i.e. Nothing

Australia's new Federal Parliament got underway this week.

'You're kidding! I thought we were done with politickin? The election ended after 40 odd weeks right? Can't we just forget the whole fucking lot of them for three years now?'

Well, no. Which is to say, yes.

With the high drama, internal squabbling and camp theatrics of the election campaign finally over and done with, most of the Australian electorate will do their absolute level best to avoid anything political until the next campaign (slated for 2012-13 which seems ridiculously close, when you think about it). This is a little easier in a week like the one we've just had, where all right thinking people's thoughts are fixated on the AFL Grand Final in Melbourne (and yes, okay, some on the NRL Grand Final in Sydney, but I'd hardly call those people 'right thinking').

So how did our new Parliament fare in this opening week?

Did the new Government 'let the sunshine in,'



as Julia Gillard said it would? Did the Opposition hold the Government 'ferociously to account,'



as Tony Abbott said it would (the above being a visual depiction of what runs through Mr Abbott's head when he addresses a member of the ALP in Parliament). Did neither of these things happen and did our Federal Parliament settle down to a week of doing what it does best i.e. nothing?

I'm sure the right thinking people in the audience know the answer.

To sum up what actually went down in Parliament this week, then, is a fairly short exercise (note: anyone looking for a robust policy debate, best click the 'Back' button now). There were two key items that took up most of our Parliaments time:

1. ELECTING THE SPEAKER

The Speaker officiates in the lower house of Parliament, the House of Representatives. They sit in a chair between the two sides and serve as a sort of umpire; keeping the peace, running debates, announcing the outcome of votes and making sure Parliament runs according to correct procedure. Well, actually, they spend most of their time going 'Member for So-and-So, resume your seat!' as various members of the house get excited and start shouting at each other. The Speaker is meant to be independent but, as they are elected by a vote of House members, they normally come from the Government benches and are thought to nominally favour the Government on match day.

The election of the Speaker was complicated this time, however, by the Government's wafer thin margin in the House. The Speaker normally only votes if the rest of House vote is tied and, with Labor holding the slimmest margin possible at 76 votes to 74, removing one vote in the form of the Speaker's could be crucial. Labor, then, were less keen than usual to provide the Speaker from their side. Independant MP Rob Oakeshott volunteered himself (undoubtedly taken with the title 'Speaker' given his recent antics) before going cold on the idea again. And a couple of Coalition back benchers flirted with nominating before Tony got all 'Watership Down' on their ass and frightened them back behind the skirting board. After a week of debate and analysis and meetings and dealings and much name calling on national television, we ended up with exactly the same Speaker as last time, Labor's mild backbencher Harry Jenkins.

Your tax payers dollars in action.

2. DEBATE ON PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE IN RELATION TO RECALL VOTES.

This hefty, weighty piece of critical nation building legislation relates to occurrences where the Government is defeated in a Parliamentary roll call vote, but only defeated due to something unusual, like, say, one of their members getting locked in the toilet or something, and then the Government wants to have another vote on the same bit of legislation straight away, say, after the handymen get the trapped parliamentarian out of the dunny, then what sort of procedures need to be followed and... oh fuck me, I can't write anymore about this. I tried to tart it up a bit and make it mildly entertaining but this was a deadly dull procedural battle about voting protocols that made watching paint dry look like 'Jackass 3D.' The Liberals won this one, by the way, causing much tweeting and emailing in the political science department of ANU.

So, it's probably fair to say, that the new Parliament worked well enough during it's first week in operation. Although, with nothing of any real consequence under consideration, this tells us exactly nothing about how it will operate when contentious legislation - euthanasia, broad band, gay marriage or carbon taxes - come up for debate.

And so after a week in which our 226 well paid Federal Parliamentarians sat around shouting about arcane trivia that no one in the whole country could have given a toss about, it seems somehow fitting to leave the summation of the current state of Australian politics down to a work experience kid on the 'Kerry Ann' show:

It's Good to be the King!

Tony Abbott is a man of his word.

During negotiations with minor party and independent parliamentarians over the last two weeks on who would form a minority government, the Opposition leader pledged a 'kinder, gentler polity,' if they supported him as Prime Minister.

Then, in the aftermath of yesterdays decision by the final pair of uncommitted country independents - Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor - to back Julia Gillard instead, handing her the top job, Abbott promised to hold the new government 'ferociously' to account and to 'vigorously' scrutinise all Government policy and to 'smash the fuck out of any Government members who step out of line or look at me funny.'

Well, maybe not that last one, but you get the idea.

Abbott, more than a little disappointed he's not going to be PM, has cancelled all bets now that the election has finally limped to an exhaustive conclusion. You'll note that he didn't say he'd be nice if he didn't get to sit in the Prime Minister's office.

