipper. Indeed, it was only a short time later that Julia Gillard reneged on her agreement with Wilkie, which in turn led to him withdrawing his support for her government.

Yet here we are just a short time later, with Slipper on the cross-benches and embattled Labor MP Craig Thomson joining him. Anna Burke has stepped into the Speaker’s role temporarily, reducing her influence to that of a casting vote. And amidst all the turmoil, while allegations and sordid details are replayed endlessly in the media, Wilkie has found himself once more in a position of power.

Continue reading "Gillard’s time to go double or nothing on pokies" »

Some years ago the ABC ran an excellent program called Bush Mechanics documenting the amazing resourcefulness of indigenous car nuts in the most remote parts of Australia. These guys have no access to car parts but keep their bombs on the road by stuffing blown tyres full of tightly wound spinifex, using pieces of wood as chassis parts, old pipes as steering columns and so forth.

I was reminded of this program while watching Julia Gillard outline her thinking on the scandalised MPs Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper. Whatever reasons Ms Gillard offers for the line Thomson has apparently crossed which now requires his suspension from the ALP, and for Slipper standing aside as speaker amid criminal claims of rorting and civil claims of sexual harassment, the popular take on her predicament is that this the prime minister is desperately trying to keep a clapped-out bomb of a government on the road. Like the bush mechanics, Ms Gillard has been flailing about for months using almost anything to keep her hands on the steering wheel of government.

At almost every turn – most notably with the supposedly genius idea of luring the shonky Slipper away from the Coalition with the promise of the speakership – she has ended up crashed in a ditch, wheels spinning madly.

Continue reading "Will the creators of this government now destroy it" »

Journalists who report on politics for a living see plenty of hypocrisy. We’re seeing plenty now from Julia Gillard.

She asserts that Peter Slipper should not be sidelined until sexual harassment allegations are dealt with by the courts because he’s entitled to the presumption of innocence. It’s the same excuse the prime minister uses when she refuses to intervene in the Craig Thomson affair and says the Labor backbencher accused of grossly rorting union credit cards still has her full confidence.

Yet when Wikileaks infuriated the US Government by publishing a stack of leaked diplomatic cables, Gillard immediately accused editor-in-chief Julian Assange of acting illegally. There was no presumption of innocence for him.

Continue reading "Gillard’s hypocrisy on the presumption of innocence" »

Peter Slipper attempted to enhance the reputation of Parliament by wearing the robes of an 18th century English parson and forming the world’s shortest formal procession to mark his entry to the House of Representatives.

It looked funny, but it was a genuine bid for a more dignified legislature. He backed up the pomp and frippery with measured and applauded management of the most boisterous chamber in the Westminster system. He was sincere in wanting to lift the image of the House, and the Parliament itself.

But it now can be argued that the current focus on Peter Slipper has endangered the very dignity of the national Parliament which he had wanted to reinforce, and through that the image of the entire nation.

Continue reading "Slip sliding away from the Speaker’s chair" »

One of the best expressions of morally ambivalent political pragmatism came from American president Franklin Roosevelt, who said of the murderous Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza that “he might be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”.

Such strong language should obviously not be applied to describe the controversial and short-lived former Speaker of the House of Representatives Peter Slipper. Slipper is not a brute, but he is clearly something of a buffoon. His cross-party nickname Slippery Pete rightly suggests that he is more comic than corrupt.

But the Machiavellian sentiment behind Roosevelt’s aphorism helps explain why the Coalition held on to their man for so long, in full knowledge of his propensity for weirdness, and despite the fact that he had memorised every eddy, tributary and byway of the parliamentary entitlements handbook. More tellingly, it helps explain why a desperate minority government led by Julia Gillard would have taken the enormous gamble of wooing Slipper across, despite also knowing that he came equipped with his very own filing cabinet of alleged travel rorts, spurious overseas study tours, and murky stories of peccadilloes involving young male staffers.

Continue reading "The rorting oddball Labor should have avoided" »

It’s been so long coming that release of the report into credit card use within the Health Services Union is being hailed as a huge stride in resolving this lingering, messy controversy.

