Majorities

I've been trying to write a conference paper this week.  It's the first effort in this direction in nearly twelve months, and I'm finding that the usual rules apply -- I spend three hours chasing a tangent, only to go back to the abstract and get back to the point.  Tangents are interesting, they offer a different way of thinking, and sometimes they bring improvement.  They are still a very high-minded form of procrastination.

I think a similar sort of deal is going on with the negotiations over the federal parliament, with manifestos flying around from the three remaining independents.

Historically, the prime minister and cabinet did not exert the sort of absolute hold on the House of Representatives that we have been used to for the last 70 years or so, as a quick browse of the succession of prime ministers in the first decades after Federation demonstrates.  One thing the last couple of weeks has driven home for me is the extent to which the two-party system as practiced in recent times is a gross distortion of the principle of parliamentary governance.  The sort of atrophied mime of an election campaign is simply the nadir, one hopes.  While I applaud Julia Gillard's obvious negotiating skills -- and she will definitely need them if Labor gets up -- the last couple of weeks has been all about shoring up the outcome when parliament meets to vote on a motion of confidence in the (probably returned) government.


Minority government is not the end of the world, and the status quo ante here would appear to be out of step with similar systems of parliamentary government elsewhere in the world.  Breaking the hold of the two-party system would be a very good thing indeed.