Independents

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" »

The Labor Party never stop spinning.  The Greens and the Nationals candidates stormed past Pauline Hanson on Tuesday to fill the last two seats in the NSW upper house. But Labor is now trying to take credit for stopping Pauline Hanson spreading her divisive politics for the next eight years. 

The major stars of the ‘stop Pauline Hanson show’ were the large number of Greens voters.  A record 453,125 people voted Greens in NSW on March 26.  That’s four and a half times as many people as the 98,043 who voted for Pauline Hanson.

The Greens did gain an extra 3,738 votes from Labor preferences.

Continue reading "NSW dodges a bullet thanks to the Greens" »

Yesterday, Pauline Hanson’s umpteenth attempt to climb out of the political grave ended in failure. But only just.

If NSW Labor had not extended Legislative Council preferences to the Greens Party, Hanson would be sitting on red leather for all of the next eight years, availing herself of parliamentary privilege to once again inject her poison into the Australian body politic.

The fact is, Labor preferences elected a Greens Party candidate over the top of Pauline Hanson.

Continue reading "Red, Green and Pauline: How Hanson was held back" »

Last week all six crossbench MPs in the House of Representatives gathered to be photographed for a newspaper with all the ease of men who know they share a loose but important bond. They were Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott from NSW, Adam Bandt from Victoria, Bob Katter from Queensland, Tony Crook from Western Australia, and Andrew Wilkie from Tasmania.

Off to the side of the Parliament House courtyard they occupied was another man, not a member of the group, but familiar with them.

It was Liberal front bencher Malcolm Turnbull, the shadow minister for communication, and he stood quietly monitoring his iPhone.

Continue reading "Turnbull is dancing to the beat of a different drum" »

The other night after playing cards I started thumbing absent-mindedly through the notebook we were using to keep score. It contained a combination of shorthand notes and a few fully-written words and phrases which at first blush made no sense.

“Juicy and sexy.”  “Wicked dilemma.”  “Wow of a time.” 

And: “Big swear jar (=no mandate).”  The brackets signified that the words “no mandate” were my own and not a quote. I had also scribbled the words “10 mins – Gwyneth Paltrow?” in another pair of brackets and initially could not remember why.

Continue reading "Julia and her wacky mates are failing the sunshine test" »

Political leaders, be they premiers or prime ministers, need protection - especially during the tough times when the polls look sick, and the backbench can get nervy.

‘Twas ever thus. Bob Hawke could rely on the dominance and iron discipline of the Right faction. Factional heavyweights like Graham Richardson and Robert Ray controlled the numbers ensuring nothing untoward occurred.

It was a highly effective arrangement with only one major weakness. When some of those closest to him swapped sides it was game over. That’s politics. The King is dead, long live the King.

Continue reading "Keep voters close, and your political allies even closer" »

There is little doubt the people of NSW want change at the March State Election.

But recent polls and by-election results reveals that voters know that, to achieve real change, needs a decisive change of government. Only a strong government, with a decisive majority, can start to turn this State around.

The Federal election result provided two lessons: that a vote for The Greens or an Independent can be a vote for Labor and that a hung Parliament leads to instability, inaction and indecision.

Continue reading "Why you should not vote for independents" »

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" »

To all those in the The Punch community who wanted – needed – to believe in the ‘New Paradigm’ politics: sorry, we told you so.

In order to gain the Speakership of our Parliament, one of the Independents will have to consider deciding and neutralising his vote on any issue before it is debated in the chamber. Goodbye quaint notion of MPs working together to discern the national interest through rational parliamentary dialogue. Goodbye the New Naïveté.

In the end, the Independents, like most politicians, believe that everything will be better if only they hold the power. This Independent is after the power of the Speakership, because only he can be trusted with the power of the new paradigm.

Continue reading "Farewell new paradigm, we hardly knew you" »

Tony Abbott wants to pressure the independents into making him prime minister in coming months without recourse to the people via another election.

And the chief battering ram he will use to crack the Labor-independent facade is to be the man Mr Abbott defeated in last year’s show-down over climate change policy, Malcolm Turnbull.

The green-tinged Mr Turnbull, also a self-declared internet tech-head, has been named as communication spokesman and specifically tasked with ``demolishing’’ Labor’s signature nation-building plan, the $43 billion National Broadband Network.

Continue reading "The old switcheroo: Tony and Mal’s cunning plan" »

The prospect of Rob Oakeshott becoming speaker is not one that should surprise any of us.

Firstly, anyone who saw the final painfully long press conference at which he announced support for Labor should know the independent MP is getting pretty used to all this attention. If that performance is anything to go by, we may need to add a few extra rules to the parliamentary reforms that stipulates time limits on the speaker’s responses. This may be the first Parliament that allows MPs to tell the speaker to keep his answers brief.

Secondly Oakeshott sees himself as the embodiment of the new political paradigm he loves to talk about. He is its self declared messiah and the speaker role is a good position from which to preach to the masses.