But all we’ve done is slip from one inquiry into another, after which there might be yet another examination of the facts, this time in a court. And we don’t yet know what those facts are.

The Fair Work Australia report filled 1100 pages. It is possible that not one of those pages contains evidence of criminal activity by Labor MP Craig Thomson - the former HSU national secretary - despite the fears of the Government and the hopes of the Opposition.

Continue reading "Thomson’s lynch mob left frustrated for another day" »

The medical qualifications of Chief Opposition Whip Warren Entsch extend to “railway porter, insurance clerk, real estate salesman, fitter and turner with a mining company, grazier, and crocodile farmer.”

A doctor he ain’t, but there he was on AM this morning examining the entrails of Labor MP Craig Thomson.

Thomson has a doctor’s certificate excusing him from this week of parliamentary sittings because of “abdominal pain”. This has become quite an issue because of a number of complicating factors:

Continue reading "When is a sickie not simple? When you’re Craig Thomson" »

Democracy can be a fragile creature; one that thrives best on respect for its institutions and a public belief in the ultimate equity of its processes.

At the very core of Australia’s democratic system is the principle that we, the people, decide who will form our government. It is a system that eschews powerful technocrats and (apart from our outmoded ties to the British monarchy) rejects the concept of political representatives gaining office through breeding and patronage.

It has worked for us for more than a century and serves us well today.

Continue reading "Quit moaning - we get the politicians we vote for" »

The hung parliament experiment has failed. Prime Minister Julia Gillard must call an election immediately.

Ms Gillard famously told us before the election that “there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead”.  The Prime Minister has been accused of lying. In my view we have never seen Gillard actually lead this government.

Today all of the Prime Minister’s policies are owned and operated by the cross benchers while those who actually voted for Gillard have been forgotten.

Continue reading "This puppet Prime Minister must call an election" »

This year’s federal election gave me some insight into what it would be like to be in a coma.

The result, oddly, mirrored my desire at the booth to split my vote- by ripping the paper in half and throwing it in the bin (note: I didn’t end up donkey-voting in the end).

A little tip for next time: If you don’t really believe Australia is about to enter an inspiring era of positive change, pretend to.

Continue reading "Wish list: the hung parliament of my dreams" »

If our election on 21 August had been held under British, Canadian, Indian or American rules, we wouldn’t have had to wait. We would have known the results that evening. 

It would have been a landslide to the Coalition.  Their majority would have been about the same size as that of the Rudd government. The three independents would have had no role in the formation of the government, and neither the Green MP nor Mr. Willkie would have been there.

There is no perfect electoral system, and none is sacrosanct. Politicians being human, they prefer the system which they think will favour them. But circumstances change. What favours a party at one time can disadvantage them at another. 

Continue reading "Let’s ditch preferential voting - but only in the House" »

There was a moment in last night’s brilliant episode of 4 Corners that might have undermined Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott’s argument the whole filming exercise was about posterity.

As the deliberations over the hung parliament arrived at absolute crunch time Bob Katter got uncomfortable with the ABC camera and said he would rather the crew left the office where he was meeting with his fellow regional independents.

But Windsor and Oakeshott had other ideas. You can watch the whole episode here.

Continue reading "Recording a moment in history or self indulgence?" »

Labor has lost its majority but it would like us to believe that it has found regional Australia.

Well, at Labor’s election launch Bob Hawke said that you have to judge a horse by its form.

It was good advice. Labor ignored regional Australia through its first term in Government.

Continue reading "Labor still looks at the regions through metro eyes" »

For anyone who missed the Governor General’s speech opening Parliament yesterday we might be able to source you a copy, but the North Koreans are rumoured to have snapped them all up and are attempting to weaponise the material.

The Punch counted at least five people asleep in the public galleries of the Senate during Quentin Bryce’s speech, and that’s not counting some esteemed members of the press gallery.

