Hung Parliament

Last weekend there was a Federal Election for the House of Representatives and half of The Senate. The result after one week of counting is Labor 72, Coalition (Lib/Nats) 73, Independents 4 and a couple of other seats yet to be determined. Result is a hung Parliament.

Not for 70 years has Australia found itself with a hung parliament. It was at the beginning of the Second World War, 1940, and this country was in turmoil. It has taken a long time to reappear on the political scene, but it has and it's taking a lot of uncustomary negotiating to establish some form of workable government.

Hung parliaments are the norm in Europe, but not in this country. Our system has produced a two sided approach to politics, with left of centre and right of centre holding sway. I say this deliberately, since there is no way our two major parties significantly disagree on most major aspects of public policy. If there is any dissension, it is played out for media and public entertainment - since they both manage to 'drop' these contentious issues literally at the drop of a hat (or poll!).

We're not talking 'Reds under the beds' type Socialists v The Establishment anymore. There's not much to separate them at all when it all boils down to it. One side wanted work place reform, and fought like there was no tomorrow to have it introduced. Later, when pressured by The Polls, dropped it as if it wasn't worth it in the first place. The other side pushed for climate change legislation with carbon trading policies to the fore. They fought, and fought THEN....just dropped any reference to it overnight. We had Fuel Watch, then Grocery Watch, loads and loads of issues that took up kilometres of column space and days and days of TV coverage and analysis....and they were all dropped overnight.

The result was, and is, complete distrust of both major sides of politics. Those of you abroad will understand little of this because in a country with just 6% of GDP owed in borrowings and the country being the only OECD country not to slip into recession last year, headlines scream 'Labor Sends Country Broke' and nobody cites the USA at 28% and UK at 32% or Greece at 48% making our bill to lenders seem totally unnecessary to worry about.

Enter the Independents and Greens. They've always been around, but now they have representation not only in The Senate but also the Lower House. The Greens will have (come July next year) a 9 member block to really influence the deliberations in the upper house. What will the next week bring I wonder? Whatever the result, it is certainly an exciting and fascinating period where the prospect of real democratic reform is not just a possibility but a certainty.