Continue reading "Mr Speaker, can you please get to the point" »

This tricky little election of ours has indeed delivered a bizarre but welcome insight into Australian country life.

And no-one, least of all our country cousins, could ever have predicted such a windfall that, for the first time in a very long time, both left and right of politics are actually listening to a word or two about troubles in the bush.

Thank you Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter for reminding Australians that – yes – people actually do still live “out there”.

Continue reading "Let’s get over the great divide between city and country" »

As a long-suffering leftie, I thought it was just my fragile ego that was picking up an increase in the intensity of the bucketing I have been receiving from my Punch fan club in recent weeks.

But now we have statistical evidence to prove that the federal election has transformed average Liberal voters from mildly dysfunctional union–baiters into feral class warriors who want to tear down a system that no longer works for them.

In a series of questions about attitudes to the independents and Greens, huge numbers of Liberal voters have put themselves in the ‘strongly disapprove’ column.

Continue reading "10 handy stress-relief tips for furious Aussie conservatives" »

MONDAY 06/09/10

6:00am

Mobile rings. Gravelly voice says “It’s the devil”. Ask Bill Heffernan why he is calling at such an ungodly hour? Bill shocked I guessed it was him. Remind Bill he’s called me before and that picture of the devil comes up when he calls.

Ask Bill why he still does this?

Heffernan says he can’t help being a prankster. AND has had a lot of time on his hands since the Kirby ‘prank’.

Bill has never been funny.

Lunchtime

Joyce charges into office, demands $1 billion for veterinary hospital in his electorate. Slams signed declaration on desk that states he will not support Coalition if demand isn’t met. Ask Joyce who he will support.

Continue reading "Diary of a Liberal Frontbencher: End game" »

“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" »

Update 2pm: Julia Gillard has named her new ministerial team. It includes Kevin Rudd as PM, Stephen Smith in Defence and Simon Crean heading a new regional affairs ministry. You can read full details here.

Australians finally know when Parliament will sit, September 28, but few have any idea what will happen when it does.

Visually, it will be interesting having both sides so evenly matched on numbers in the House of Representatives. Where will the independents sit - on the cross benches yes, but where exactly? On the Government side or on the Opposition side? It is one of many questions.

Julia Gillard may have emerged victorious from our closest ever election, but beyond that stretches yet more uncertainty. A new Cabinet will be named as early as today, but Ms Gillard knows that is the easy bit. Well, kind of.

Continue reading "Headache of government beats not governing at all" »

For all the giddy talk about new paradigms and the renewal of democracy, there’s every chance that this Parliament could end up looking more like an episode of The Office than a functional and productive political assembly.

In a campaign where marketing psychobabble often took centre-stage, it’s only appropriate that, moving forward, the result itself take us further down the path towards the proactive and the inclusive - where instead of just making decisions, it’s now the primary job of parliament to facilitate dialogue and discourse, even to re-open the discussion of issues not remotely on the minds of the 85 per cent of the population which voted for either of the major parties.

Things got off to an inauspicious start when the man who wants ministerial answers limited to three minutes took a full seventeen to address the relatively simple question of whether he was supporting Labor or the Coalition.

Continue reading "The proactive new world of Australian politics" »

It was an election campaign filled with memorable images. Tony Abbott, like some cabaret crooner with a cordless microphone, hitting the swirly carpet to schmooze the crowd at the Rooty Hill RSL.  Mark Latham busting out of his enclosure to go on the rampage at the Brisbane Show. Discharged patient Kevin Rudd, his senses deadened by pethidine, poring over an electoral map of Queensland at a staged summit with the woman who pinched his job.

Given the result of the election, there’s another lesser image which might not be emblematic of the campaign, but speaks volumes about the utterly bizarre policy outcomes it has delivered.

The image was of Independent MP and gentleman farmer Tony Windsor, in moleskins and a leather-shouldered knitted jumper, riding a tractor mower which probably cost as much as a Holden Barina, tending the lawns at his country manor as he finalised his extortionate crusade to turn our national government into the vassal of the laughably persecuted rural class.

Continue reading "The deliverance of cash to those who squeal loudest" »

Before everyone gets too excited about reforming Parliament, it has to be remembered the combative nature of the placed has given millions of people a myriad of enjoyment and entertainment over the years.

Sadly the wags and wits of yesteryear have gone and their replacements have, in the main, never been able to replace them, with some remarkable exceptions.

Going way back we had Fred Daley, Bill Wentworth, Jim Killen and Gough Whitlam – today the not so pale current crop has included Keating, Costello, Albanese, Julia herself and up to a point the Mad Monk qualifies until he loses his cool.

Continue reading "Making Parliament the preserve of delicate flowers" »

Bob Brown should be first to chip in to Rob Oakeshott’s swear jar which the independent MP says needs topping up any time someone says the Labor government has a mandate.