The Governor General’s speech is written by the Prime Minister and intends to outline the Government’s new term agenda. Besides being very dull, the speech was also an extremely rosy view of how the Gillard Government will negotiate its policy through the new paradigm Parliament. Here’s a more realistic account version of the Governor General’s speech:

Continue reading "The speech the Governor General should have given" »

Less than a month into the new parliament, there is no shortage of advice for our Prime Minister, with News Ltd warning about the danger of ‘over-reaching to the left’, while former British PM Tony Blair – perhaps nostalgic for his own failed New Labor experiment in the UK – is urging her to stay the ‘centre course’. 

But the ‘sky is falling’ hysteria about our new patch-work parliament has been a little overplayed:  it mirrors perfectly the divisions across our rainbow nation – between regional and urban Australia, between migrant and non-migrant communities, between open minded and closed minded individuals … and the list goes on. 

We live with these divisions every day – and manage to negotiate our lives around them.  It’s curious that we don’t reckon our politicians should be expected to do the same. 

Continue reading "A party machine we can believe in" »

Tony Abbott might have pretended to be graceful in defeat a couple of weeks ago but it is now clear that he is intent on destroying Julia Gillard’s flimsy government by almost any means necessary.

The Opposition Leader looks more like a campus Trotskyist than an alternative prime minister as he employs a raft of tactics aimed at reducing Labor’s tenuous majority on the floor of Parliament, blocking its policy agenda, sabotaging the ability of the Prime Minister and senior ministers to do their jobs.

At the centre of this strategy is a calculated gamble – that the voters will be less likely to punish the Opposition for treachery than to conclude that Labor is simply incapable of governing effectively and turf them out.

Continue reading "Can Abbott the wrecker build a platform for power?" »

So there I was last week listening to the radio and on came Rob Oakeshott with the most intriguing news.

According to the Port Macquarie-based Independent: “I come from an area of Australia where people look at each other in the eye and tell the truth.”

I’ve got to see this place! I thought to myself. So I booked a ticket in search of this magical land that was apparently so unlike the rest of Australia.

Continue reading "Oakeshott country: where people tell the truth, mostly" »

As suspenseful as a Hitchcock movie, the twists and turns along the path to the nation’s 43rd Parliament remain a source of fascination and frustration in equal measure. And still it drags on.

We may have to wait until the last moment to know who will be Speaker, (and Deputy Speaker) in the House of Representatives, where government is made - and potentially unmade.

It matters because it affects the final numbers able to be called upon in a vote. Labor has already announced a massive legislative program including more than 40 bills this coming week alone. How any will get through is simply unknown.

Continue reading "Saddling up for the smiley new politics" »

Speaker of the House of Representatives Harry Jenkins is a bit of a Punch Question Time Live favourite, with his school master tone and ever-developing sense of humour.

And now he has a new fan - Opposition Leader Tony Abbott. It was reported yesterday Julia Gillard couldn’t get away from Jenkins fast enough when he bailed her up in Aussies Cafe at Parliament House.

She seems more keen to indulge the increasingly lofty ambitions of Independent Rob “this isn’t about some out-of-control ego” Oakeshott , which must be driving Jenkins a bit mad. According to Gillard, Oakeshott has the “skills and attributes” necessary for the tricky parliamentary role. But this morning Abbott backed up the Labor stalwart.

Continue reading "When friends are enemies and enemies friends" »

Many conclusions have been made about the “new paradigm” of Australian politics. 

Much has been written of the rise of Independents – though close to 80% of Australians cast their first preference vote for either the Coalition or Labor, and that figure rises to 90% if you include the Greens, which by nature of their deal with Labor are no longer an innocuous fringe dweller.

All interesting stuff for the media and those whose lives revolve about politics and the operation of Parliament. But the real lesson of the past few weeks, the real message we ought to take from the sideshow is that it’s not about the Government of the day.  It’s not really about Government full stop.

Continue reading "The lesson from the new paradigm: less is more" »

“I’m sorry I’m late, but I have piles.” With these immortal words, the former member for the South Australian seat of Mallee, rogue rural Liberal turned independent Peter Lewis, apologised for his late arrival at a scheduled press conference on the steps of State Parliament from North Terrace.

Coming from anybody else the words would have caused shock. Not so in the case of Peter Lewis, a man who made the word maverick seem somehow inadequate to capture the bizarre nature of his unlikely life in the public arena.

