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Tuesday, September 07, 2010

A fragile government is formed

In a day of high drama, Julia Gillard was granted the right to form a government—of sorts—with the tenuous promise of the backing of independents—with support more conditional than anyone has ever had before, in attempting to form and maintain government .
Rob Oakeshott, the key architect of this traumatic arrangement, described its future operation as ‘ugly but beautiful’. It is a scenario to delight independents but give the new government many a headache, with guarantees limited to support for supply and opposition to frivolous no-confidence motions. He has cobbled together this combination of open, independent voting by some five independents without any limits to the dysfunctional operation of the adversarial two-party system.
There will be little legislation which can escape controversy. Oakshott’s idea, as he suggested, is that the word ‘mandate’ would have no place in this parliament, meaning the power of the government to legislate will be based, virtually, on the PM’s persuasive ability, throughout the life of the parliament.
If the Prime Minister can manage to carry important legislation through the Lower House successfully she will be a tactical magician, not to mention a political diplomat of outstanding calibre.
Oakshott’s attempt to achieve a non-partisan parliament with a handful of independents, is a bold attempt and is to be commended, and has achieved much improvement in executive accountability.
However a ballot parliament would be far better able to achieve his desire for a non-partisan parliament with far less trauma and waste of time. When will we see sanity prevail?

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