Which probably suits the man and his temperament. Nice was never his strong suit and holding his breath these last few months and not trying to yell and bash things has probably worn him out a bit. Now that the election is over and he doesn't have to try and convince any swinging voters in marginal seats to vote for him - at least for a little while - he can exhale and let the mongrel back out again.

And he's not alone. Members of the Liberal Party were flailing around today, desperately trying to get onto some sort of media conveyance - print, radio, television, online, whatever - so they could let fly at our new Government and it's independent backers.

Liberal Senator George 'The Hitman' Brandis: 'This government has as much legitimacy as the Pakistani cricket team.'

Nationals Senator Ron 'Begbie' Boswell: 'This is payback from Tony Windsor on the National Party.'

And Manager of Opposition Business Christopher 'The Hammer' Pyne: 'This government is like putting a mongoose and a cobra together.'

And while I'm not sure exactly what The Hammer is getting at with his comment, you can bet that he doesn't approve of the way things played out.

So what does this mean for our incoming Government? The one that will be mostly made up of shell shocked Labor MPs and backed, sort of, by an excitable Green (Adam Brandt), a taciturn former Army officer (Andrew Wilkie) and the aforementioned country independents? Well, it probably means that it's unlikely that it'll be a Government that'll 'let the sunshine in' (as Gillard said it would be yesterday, trying her best to sound optimistic at a difficult time). Robb Oakeshott's desire for 'consensus politics' is also about as likely as Bob 'The Mad' Katter agreeing to appear on a Mardi Gras parade float.

Far more likely is that this will be a government on the run, trying to appease it's disparate supporters in the House of Representatives - who span the whole political spectrum, from left to right - while trying to come up with something the the balance of power Greens in the Senate will also find acceptable. And all this while the Coalition will fight tooth and nail on all fronts to oppose every bit of legislation the new Government puts forward, knowing that they only need to shake one vote free to stop any policy in its tracks. And also knowing that if this were to happen a few times, the Government would grind to a halt and Coalition calls for a fresh election - which they are confident they would win - may well be overwhelming.

There is a precedent for this type of thing.

In 1975, the Whitlam Labor government held control of the Senate by a single vote. The death of one Labor Senator, and his subsequent replacement by a National Party representative (quite a story in itself), cost Labor control of the Senate and set off a chain reaction of events that lead to the Liberals Malcolm Fraser being installed as Prime Minister. Fresh elections were subsequently called to resolve the situation. Much has been written about this incident, the great 'Constitutional Crisis' of 1975, and much of what has been written about it focuses on the injustices heaped onto Gough Whitlam and Labor. What is usually less focused on is that when fresh, deadlock breaking elections were held, the Liberal Party gave Labor such a trouncing it took them nearly a decade to recover.

The problems for Labor then, are many.

They have to try and look confident and in control at a time when their confidence has been knocked by a poor election result and they have, literally, lost control of Parliament. They have to try and put forward bold, definitive policies on climate change, taxation and asylum seekers at a time when their new, independent, supporters do not agree what, if anything, needs to be done about any of these things. They have to try and prevent all their factional heavyweights and apparatchiks from tearing into each other and blaming one another for their appalling electoral outcome at a time when they show no interest in doing anything else. And, and perhaps most importantly, they have to find a way to get Robb Oakeshott into the ministry that they've promised him while keeping him away from any microphones or press, lest he launch into another endless speech like he did when he announced his vote yesterday.

Really, that last one is important. This bloke'll be assassinated and we'll be back to the polls again if he thinks he can drone away endlessly about the nobility of country children and the wonders of the democratic process whenever he feels like it (I wanted to jam corks in my ears and smash my radio after about five minutes).

Which is to say, he can do exactly that, drone on endlessly or whatever else take his fancy. All the independents can. Whatever may happen in the life of this government, for now Oakeshott et al are king makers, and as Mel Brooks will tell you:

Christmas Decorations

Like an excitable parent who doesn't take the Christmas decorations down until Australia Day, one of my neighbours just cannot seem to let the election go:



I mean, I know the final result is still unclear, but the campaigning part of the whole thing is over and done with, right? The signs and stuff can't help anymore, right? None of the candidates are still actually trying to get our vote... right?

Well right.

But only in the sense that our primary political leaders are no longer trying to get our vote. As in the humble punters that make up the bulk of the electorate in this country. Nope, we've had our go and the major parties are well and truly done with us. And since these same major parties went out of their way to ensure there were no real differences between them during the election campaign, and so no meaningful choice, we didn't end up choosing either of them outright.

Final power, then, now rests in the hands of a disparate group of independents and minor party parliamentarians, and the wooing of their vote is very much still in full swing. A second election campaign, of sorts.