Lewis not only looked like Yosemite Sam, he acted like him. In an all-night conscience vote on euthanasia in the mid-1990s, the socially conservative Lewis surprised colleagues by rising to support the legislation on the grounds that, while working as a mercenary in the Thai jungle some years ago, he shot dead one of his fellow soldiers in a mercy killing after he had been mortally wounded by Marxist guerrillas.

Continue reading "Minority government sounds crazy but just might work" »

Political staffer: “Hey Rob I’m just going to the parliamentary canteen, did you want the pasta or the salad roll?”

Rob Oakeshott: “Well, look. I mean, yikes. I’m not pretending this is easy. It’s been line ball, a points decision, six to one half a dozen the other, it really could go either way, in fact it’s going right down to the wire. I mean, I like pasta. I like it a lot. Over the years I have eaten a lot of pasta, it’s, you know, it’s a carbohydrate, and you can have it with a variety of sauces. 

But then I really like salad rolls. I’ve eaten a lot of salad rolls in my time too. And weighing it up on balance I have to say that I’m kind of torn. The question I have been asking myself is what is the pasta going to provide? I want more than just sustenance, I don’t just want to eat for the sake of eating, I think what we really need at this point of time, that is, lunch time, is a whole new way of eating.

Continue reading "Day one of democracy’s new dawn: Oakeshott gets lunch" »

If Julia Gillard can make a go of governing Australia over the next three years her next job should be to succeed Ban Ki-Moon as the general secretary of the United Nations.

The minority government she has cobbled together could not be any more delicately poised. This fragile coalition was sealed with the support of Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor at a 3pm press conference so tortuous in its length that it constituted a cruel form of electoral teasing.

After Bob Katter announced earlier this afternoon that he would back the Coalition, Labor needed the support of the two remaining independents to reach the magic figure of 76 Lower House seats.
Labor got it.

Continue reading "Government by the phew" »

Put My Way on the karaoke machine. It’s the end of the night and the sun is coming up on a new government - a Labor minority government, to be precise. If you’re a bit of a political tragic having followed the campaign and its surreal denouement, tomorrow you might wake up feeling as if someone has died.

But conversely if you don’t care - and many normal people don’t seem to have given a hoot, in fact being politically rudderless has been a subject of some mirth - you might feel as if that irritating but really fun friend of yours has just left town. Anyway here’s The Punch’s list of our favourite shark-jumping and oddball moments of the 2010 campaign. Add yours in the comments, and we might build out the list. Let’s start with today’s silliness:

1. Rob Oakeshott’s speech announcing who he would support: Really, could he actually have drawn it out any longer? He started with a list of thank-yous that made it seem like he was accepting an Oscar, then proceeded with a meandering justification of his decision that prompted Laurie Oakes to wonder if we would be here another fortnight. But in the end said he would support Julia Gillard in helping Labor form a minority government.

Continue reading "Goodbye campaign 2010, we’ll miss you" »

Just when it looked like the prospect of a hung Parliament had taken us to a new paradigm of political discourse, where nice trumps nasty and diversity of opinion is respected, the public has sent a clear message: enough already!

After railing against stage-managed elections, two weeks of introspection and pandering to the wishes of non-aligned members has the public calling for a recommencement of hostilities.

According to this week’s Essential Report, a majority of voters want a new election – and even more (70 per cent) believe a new poll is inevitable.

Continue reading "10 reasons we want to go back to the polls" »

In the next few days we should know whether Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott will be the next Prime Minister.

Regardless of whoever prevails they should do the country a favour and appoint the leader they knocked off to be the country’s chief diplomat.

The position of Minister for Foreign Affairs, which for the moment at least also has trade tacked on, is a coveted portfolio. Unlike most other ministries it has traditionally involved dealing almost exclusively with matters core to the national interest with a lesser regard for the day-to-day trench warfare of politics. Until Kevin Rudd came along.

Continue reading "Rudd and Turnbull are the safe hands for foreign affairs" »

A hung parliament is a golden opportunity for serious reform. The independents should not waste their extraordinary power on ephemeral trivia such as the black holes issue. (This is essentially about whether Treasury’s long term predictions are reliable. They are not.)