The Greens leader appeared to contradict Oakeshott when he wrestled with the mandate question on Lateline last night. Asked what he thought of the member for Lyne’s view that the Gillard government shouldn’t be claiming to have a mandate, Brown replied:

Well it’s got - we got a proportional mandate, and it’s got the biggest mandate amongst the make-up of government, ah, and it’s certainly now got a stronger mandate than the Coalition.

Continue reading "Watch it, sunshine" »

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" »

While Tony Abbott managed to resurrect the Coalition from its electoral death bed, to come so close and not seal the deal leads to questions of how the Coalition ultimately failed.

Here’s five things that they stuffed up in their bid to form Government:

1. Broadband:

Tony Windsor said this was critical in his decision to back Labor. The Coalition’s decision to spike the National Broadband Network policy in its entirety is questionable, but it was compounded by Abbott’s almost wilful ignorance of the issue during the campaign.

Continue reading "5 reasons Abbott didn’t seal the deal" »

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" »

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" »

What has become increasingly clear from the dithering statements from the three independents is they are unlikely to announce a decision on who will form government today.

Tony Windsor is still speaking in some kind of Yoda code, now worried that the three buddies will split:

“To talk to the other two about the possible prospect of a 75-all I must, in which case we might have to even rethink our own thoughts.  Yeesssssss.

“How the other two are going to vote, I know not.  Going to put our cards on the table today we are.  To see if we can get to something that is stable, the main objective here is. If we cannot get to something, stable we may well end up back at the polls, that is.”

(That was a Yoda translation of what Windsor actually told journalists this morning, it really wasn’t far off)

Continue reading "Some cricket relief during a political rain delay" »

Update 9:15PM: Appearing on Sky News this evening the crucial three independents Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor say they still have not made up their minds over which party to support.  It continues.

Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie’s decision to side with Julia Gillard’s Labor Government is not surprising.

The intelligence officer turned Iraq war whistler blower was basically labelled a clear and present danger to national security by the Howard Government, formally had a fling with The Greens and now holds what is usually a safe Labor seat – hardly paints the picture of someone who would hand Government to the Coalition. Like the laughable attempt by Bob Brown to tell us the day after the election the Greens could side with any party, Wilkie’s decision ended what was a series of false flirtations with Tony Abbott.

But by revealing that Tony Abbott, like Dr Evil making an ambit claim, was willing to write a $1 billion cheque for Royal Hobart Hospital, Wilkie could have done more damage to Abbott than anything Treasury can come up with.

Continue reading "Abbott’s Fatal Austin Powers Moment: One Billion Dollars" »

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" »

Regardless of the outcome of this hung Parliament scenario; business and vested interest groups will be the winners in the medium to long term.

Forget the current wobbliness on the stock exchange and the suspension of investment and trade by some mining companies and multi-nationals; the opportunities posed for those wishing to engage with the independents and the incoming Government far outweigh the risks.

Continue reading "A hung parliament is good news for business" »

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" »

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" »

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" »

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" »

I was at a pub a couple of weeks ago and a friend asked my prediction about the election. Not much into making predictions I speculated that Abbott would do better than anyone expected and the ALP were running a campaign that could ruin them. One of my other friends jumped in and said, ‘it’s the tax, the mining tax, the idiots should never tax the one thing that makes us rich’.

An interesting debate followed that only ended when someone reminded me that it was ‘my shout’. Being a Saturday night and with the footy on the big screen, I think we simultaneously decided that this discussions about tax do not make for an ideal night out.

While the country remains in political limbo and the power brokers are cutting deals, the mining tax is one of those issues that seem to be bubbling below the service.

Continue reading "Why the Independents should dig the mining tax" »

This afternoon The Punch has obtained a new list of demands from the three men that hold the nation’s government in their hands:

Dear Ms Gillard and Mr Abbott,

We three independents, Rob Oakeshott, Bob Katter and Tony Windsor, who are now officially acting on behalf of every Australian voter have been impressed with the progress made in negotiations to form a Government thus far, but have decided our initial seven point plan was lacking some flair. In that spirit we demand the following in for the sake of Australian democracy: 

1. Bob Katter wants a new pony and a lone ranger outfit

Continue reading "10 new demands from the three independents" »

The torturous negotiations over who can form a Government have taken an interesting twist, with former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd arriving in Canberra as talks with crucial independents begin.

The former Prime Minister, turned backbencher, turned Labor election campaigner has arrived at the same time crucial talks with rural independents Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Queenslander Bob Katter are taking place at Parliament House.

While Mr Rudd’s office says his trip to Canberra is not directly related to an attempt to form a Labor Government with the three independents, the former PM has a good relationship with the former independents, and is understood to have contacted Mr Katter on election night congratulating him on his re-election.

Continue reading "Is it Rudd to the rescue once more?" »

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" »

Eat your heart out, Antony Green. It’s cutting-edge interweb publishing here at The Punch. These infographic presentations explain the results of the 2010 election. Let’s start with the ratio of eggs to faces.

Next is a Venn diagram roughly illustrating the voting blocs in the new House of Representatives.

Continue reading "Crunching The Punch’s election data" »

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?" »