Independents likely to guarantee stable government

Updated September 7, 2010 13:05:32

As we heard, Australia's not had a proper government for 17 days - a situation that's unprecedented in Canberra.

A minority government is expected to be announced if not today, then hopefully, this week. But how will it work, and what are the issues confronting it and the independents?

Presenter: Sen Lam
Speaker: Brian Costar, Professor of Politics at Swinburne University

LAM: Brian the independents may or may not announce who they'll support today. The situation can't drag on for much longer surely?

COSTAR: Well I mean Australians are very unused to these sorts of circumstances. I was somewhat amused to listen to the radio the other day to be reminded that the latest attempt to form a government in the Netherlands has collapsed three months after the election. Lots of other parts of the world of course regularly take time to form governments after national and local elections. Australia of course is not one of those, you're quite right to say this is the first time since 1940 that we've had a minority government. So really for Australians of course who expect to know who's going to be their government on midnight or even before on polling day, this is unusual. But across the world it's not that unusual.

LAM: So you don't think this stalemate has been damaging for Australia in any way?

COSTAR: No there hasn't been any evidence. I mean some people were saying that it would have damage on international monetary markets and all sorts of things, but the market seems to have taken in its stride. And really while it's true that we have a caretaker government, we do have a government and the procedures are moving on, all that isn't happening is that of course the parliament isn't meeting, which means legislation can't be passed, and under conventions of caretaker governments big and new policy decisions and announcements are not made. But other than that I mean the country's being governed as well or not as it's always is.

LAM: And whichever party gets to form government, how will the support of the independents colour their key policies?

COSTAR: Well obviously they're going to have to be more accommodating and they're going to have to negotiate on contentious issues. But again let's remember that in the Australian parliament the vast majority of legislation passes without any need to have votes at all. I mean it's supported by all the parties. It's going to be on the obvious contentious issues. Now how that plays out we're yet to find, I mean it could well be that we run into a situation of policy gridlock, though I don't really think that will happen. I think what will happen is that there'll be more negotiated policy, and some might say that that might turn out to be better policy than kneejerk reactions.

Remember the previous government got itself into political trouble by making sort of out of the blue big policy statements, some of which they were able to carry through and some of which they weren't. I mean if they were required to go through a negotiating process, which let's face it with whichever side they go, the three independents that who are going to determine this, will be in a sense disposed to be cooperative. I mean this is one point that's not being I think given enough attention. Many people are saying oh this is terrible because this will never work and we'll have an election in the near future. If you think it through why would the three independents whose votes are going to be critical to the formation of whichever party forms government, why are they going to want to bring this government down, because if they do it's almost certain it'll go to an election. They'll lose their position.

LAM: For our international audience, what are some of the key issues that are important to these independents supporters?

COSTAR: Ok I think we can cluster them into two big packages; one is parliamentary and electoral law reform, and the other one is improving infrastructure for regional and rural Australia, particularly in the area of transport, Internet access and issues like that. So there are two big packages that are driving the three independents. Now one interesting thing is that one of those independents is not so interested in the parliamentary reform side of the package, he's more interested in support for, well not just regional Australia, but northern Australia, which is where his electorate resides. Whereas the other two I think are equally moved by the parliamentary reform and the regional infrastructure reform.