With the counting continuing at the deliciously slow pace set by the AEC, we are given the opportunity to consider what’s about to happen. And the answer is clear. We are a witness to history. The federal Parliament we have just selected is the one that offers the least chance of deriving a legitimate or effective government. We have surpassed the “three-cornered” parliaments of our first decade, when Labor, Protectionist and Free Traders swapped alliances, bringing each other down in the 1900s; surpassed the collapse of the late 1930s, when the UAP started to come apart; or the Country Party-Labor Party brouhaha of the 1950s.
Consider:
- Labor is pulling ahead of the Coalition in the overall two-party preferred vote — about 50.2% to 49.8% — yet it appears that the Coalition will have more seats, and even a one-seat majority. That gives Malcolm Turnbull first nod to try and form government, even though — by the raw understanding of the Australian public — Labor has “won” the election.
- Depending on the final number of senators the Greens take (six to nine), the ALP-Greens bloc (the ALP has 27) would approach the 38 votes needed to get legislation through, requiring only NXT to do so, or Lambie plus Hinch. The Coalition, on 30, by contrast, have a nearly impossible task, corralling four or five different groups and individuals into one, and trying to avoid dealing with Hanson’s One Nation.
- The closeness of the result, the contrary majority/seat majority settings, the rise of lower house independents, means that nothing resembling a mandate can be claimed in the lower house, even if the Coalition cracks the magic 76. There is no chance that a Senate crossbench, elected as “outsiders”, will be willing to conform to Senate conventions.
- Turnbull, as caretaker PM, would, it seems, only have to take regard of the lower house in advising the Governor-General as to whom he should call on, i.e. him. But if Labor and the Greens formed an alliance, then the Senate arrangement would give Turnbull reason (at least formally) to advise the G-G to call on Shorten first.
- Turnbull won’t do this, of course, but in trying to actually govern, he faces a nearly impossible task, and his team would be treated with great hostility by the non-NXT crossbenchers, eager to burnish their outsider credentials with a show of disdain and demand. Yet Turnbull must wait at least two years to hold an election with a half-Senate election — and this would only replace crossbenchers with Greens, or other crossbenchers. A House election only is less likely to deliver the Coalition a second-time-round majority, simply because Turnbull has so undermined his own authority with the long campaign that he has lost much of the “legitimacy” claim. Another double dissolution does not bear thinking about.
- Would Turnbull then challenge Labor to support the government’s key measures, in the interests of system-legitimacy, thus cutting the crossbenchers out altogether? That would put Labor on the spot, since to refuse such stability would look churlish — but the Libs would then pack their measures, with elements Labor would find almost impossible to swallow.
- The entry of an organised hard-right party into the Senate will put immense pressure on the Liberal party room. The conservatives will want to move rightward to take their policies, the moderates will resist (to some degree). It seems impossible that Turnbull could lead this party. It is not impossible (though unlikely) that Hanson’s group could attract Coalition defectors.
- It is not the country that is unstable, but the system. The country has voted in an orderly fashion. The particular constellation of the system has then created a result that hangs between single-party government (which it was designed to facilitate), or multi-party agreements (which it constructs as lacking legitimacy), without being able to affirm either. There seems little doubt that minor parties will grow — and thus every possibility that our lower-house preferential system will become a machine for hanging parliaments. From here on, it’ll be landslide or a hung mess. Even with the higher quota of half-Senate elections, the prospect of easy Coalition control remains slim.
- The situation we are in has little analogy with the great ruptures taking place in the UK, US, Europe. We may get those, but for the moment, it is our institutional structures generating outcomes that make those very structures unsteerable, i.e. ungovernable. If we want a way out of that, the major parties will have to ditch their insistence on single-party government.
Malcolm Turnbull had his wish granted – a new-look Senate. The good news for Oz is that any dubious Coalition legislation they had up their collective sleeve will have nil chance of being passed.
And Medicare is safe because the penny has finally dropped with Turnbull & Co ie: undermining, tinkering with or privatising Medicare is guaranteed electoral suicide. Shorten facilitated that message, thanks Bill.
“A puppy is for ever”. Turnbull got what he wished for – he doesn’t like the look of it and wants to send it back – maybe he can sell it for medical experiments.
Tell us Malcolm – what was the Right way?
Turnbull’s new theme song: Peter Allen’s ‘Don’t Wish Too Hard’….
Don’t wish too hard for what you want
Or then you might get it
And then when you get it
Then you might wish you never got it all
Yes, but the LNP stooge Guthrie they planted in the ABC is already spreading their poison into our balanced information sources….I hope there are enough dedicated ABC supporters to raise a huge hue and cry about that, enough to get Guthrie sacked and replaced with someone decent.
I like minority government. It is a useful curb on parties that lack the intelligence or motivation to develop public interest policies.
It’s clear that we need proportional representation in the lower house, presumably via multi-member electorates whose MP numbers could be adjusted by the AEC as necessary over time to respect population changes within state boundaries. This would have the additional big benefit of diminishing the impact of safe seats.
Either that or the NZ system of local members + list members to top up parties’ MPs to match their share of the vote. Would perhaps need to increase the House to say 200 members (100 local + 100 list) so the resulting local electorates aren’t too huge.
Personally I prefer MMP, a version of the model as practised in Tasmania.
I don’t think that a fresh double dissolution election is possible (the new Senate hasn’t rejected a piece of legislation twice more than 3 months apart).
Turnbull also can’t call a fresh election including a half senate one, because the senators facing the polls would be the current 3 year term ones. Usually elected senators at a half senate election get a 6 year term.
Deciding which senators at a double dissolution get the prized 6 year terms is messy. I understand that the Senate decides. I suppose it’s possible that the Senate somehow could agree that the new senators in a fresh half senate election have 3 year terms. But I doubt it.
If there was just a fresh election for the lower house, I imagine that whichever party managed to stitch up a deal with enough of the cross benchers in the Senate would romp in. And probably Labor would have the better chance, so I can’t see Turnbulldoing that either.
It’s like you’re saying Turnbull has nowhere to go. He can’t go Right because the electorate won’t like it. He can’t go left because the Right, intransigent at the best of times, won’t like it and, now, their backs are up.
John Howard reassures his troops that the Liberals are a ‘broad church’ but he proved that the only way to keep those forces in check was to be conservative yourself and, if necessary, make concessions to the left (which, when he was strong, he rarely did).
Turnbull on the other hand is of the left, in Liberal Party terms, and has to make concessions to the Right. They don’t play that way.
Did you watch “Broadchurch”?