According to a new poll most Australian’s want to go back to the polls to sort the current political impasse out. The poll more or less makes a mockery of claims by the independents that people want three years of ‘stability’.
On first thoughts I am a little puzzled that it is taking the independents this long to make up their minds. My overall feeling though is that they have already made up their minds to go ALP and are just spending the interim getting briefed up on Hawker ALP talking points.
Abbott should not feel too disappointed. Government right now looks like a poisoned chalice. The only danger is that the independents want fixed terms, presumably to avoid the voter back lash that will be coming their way from their own electorates when they discover their local MPs are backing the ALP. That would mean no early elections, no matter how bad the government is and how fractured the grand and unholy alliance of unprincipled leaches that will be the ALP-Greens-independents.
Tim Blair has some revealing comments in the same vein:
Government, as we’ve been reminded, needs us a lot more than we need government.
When Parliament resumes – and if we assume that Julia Gillard remains PM – so does the instability.
Gavin Atkins:
In the meantime, if we are to believe that Australia will have a stable government over the next three years, we are meant to believe that Andrew Wilkie will happily pass Labor laws involving armed forces doing anything anywhere, that Tony Windsor won’t be fussed passing laws about the mining tax or destroying rural communities down the Murray by taking their water, and that Adam Bandt’s idea of a good day in the House will be supporting the coal-fired power industry.
While stability is likely to be the independents’ justification for creating a Gillard minority Government, the harsh reality is that it currently looks as though it will be about as stable as a Christchurch chandelier.