Today, after weeks of patient, nail-biting negotiation, all but one backed Gillard to give the Labor Government a one-seat majority in the crucial House of Representatives. Ironically, two of the new Gillard government’s independent backers represent conservative regional constituencies. In the Senate, Gillard has struck a deal with the Greens who will hold the balance of power when the newly elected senators take their seats next July. The guarantees are all in writing. But with government dependent on a one-seat majority (the fourth independent, though he supported the Opposition Liberal-National Party for government, has declared he will not act capriciously should an opportunity arise to bring the government down), it will be a testing time in government for Ms Gillard, Australia’s first elected female Prime Minister.
Only once before in Australian history has there been a hung parliament, in 1940 at the beginning of the Second World War. Only once before, in 1961, has a federal government in Australia governed with a one-seat majority, though that one seat was then held by the governing party, not by an independent. The political circumstances in Australia now are historically unprecedented.
On foreign policy, the confirmation of the Gillard government is likely to see more continuity and more scope for initiative under these finely balanced political circumstances than there might have been had the Opposition been able to form government. Foreign policy strategy was not an issue during the election campaign. Whichever portfolio former Prime Minister Rudd or Foreign Minister Stephen Smith end up holding in the Gillard government, the capacities are in place to get on with foreign policy despite the government’s intense domestic political preoccupations. That would have been less so had the Opposition managed to get the numbers as a new Coalition government would have taken time to get its stride abroad as all attention was required at home.
Whichever way, political events in Australia over the last few months will have been very baffling to non-Australian observers, but not much more so than they have been to Australians themselves.
Peter Drysdale is co-editor of the East Asia Forum.