Uncertainty rules, whoever wins

THE only certainty to come out of Saturday's election result is that uncertainty abounds.

As the incumbent, Julia Gillard will get the first chance to form a minority government. Picture: Craig Borrow

THE only certainty to come out of Saturday's election result is that uncertainty abounds.

If the voters always get it right, their judgment is that Tony Abbott isn't electable but the Labor Party don't deserve a second term.

Labor has lost its majority but the Coalition doesn't look like it will be able to form government in its own right.

Australia is facing its first hung parliament since 1940. On that occasion incumbent prime minister Robert Menzies retained power with the support of the two independents. But they switched their support to Labor, bringing John Curtin to power in 1941.

Both of the traditional bellwether seats, Eden-Monaro and Lindsay, both in NSW, appear to have been won by the Labor Party. But it is the Coalition that is slight favourite to cobble together a minority government.

It is the three regional independents - Rob Oakeshott, Bob Katter and Tony Windsor - as well as the Green candidate for Melbourne, Adam Bandt and, if preferences fall his way, independent candidate for the Tasmanian seat of Denison, Andrew Wilkie, who will decide whether Abbott becomes prime minister or whether Julia Gillard keeps her job.

There are several factors that are likely to feed into their decision making. The party that secures the majority of the national two-party vote could lay claim to a certain amount of legitimacy as the party the majority of voters would prefer formed government. Two-party projections are varied, but the likeliest scenario appears to be Labor securing fractionally more than 50 per cent of the two-party preferred vote as Saturday's Newspoll predicted.

Another advantage might go to the party that holds the greatest number of seats. It would be difficult for either side to hold together a minority alliance with fewer seats than the other party.

Most estimates give the Coalition 73 seats and Labor 72, or 73 if it hangs on in Denison. The two key seats that could go either way are Brisbane and Hasluck in Western Australia. Both are now in the Coalition's column, but it is possible the two sitting Labor MPs might be able to improve their positions, although Hasluck looks very doubtful for Labor.

What worries Labor strategists is that most postal votes were cast in the second and third week of a campaign, when Labor was leaking badly and trailing in the polls. There is also some suggestion the Liberal Party is still a chance to win back the Victorian electorate of Corangamite, which would almost certainly seal Labor's fate.

Wilkie is stressing that he is a genuine independent and says, if elected he will support the party that can convince him it can deliver stable, competent and ethical government for the next three years.

While it seems likely that Bandt and Wilkie, because of his former membership of the Greens, will support a Labor government, what the three regional independents will do is less clear.

All three are former Nationals, and their electorates would likely prefer it if Abbott formed government.

But there is no love lost between all three and their former party of choice, and on issues such as the National Broadband Network Labor might have more to offer their rural constituencies. During the election night coverage Liberal senator Mitch Fifield made the point that all three men are now genuine independents.

In a sign of the jockeying for favour with the independents that is likely to go on, Gillard used her speech on Saturday night to congratulate them all on their successful elections.

And when the Nine Network's election panelist Barnaby Joyce asked Windsor some pointed questions about who he would support in forming a government - suggesting the country needed the certainty of a quick decision - he received a call shortly afterwards from Coalition headquarters telling him to tone down his rhetoric.

Perhaps an important factor that might give the Coalition an edge in negotiating with the independents is sheer momentum, which it has in spades. There was a large swing away from the Labor Party at this election, with its primary vote dropping to just over 38 per cent, especially in the key state of Queensland where it has lost as many as seven seats from its 2007 performance on a primary vote substantially lower than the national average.

The process of counting the remaining votes cast on Saturday, as well as postal votes and the as many as 60,000 voters who were belatedly added to the electoral role courtesy of Get Up's successful High Court challenge of the early closing of the rolls, will go on for days if not weeks.

In the meantime, Gillard will continue on as Prime Minister in caretaker mode, pushing her time in office past the two-month mark.

Both leaders have a lot riding on the negotiations with the independents and the Greens, especially Gillard. If she doesn't retain the prime ministership she will go down in history as the shortest-serving non-caretaker PM. And assuming she walked away from her political career or was removed as leader by the same factional hardheads who installed her in the first place, Labor would have burned through its two best leadership options in just two months, leaving the remainder of the parliamentary team to descend into bloodletting as it tries to work out where it all went so horribly wrong.

If Abbott doesn't form a government he will certainly continue on as Opposition Leader. But unless the minority Labor government collapses, forcing voters back to the polls for any early election, there are no guarantees he would survive a full three years in what is widely regarded as the toughest job in Australian politics.

As one senior business figure sardonically noted, if minority governance constrained Labor from making decisions it might make it a better government.

However, at the moment, Abbott is a Liberal Party hero, as well he should be after the disciplined campaign he has run and the quality of his unpicking of Labor's legacy as a government.

And having exceeded all expectations in this campaign, the traditional difficulties of being Opposition leader for a full term very easily might not apply in this climate.

If stability is the yardstick for which party should form government, on first impressions the Coalition would appear the better choice.

As Abbott pointedly said on the election night, if Labor can't govern effectively with a 17-seat majority it can't be expected to do so with minority status.

It is hard to see how the federal parliamentary Labor Party is going to avoid descending into a sustained period of finger pointing over whether the decision to remove Kevin Rudd was the cause of its poor performance.

Powerbrokers such as Mark Arbib and Bill Shorten will face internal scrutiny for leading the charge to dump Rudd on the eve of an election.

However, while many of Abbott's front bench are former ministers from the Howard government, most of them were not part of the leadership group that made the former Coalition government so successful.

While a hung parliament hasn't happened federally for 70 years, it is not an uncommon feature at

state level in Australia. At the moment, the West Australian Liberal government led by Colin Barnett is in a minority requiring the support of the Nationals who aren't officially in coalition, along with support from a Liberal-leaning independent.

In Tasmania the David Bartlett government was re-elected earlier this year with minority representation relying on the support of the Greens.

And internationally the Conservatives returned to power in Britain after a decade and a half in the wilderness with the support of the Liberal Democrats led by Nick Clegg.

It will be interesting to see whether government is gridlocked because of the newly elected House of Representatives. But another factor from this election that will make governing difficult for whichever side ultimately wins the election is the composition of the Senate.

For the first time in its history the Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate, but only next July when the changeover of half the Senate happens. Some commentators are predicting that the instability of a hung parliament could have forced us all back the polls well before then.

Quite apart from the macro issues of which party forms government and what impact a hung parliament will have on governance, there are also a series of fascinating micro issues, some of which will play out in the weeks ahead.

What frontbench positions do the former party leaders Malcolm Turnbull and Rudd get offered? And if they aren't happy with what they are offered, would either man be prepared to walk away from politics thereby forcing a by-election and possibly threatening the viability of the new government?

Will any of the independents or the Greens be offered executive positions?

Will the House of Representatives finally get an independent speaker as part of the negotiations?

Will the three rural independents unite to call for a national equivalent of the West Australian royalties for regions spending commitment as their price for offering support? That prospect could also see Tony Crook, the newly elected West Australian National for the seat of O'Connor - where Wilson Tuckey has finally had his parliamentary career terminated - refuse to sit in the Coalition's joint partyroom?

There is no small amount of uncertainty attached to Saturday's election results.

Constitutionally, Governor-General Quentin Bryce is obliged to give Gillard, as the incumbent, the first opportunity to form a government. If Gillard is unsuccessful Bryce will then give Abbott the same opportunity.

If neither leader can reach agreement with the cross benches to guarantee confidence in their party as the government, and depending on the time taken Bryce will have one eye on the national interest of what difficulties uncertainty might create for the Australian economy, the only option could be to go to the polls again.