They should do something for which they will be immortalised in the nation’s pantheon. They should propose fundamental reform to our system of government, making it more democratic.

Why do the people have to wait three or four years to pass judgement on a failed government?  Why shouldn’t they block a law they do not like?

Continue reading "Trivial independents miss chance at making history" »

There are many of us who happily whiled away our youth reading those terrific Choose Your Own Adventure books where by thumbing through to different pages, you could select from a variety of endings.

They were swashbuckling tales involving shady figures, sinister conspiracies, acts of trickery, magic and deceit - pretty much like the 2010 federal election.

Now entering its third week, this campaign has been even more fantastic than anything the authors of those adolescent adventures could have dreamed up. It’s often been just as juvenile.

Continue reading "Choose your own election: come with me to Acapulco" »

THE past two weeks of political dealing and card playing between the major parties and the Independents to form a minority government reminds me of Kenny Rogers’ ode to The Gambler.

The song’s chorus, in particular, sums up the quandary faced by the political gamblers:

You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away and know when to run. You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table. There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealing’s done.

Continue reading "Independents took a leaf from Kenny Rogers’ book" »

The Greens are now officially the far-left faction of the Australian Labor Party.  They have been signed, sealed and delivered by a Prime Minister desperate to cling to power and their own party leader who is clearly desperate to be part of the “big game” he has always decried.

Those people who voted Green because they would “stand up to” the major parties must be bewildered and disappointed by the indecent haste with which they have got into bed with the Labor Party.

The Greens can no longer claim to be an “alternative” to the major parties, because they are now a formalised wing of Labor.  Rather than being a third political force, they’re just Labor’s appendage.

Continue reading "Introducing Labor’s new faction – the Greens" »

Well silly old me. There I was thinking the 2010 federal election was about economic management, border protection, broadband and leadership.

Turns out it was about light rail for north Hobart, the reintroduction of tariffs for the banana industry, an hourly limit on poker machine betting, new rules governing the length of answers during Question Time and the urgent introduction of an emissions trading scheme.

For all the talk about who has the biggest mandate, a separate and more compelling point should be made about the emergence of a raft of left-field side issues as bargaining chips in the battle to form government. And that is – none of these independents has any mandate at all to use them as conditions for supporting the major party.

Continue reading "The national policy agenda which nobody voted for" »

Those delegates from Labor and the Coalition who are hoping to win over Bob Katter ought to make sure they enter his personal space equipped not just with mouthguard and groin protection but a powerful sense of the past.

Nothing matters more to Katter than history. It is the key to his heart. He speaks of events that happened more than a century ago as though they occurred only yesterday – and as if he himself was there.

Katter talks of two photographs that hang in the Civic Club in his hometown of Charters Towers, in the Queensland hinterland. “One is of the mine managers in 1899 in Charters Towers,” he says. “They’re all there in their hats and three-piece suits and gold fob pocket watches. Those bastards drove us down in the mines and one in 31 of us never came back up again.” Us.

Continue reading "Troglodyte is not an insult: inside the mind of Bob Katter" »

Having recently been in New York I am able to present the playbill lyrics of a show that opened off-off-off-off-off Broadway last month. Despite overwhelmingly harsh reviews from numerous critics it appears the production is going to have a surprisingly extended run.

A Night at the Ballot

Opening scene: Julia Gillard’s office. A number of faceless men lurk in the shadows behind Julia.

Continue reading "A Night at the Ballot: Election 2010, the musical" »

As the country enters yet another day of political limbo, at least one element of the recent federal election is clear: the Australian people want genuine action on climate change.

Over a week has passed since voters rejected both the major parties, creating our first hung parliament in seventy years and only the second in our history. The electorate’s disapproval of each alternative government manifested in a swell of support for the Greens and independents, who now hold the balance of power in both houses of parliament.

This unique situation seems in no small part to have arisen from Labor and the Coalition’s reluctance to offer substantive policies to mitigate global warming—the issue heralded as the greatest moral and economic challenge of our time.

Continue reading "Political limbo: hung for lack of climate vision" »

I don’t know about you, but I feel beaten over the head by the demands of the four Independents.

