Back to the ballot box if the talks just drag on

"A Marriage of Inconvenience." Illustration: Bill Leak

DIGNITY and Julia Gillard parted ways last Saturday evening, at least for now. To use poker terminology, she is all-in for these negotiations.

Gillard's chips are committed, she must win the hand.

The unedifying spectacle that is federal politics in this country continues. Gillard looks as desperate as any prime minister in history to retain her job.

Were the desperation born out of fear of what her opponent would do to the country, that would be one thing. But a hung lower house and a Greens balance of power in the next Senate must surely have quashed the concerns of even the most ardent unionist that Tony Abbott would reintroduce Work Choices.

Gillard's fear is that she could become nothing more than an embarrassing footnote in history. That is what's driving her to strike a deal with the rural independents to allow Labor's damaged government to continue in power. She needs a second chance.

The independents want full access to Treasury. Why not, says Gillard. They put forward a list of seven requests as part of an attempt to effect a "paradigm shift" in Australian politics, and suddenly, after three years of Labor taking no such steps, Gillard thinks they are good ideas. You get the impression that as long as there weren't any cameras around, if the independents asked Gillard to hop on one leg for 10 minutes, she might consider it.

If she becomes the elected prime minister, even of a minority Labor government, she can start rebuilding her reputation and carving out her own narrative. But it would be tough.

In contrast, Abbott certainly isn't coming across as desperate; he knows second-term governments with a minority status don't have a lot going for them. That was the case in Abbott's home state, NSW, in 1991 when the Nick Greiner-led Coalition remained in power only with the backing of five independents (including Tony Windsor). Greiner didn't survive the term and his party lost the subsequent election (it is still out of power).

But Abbott needs to be careful how he negotiates with the independents and he shouldn't just assume a minority Labor government would be a disaster. For a start, the checks and balances of Greens and independents, not to mention a revitalised opposition, may save the government from some of its own decision-making in a way that didn't happen in its first term.

Abbott's greatest weakness, whether he forms government or not, wasn't exposed during the campaign but it has been exposed now. It is his unbelievable policy costings. So bad are they that he spent the first week of negotiations finding any and every excuse not to allow Treasury to evaluate them. Yesterday he reluctantly agreed to a partial evaluation, which the independents would get to see, as long as it wasn't passed on to the government.

The Coalition prevented Treasury seeing its costings during the campaign because it said earlier leaking meant it couldn't be trusted. The call was politically understandable.

But equivocating about a Treasury examination now, especially when the independents want to take a look as part of their decision-making process about which side gets to form a government, is a sign that the numbers must be rubbery.

Abbott reluctantly agreed to the independents' request only because it was becoming obvious that refusal to do so could rule out his chances of gaining their support.

If Labor forms a government after Treasury gets to look over Coalition costings, Abbott worries it would have the ammunition to make a good start to its second term by tearing him down on the crucial indicator of economic management credentials.

He is taking the punt that by providing the independents with the costings he can win them over. But if Treasury highlights spending inconsistencies, the gamble could backfire.

The process of Gillard and Abbott negotiating with the independents in a bid to form minority government has revealed more than all of the analysis during the tightly controlled election campaign.

Gillard has looked weak while Abbott has looked uncompromising. During the campaign both parties tried very hard to avoid these images of their leaders coming to the fore.

Gillard's weakness is illegitimacy, the factor responsible for Labor not winning enough of the undecided vote to get across the line in its own right last weekend. No one inside the Labor camp will allow themselves to consider what would have happened had Kevin Rudd been allowed to continue as prime minister and fight the election.

Yes, he was damaged; and yes, he wasn't listening to advice when he was rolled (and yes, he wasn't exactly the most collegial parliamentary representative). But given that he was an elected prime minister, it's likely undecided voters would have given him the benefit of the doubt.

As a Queenslander, he may also have helped contain the swing against the government in the Sunshine State, and there obviously wouldn't have been leaks about Gillard's performance in cabinet if Rudd had remained leader.

The longer this negotiations saga drags on, the likelier it becomes that another election is the best solution to the problem of unstable government. No one wants another campaign: neither the public nor the politicians, or the media. But goodwill towards the gaggle of independents is eroding quickly.

The election result isn't a paradigm shift, it is a quirk that the Westminster system can sometimes throw up. If the independents really want to change politics, they should focus on electoral reforms, donations disclosures and rules to ensure better debate during parliamentary question time.

After that they can hunt for a little pork for their electorates; no one would begrudge them that. If they wanted to be adventurous, they could even seek a national equivalent of Western Australia's Royalties for Regions scheme, which the Nationals in WA bargained for at the 2008 state election. But the independents didn't take any such scheme to the election, so the best they could hope for on that score would be a memorandum of understanding to be nutted out in the months ahead.

"Don't stuff it up" should be the words echoing in their ears because they won't get a chance like this again anytime soon. They aren't the arbiters of all that is right in politics, they are just lucky to finally have some influence and importance. If they get too sanctimonious in the negotiations, the Coalition and Labor may prefer to take their chances at the ballot box.

It is hard to know which side would benefit from a second chance at gaining a majority. The momentum is with the Coalition, and that counts in spades when campaigning. But there must have been a protest vote component in the Coalition's vote, given that even towards the end of the campaign a comfortable majority of Australians thought that Labor would win.