And, just like that, the Teals became an irrelevant sideshow. After more than a week of counting, Labor have finally clinched the magic 76 seats in the lower house that they need to govern in their own right. The Teals’ hopes of being the powerbrokers in the next parliament have been dashed.
Labor appears certain to have a majority in the House of Representatives after preference counting by the Australian Electoral Commission showed the government had comfortably won the Melbourne seat of Macnamara.
The apparent victory would give Labor 76 seats in the 151 House of Representatives.
Labor also appeared to have a chance to extend its seat count to 77 after it moved back into the lead in the NSW south coast seat of Gilmore where it has been in a seesawing battle with the Liberals.
On Monday evening, Labor’s Fiona Phillips was ahead of the Liberal candidate Andrew Constance by 142 votes.
It is expected postal votes and preference flows will need to be fully accounted for before the race can be called.
The Australian
So, that’s one bullet dodged, but another one is being chambered — pun intended — in the Senate. The Greens will almost certainly control the upper house, meaning that the Albanese government’s entire legislative agenda will be subject to the approval of the watermelon loonies.
A legislative agenda, moreover, that has the least legitimacy of any government in possibly the history of Federation.
On 21 May, the more-than two-thirds of Australians who did not vote 1 for Labor nevertheless ended up with an Albo Labor government – and a Senate with the Greens holding the balance of power. Does this really reflect the will of Mr and Mrs Australia […?]
However, there is a moral consequence emerging from the fact that the Albanese government has now been elected by the lowest percentage ever with only 32.84 percent of Australian voters putting Labor first (which is even well below its vote when Labor was thrashed in two landside elections, one to John Howard of 38.75 percent in 1996 and to Malcolm Fraser of 41.8 percent in 1975 when I was first elected to Parliament). So it had much less support in gaining government last weekend than it had when consigned to the depths of opposition.
Labor’s vote share in the Senate is even lower than its abysmal showing in the House of Representatives: just 29.8%.
Which raises the basic question: when two out of every three Australians voted for politicians who aren’t Labor, and who therefore have often starkly differing policy positions, by what right does Albanese claim any kind of mandate? Let alone a mandate to “change Australia”, as he declared his intention?
Especially when he will almost certainly govern in effective coalition with the Greens? Bear in mind, too, that the Greens’ increased seat count belies the fact that their vote is also below their historic high in 2013, when they managed just one seat.
With the prospect of the smallest major party representation ever in the Senate of 57 (31 Coalition and 28 ALP) and thereby a record number of 19 cross-benchers with their diverse demands that a government has to deal with, Albanese Labor will inevitably seek the relative stability of a deal with the 12 balance-of-power Greens.
We’ve seen this movie before: in 2010-13, the Greens were effectively in coalition with Labor, forcing the Gillard government to repeatedly dance to the Green’s tune.
The Green wish-list of conditions if it is to work with Labor is incapable of being met without bankrupting the nation, quite apart from the economic consequences of ‘real climate action’ that will mean no new coal, oil or gas and a slashing of defence in a more pacifist approach. Funding a welfare and wages spending spree will be by ‘taxing the billionaires and big corporations to provide all the things we need for a better life’, restoring healthcare, electricity, transport, education to public ownership, wiping out student debt – a cornucopia of goodies for everyone, along with an emporium of wokeness.
Spectator Australia
All we can hope is that we’ve given the bastards enough rope to collectively hang themselves.