What about our demands?

Here are some of issues plaguing Australians. Feel free to add your own.

1.    Who shrunk the Weet-bix? Is it an evil ploy by the Seventh Day Adventists at Sanitarium to slowly starve us until – low on carbs and high on delirium – we agree to join their religion? And who decided that Sultana Bran shouldn’t have as many sultanas? Discuss.

Continue reading "The indies should be asking about the WeetBix" »

Did anyone else choke on their breakfast cereal hearing Rob Oakeshot demand party discipline from the Liberal leadership to protect him from ‘rogue’ MPs? This from a guy who wants us to believe that unwillingness to be bound by a party room is the defining virtue of a good local MP.

There’s been a lot of naive commentary about how having independents control our Parliament would be good for democracy. Here’s a realist perspective on what a Parliament with a decline in the dominant two-party political setting would look like.

First prediction: the weaker the discipline that the strong two-party setting imposes, the greater the influence would be of lobbyists. We need only look to the effect the weaker party discipline of the Republicans and Democrats in the US has on American politics to back this prediction.

Continue reading "Vote Independent? Not if you believe in democracy" »

Thursday, 26 August, 2010

7:00am

Horrible nightmare. Dreamt election never ended, then suddenly realised I was awake.

8:00am

Meeting in my office with Abbott, Alby Schultz and Hockey to discuss negotiations with Independents and costings.

Abbott says Treasury cannot be trusted. Just look at lying leakers like Godwin Grech. Point out that Grech leaked to Malcolm Turnbull. Abbott says that’s exactly his point.

Schultz proposes divide-and-conquer approach to Independents. Says it worked with the three musketeers. Unclear whether Schultz took away central message of Three Musketeers.

Abbott likes idea. Schultz will talk to Windsor. Shultz says they share language: Fair-Dinkumese.

Wants me to speak to Oakeshott.

Abbott will talk to Katter.

Continue reading "Diary of a Liberal frontbencher: The indy wars" »

Julia Gillard is now in a bit of strife. Since the inconclusive result on polling night - almost 10 days ago - she has argued that Labor has the right to govern because the two-party preferred vote shows a majority of Australians voted for the Government.

Not any more. As of late this afternoon, a majority of Australians voted for the Coalition. 

Both in her public rhetoric and her lobbying of the independents, Ms Gillard had placed great store in the fact that Labor was ahead on the 2PP vote. When she made the claim on the Sunday after the August 21 poll, Labor enjoyed a lead of 50.66 per cent to the Coalition’s 49.34 per cent, and no-one thought it likely that the lead would change. 

Continue reading "On the PM’s own test, the numbers now favour the Libs" »

Update 2pm: Now Bob Katter’s office says he was only “speaking figuratively” about being punched on election night.

Update 12.15pm: Bob Katter has just claimed he was punched on election night, but it’s not clear if he was suggesting it was by a member of the Coalition.

Update 12pm: Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan has outed himself as the maker of the “it’s the devil” call to Rob Oakeshott. Fairfax’s Phil Coorey says it’s one of the Senator’s “standard jokes” when he rings people.

Tony Abbott’s pitch to the country independents is looking a bit flimsy this morning. He’s got one unnamed Lib MP making “devil” calls to Rob Oakeshott’s family, the Nats are jumping up and down saying “what about us?” and over the weekend it emerged Alby Shultz took it upon himself to ring Tony Windsor and give him a piece of his mind.

The Coalition is carrying on like a bunch of school girls (apologies to schools girls everywhere) who don’t actually want to form Government.

Continue reading "Who needs enemies when you’ve got a Party Room" »

I stumbled upon a new and informative website today: http://doesaustraliahaveagovernmentyet.com/

It sums up the current political situation pretty well, and what a bizarre situation it is.

Gillard stabbed Rudd in the back, Rudd stepped up and helped out his Lady Macbeth during the election, interim-mad-monk-Abbott pushed a relentless campaign, we discovered that there was Julia and then there was the “real Julia” (along with two impersonators) which was confusing, the Greens slid gracefully into the Senate and House of Reps, Bob Katter… I don’t know what Bob Katter is doing, but one somewhat effective campaign video and all of a sudden he’s the force to be reckoned with.

