Who would’ve thought it? For weeks the cognoscenti in general and the press corps in particular had said that what we were looking at was the strong likelihood of a minority Labor government under Anthony Albanese’s prime ministership, but with the needful support of the Teals, the Greens, whoever would back Albo and co against Peter Dutton’s Coalition policies. Though it was worth remembering that the Teals’ conquest of traditional liberal strongholds – very upper-middle class seats previously held by the likes of Tony Abbott and Josh Frydenberg – did not have any traditional emotive loyalty to Labor. And Adam Bandt and the Greens were exhilarated by the prospect of backing an Albanese government and in return being enabled to pursue their own agenda on climate change and ending the war in Gaza.
None of this happened. The Albanese government not only achieved an absolute majority – something so improbable that you scarcely saw it happening – but they looked like coming in with perhaps 88 seats, 12 more than the magical 76 they needed.
It was interesting that last Monday, Paul Fletcher, one of the liberals retiring from the parliament said on Q&A that the two great achievements in Australian politics in recent decades had been Keating’s deregulation of the market and Howard’s backing of the GST and that both of these had been made possible by strong majorities.
There was no doubting how haphazard and uncoordinated Peter Dutton’s election campaign had been.
Niki Savva, one-time senior advisor to Peter Costello and Nine columnist, said it was the worst Coalition campaign in living memory and that was said to be the opinion of John Howard. Though Bill Shorten with a degree of magnanimous bipartisanship had cited Mark Latham’s electioneering atrocity. Shorten has been talking to Sarah Ferguson the last few Thursday nights in company with that other liegeman of the Middle Way, the former Coalition leader of the house, Christopher Pyne, (whose opposite number was, in fact, Albanese). They do that kind of old devil’s act, which is one of the comical and companionable delights of the election. It’s the kind of facetious and frank politicians’ duet that reminds us of why egalitarianism is such a cherished myth in Australia.
Shorten (Xavier-educated, best friend of John Roskam of the IPA) is not by any stretch a man of the left, though his mistake in the 2016 election, where he out-campaigned and almost beat Malcolm