And both major party's seem much more comfortable with this. This is politickin' as both Labor and Liberal prefer it, in private suites of offices away from the prying eyes of the public and the media. Where deals can be cut and votes bartered over coffee and sandwiches and where the talk is pragmatic and no one has to pretend to be in favour of reducing public debt while simultaneously announcing $42 billion worth of spending, as the Liberal Party did, or to pretend to be strongly in favour of reducing carbon emissions while simultaneously announcing a ludicrously complicated citizens assembly that would have made it impossible to reduce anything except the application of common sense, as Labor had done.

Those kind of nonsensical, doublethink ideas have gone out the window now we're into 'Election Campaign 2: Meet The Independents.' Both Gillard and Abbott are doing their best to stick to facts and reality and keep the bullshit to a minimum at the moment. And both are looking pained doing it, like people who learned how to play the piano when they were kids but haven't played for years and are now trying to recall a phrase or two. But this - hard facts and no hyperbole - is what the independents want and so this is what our leaders are trying to give them, at least in public.

And so this current dance between Labor, Liberal and the Independents is simultaneously like an election campaign as we know them... and yet not like one.

For example, Julia Gillard gave a speech to the 'National Press Club' last week, as she did during the real election campaign, in which she outlined her vision for Australia... a vision which suddenly included things like reform of Parliament and more money for neglected regions of Australia and more money for mental health treatment and disability insurance. Things, policies, with a bit of vision about them and so entirely missing from her actual election campaign, the one that was supposedly run for our benefit. And Tony Abbott this week submitted all of his election policies to Treasury for costing, exactly as the 'Charter of Budgetary Honesty' requires him to do during an election campaign... except he didn't do this during the actual election campaign, the one supposedly run for our benefit, claiming at the time that Treasury was full of liars and communists and should be the subject of a Federal Police investigation.

That Federal Police investigation is now forgotten about, and anyone that asks Mr Abbott about it in public will get a sickly grin before he changes the subject (in private they'd probably get a punch in the face, at least). Likewise anyone that asks Ms Gillard about her sudden conversion to Parliamentary reform, a broken Labor election promise from 2007, will get a short reply about the wonders of democracy and her personal commitment to reform. And then both of them would probably dash, sprint, to the nearest phone to call Rob Oakeshott or Bob Katter and ask them if they'd seen the press conference and what did they think and how was everything going anyway? Bigger office? Maybe you could use a bigger office. We could arrange a bigger office if you feel you need one. Now might be the time. Anything you like, you've got my number.

There can be no doubt that these are unusual times in Australian politics (Don Bradman and Adolf Hitler were both still captaining their respective countries last time we had a hung parliament) and this is causing some unusual side effects. Quite apart from the major party leaders behaving like rational adults with the best interests of the public at heart, some good ideas are being batted around about what to do with this country of ours. Some bad ideas are being batted around too, but the key word in both of those sentences is 'ideas' (and the 'batted around' part is important too):

Bob Katter wants a return to protectionism and the tariff wall, Rob Oakeshott a national unity government, Tony Windsor super fast broadband, Adam Bandt and the Greens a conscience vote on gay marriage, Tony Crook a sackfull of money for his mob in the bush and Andrew Wilkie a new hospital for Hobart (I guess not everyone's caught up in the big picturedness of the moment).

Now you could fairly quickly make a list of pros and cons for all of those proposals and stir up a pretty lively debate about any of them. And if you did that, you'd have the undying gratitude of anyone in Australia with an interest in politics who's just suffered through 5 weeks of 'Moving Forward' and 'Stop the Boats!' (A debate! With ideas and and differing points of view and everything!).

The other thing you can fairly quickly deduce from looking at that grab bag of wish list items is that it's no surprise we don't have a government yet. The fate deciding independents have little in common other than the phrase 'Independant Member for' in front of their parliamentary title. Little wonder then, that Tony and Julia look not only like people who have forgotten how to play the piano, but like medieval princes who have forgotten how to play the piano and who are also watching their castle being sacked by Visigoths. Business as usual has been suspended and change is in the air. Which has got to be good for the rest of us.

The Labor Party, which has already signed agreements with the Greens and Andrew Wilkie for limited support, appear best placed at this time to stagger over the line. The Coalition's mathematical problems with how they've funded their policies, exposed at long last by Treasury scrutiny, has undoubtedly hurt them. Treasury reporting a short fall of $7 - 11 billion dollars in the funding of a candidate that had sloganised constantly about 'ending debt' and 'stopping the waste' in Government spending could only ever be bad. Although Abbott did his best to heroically wave these sums aside as unimportant, and nothing more than 'a difference of opinion.'

Oakeshott, Katter and Windsor have indicated they should make up their mind this week, and maybe as early as tomorrow (Tuesday). The established thinking is that they will find enough common ground with each other and one of the major parties to install a minority government of some sort and end this current limbo period.

If they cannot, and it's probably unlikely but not impossible, we could all be back to the polls to have another go. Perhaps my neighbour, the one with the election signs still in the front yard, knows something the rest of us don't.