Continue reading "Do we have a government yet? No, thank goodness" »

Who’s going to win the next federal election?

It is on the face of it a particularly stupid question, given that we don’t yet know who won this federal election.

And given the glacier-like pace of negotiations between the major parties and the independents and Greens, history may eventually describe this poll as the 2010-2011 election, such is the slowness of its resolution.

Continue reading "Whoever wins this election is likely to lose the next one" »

During election campaigns, Canberra is to national politics what a hole is to a doughnut - defining, but of no interest.

That changed with a rush in the wake of the closest result in a century.  With neither side able to claim a majority, both leaders rushed back to the national capital to court a suddenly pivotal troika of independents, Bob Katter, Tony Windsor, and Rob Oakeshott - all former Nationals members.

But rather than filling in the ``hole’‘, the unedifying horse-trading now underway Canberra has done the opposite. Bluntly, the nation is in danger of being dropped right in it.

Continue reading "Dawn of a new democracy? More like a siege" »

Julia Gillard’s office has just released some letters she sent to Tony Abbott regarding caretaker conventions and one of the most interesting things about them was the signature. Here’s her signature from the letter dated August 25.

And here’s what she wrote two days later on August 27.

I have to admit the unsightly scrawl I call my signature changes almost every time I write it. But I wonder what the hand writing experts would tell us about this.

Should Australia make a quick return to the polls, stand by for the el cheapo election re-run, where the late night Guthy-Renker advertisements for the Sham-Wow chamois system and the Zumba high-energy dance program are interrupted by statements from a guy called Tony and a woman called Julia about their vision for the nation.

After the style of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues, the leaders will spruik their major policies on a series of hand-written cardboard flashcards.

There will be no money for focus group testing.

Continue reading "The NEW! improved low-fi el cheapo election campaign" »

In yet another extraordinary exclusive, Joe Hildebrand has obtained tapes of Julia Gillard’s meetings with a key independent MP whose support she needs to form Government…

PA: Prime Minister, Mr Katter here to see you.

JULIA: Oh hello Bob, come in. Do you mind if I ask you to remove your hat?

BOB: What hat?

Continue reading "Revealed! The secret Bob and Julia tapes" »

A new election will cost the taxpayers about $170 million. It’s a small price to pay for stability, which is something neither side will be able to deliver as a result of the seemingly insurmountable impasse created by Saturday’s mad result.

Governments are meant to operate in the national interest. The biggest worry about the current deadlock is that any balanced sense of national priorities will be compromised, as the party which forms government evaluates every major policy on the basis of what’s in it for Tamworth, Port Macquarie and whichever part of the planet Bob Katter hails from.

The last time we saw this distortion of public policy was in the late 1990s when Independent Senator Brian Harradine held the balance of power, and his home state of Tasmania was showered with extravagant telecommunications riches by the Coalition to buy his support for the Telstra sale.

Continue reading "We don’t need new politics, we just need a new election" »

Three days after the election and punters will no doubt be biting their nails until the independents strike a deal with Gillard or Abbott to form a government. We’re still holding millions of dollars on the election result, and they could be waiting a week or so to be paid out on a head-to-head bet.

What’s clear is that punters who backed a hung parliament at $6.00 will be among the only ones celebrating at this stage.

With the wash up then showing about 73 seats in the bag for Labor and as many as 73 for the Coalition, punters didn’t take much of a rest after a late night awaiting a result on Saturday.

Continue reading "Follow the money: no result, but a number of winners" »

It took a brave (and bitter) kind of former politician to stand in front of the camera on 60 minutes, and tell the country to turn in a blank vote out of protest come election day. But that’s what happened.

In an amazing example of the pot calling the kettle black, Mark Latham declared neither party major worthy of leading Australia, and encouraged all voters to follow his lead and send them a clear message.

There’s a chance that even Mark Latham was surprised that people actually listened to him.

Continue reading "Goodbye naughty chair, it’s time to bring out the Latham" »

Meet Jackie Healy Rae. If Irish politics has a Bob Katter, it’s him. Like the member for Kennedy, he’s a rural independent and disaffected former member of an established party, who trades on his commitment to fighting for the peculiar concerns of his local constituents.

The parallels between Katter now and Healy Rae when he was first elected are as striking as their respective signature hats. The 1997 Irish general election produced a hung parliament in which the conservative coalition fell just short of a majority. Healy Rae was one of three independents who agreed to put old enmities aside and support the government in parliament. In return he extracted concessions for his constituents.

On the surface it’s all standard horse-trading, but there’s a murkier side that would be unwelcome in the Australian context. It has never been precisely clear what Healy Rae was promised in return for his support. And since 2007 Healy Rae has been propping up his old party again, under a deal which he openly says is none of the public’s business, thank you very much.

Continue reading "Heard the one about the Irish MP who promised stability?" »

What a great night to be Labor. As the Party swept back into office with a mandate to lead global action on climate change it seemed like the entire nation had grown a few inches taller.

The energy on the ground made the excitement of Kevin 07’s electoral triumph seem like a mere entrée to the main, as thousands of young people on booths around Australia literally enthused swinging voters into embracing the future.

Forgive my hyperbole just this once, but this was a night when the rules of politics were rewritten, where principle drove politics and the people responded by voting to reject fear and confront the reality of global warming.

Continue reading "Yes we will: remembering a campaign that never was" »

If the election was a referendum on the Government then the Coalition has lost.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott may have fond memories of referendums because of 1999, but his statement at 1.56 am on election night that the 2010 Federal ”…election has been a referendum on the political execution of a Prime Minister” could come back to bite him. If the Independents take his advice he’ll probably remain in Opposition for the foreseeable future.

The media and the Opposition are suggesting that the country rejected the current Government: “a humiliating rebuff” was the way ABC Radio National’s breakfast presenter Fran Kelly framed it in her interview with Federal minister Tony Burke on Monday morning.

Continue reading "Abbott losing his own election referendum" »

Stability - hilariously enough - is the word of the day in Canberra as both Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott argue that they are best placed to find a way out of the mess left from Saturday’s election shemozzle. 

While much of the horse-trading will come down to policy - that is, arguments over the respective party positions on big issues such as national broadband and the ETS - it will also be determined in equal measure by questions of personality. And the top-shelf sledging and sniping which we’ve seen in the past 36 hours suggests that neither the Labor Party nor the Coalition can credibly promise they will be able to deliver a stable minority government.

The immediate challenge for Labor is to keep a lid on the explosive tensions involving the conduct of national secretary Karl Bitar and factional numbers men and anti-Rudd plotters such as Mark Arbib, who has pulled out of a scheduled appearance o Q and A tonight amid the fallout from Saturday.

Continue reading "Fate of nation rests upon who hates who the least" »

Desperate times call for desperate measures and the measures don’t get much more desperate than the argument between Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott over which side won the popular vote in Saturday night’s election shambles.

At stake in this argument is nothing less than the right to govern a nation - well at least for a few weeks until Bob Katter demands we declare war on Brazil over orange imports, Tony Windsor has the entire $43 billion outlay for the National Broadband Network spent in Tamworth alone, Rob Oakeshott declares Port Macquarie a tax-free haven, and Adam Bandt announces the Melbourne CBD is now a bilby sanctuary.

As both sides start playing footsies with the independents, they are desperate to claim the mantle of legitimacy, to argue that the number of votes they received overall has given them a popular mandate.

Continue reading "They don’t totally love us but they like us a teensy bit more" »

I’d like to know if anyone out there is having an election party which they’ve promised to keep going until there’s a winner. They’ll need to live near a well-stocked bottle shop and possibly ring out for some new livers.

You could exclaim that the outcome of the 2010 federal election was an amazing result. As in, there wasn’t one.

The Prime Minister quoted Bill Clinton’s line about the people having spoken, but it’s going to take a bit of time to figure out what they’ve said. I’m not so sure. On the results as they stand tonight there seems a clear message that Australians have opted not to give either of the major parties a mandate to govern in their own right.

Continue reading "Australia votes for chaos" »